“He began teaching us the knowledge of ourselves, of God and the devil, of the measurement of the earth, of other planets, and of the civilization of some of the planets other than earth. He measured and weighed the earth and its water; the history of the moon, the history of the two nations, black and white that dominate the earth.” – Elijah Muhammad.[1]
“[He] gave us the measurement of our earth – the land and the water – and gave us the distance between the planets … every time we look around, the white scientists [are] fixing their measurements, coming closer and closer to that which you know and have known since 1930 in this city of Detroit. You’ve been blessed, but you don’t know your blessings.” – Louis Farrakhan.[2]
W.D. Fard, the man venerated as “God in Person” by the African American Nation of Islam (NOI), was an enigmatic teacher that was active in Detroit and Chicago between 1930 and 1934. Many of his teachings were compiled into The Supreme Wisdom, a book containing lessons on geography, mathematics, and NOI theology and history. The Supreme Wisdom is often memorized verbatim by NOI adherents, including by children at the NOI’s University of Islam schools.
One of the documents in The Supreme Wisdom is called “Actual Facts”, which provides numerical figures for the square mileage, circumference, and diameter of the Earth, as well as the square mileage of land, water, hills and mountains, islands, and deserts. As a modern and quasi-naturalistic religion, the NOI puts some emphasis on incorporating the empirical sciences in their teachings. “Islam is Mathematics”, The Supreme Wisdom says.[3] White people are said to be the product of a scientist using a form of eugenics.[4] The War of Armageddon would be brought about by a UFO-like Mother Plane built in Japan.[5] The holy scriptures were written by a council of scientists.[6] As elaborated by Dr. Edward E. Curtis, “the Nation of Islam emphasized scientific, material, and empirical over spiritual and supernatural understandings of religion.”[7]
But where did W.D. Fard get his figures from in his “Actual Facts”? For the NOI, Fard is God in Person, and “he stood and measured the earth” (Habakkuk 3:6).[8] In the earlier quotation, Farrakhan suggested that white scientists’ estimation of the Earth’s measurements is gradually getting closer to the miraculous measurements of The Supreme Wisdom.
However, Fard was also a resourceful man: he used both the Bible and the Quran, he assigned 104 books from the Library of Congress[9] (or 150 books) to Elijah Muhammad,[10] and he taught from Breasted James Henry’s The Conquest of Civilization[11] and Judge Rutherford’s Deliverance!.[12] It is thus likely that he supplemented his scientific teachings with published works as well.
As it turns out, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, a popular reference work published every year since 1886, is probably the source of Fard’s “Actual Facts”. The almanac was used by U.S. presidents Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.[13] Over the years, the almanac became a household name and has been featured in several Hollywood films and television appearances.[14]
“Actual Facts” says that “the total area of the land and water of the planet Earth is 196,940,000 square miles … The area of the Water is 139,685,000 square miles … The area of the Land is 57,255,000 square miles … The Atlantic Ocean covers 41,321,000 square miles … The Pacific Ocean covers 68,634,000 square miles … The Indian Ocean covers 29,430,000 square miles … The Lakes and Rivers cover 1,000,000 square miles … The Islands are 1,910,000 square miles … The circumference of the planet Earth is 24,896 miles.”[15]
The 1928 edition of The World Almanac and Book of Facts – published just two years before W.D. Fard appeared in Detroit – has the exact same figures.[16]
The 1923 edition of the almanac (available for free online)[17] also gives the same figures for the diameter of the Earth and the Earth’s fertile regions. The facts appear to have been revised by the National Geographic Society of Washington D.C., “from the latest available figures and estimates.”[18]
The almanac has also been available at the Library of Congress since the 1920s.[19]
Despite these statistics being penned nearly a century ago, they are very close to today’s estimates – but they are not exact. With the advent of space travel and the invention of GPS, it is likely that today’s figures are more factual than what is seen in “Actual Fact”. Still, Fard did not simply fabricate these numbers – he consulted a prominent and respected sourcebook.
The more we discover about W.D. Fard, the more we learn that he was an adaptable man that stitched various fabrics into the garb that he would gown the NOI in. He was the product of an era of technological advancement, millenarianism, eugenics, numerology, and interreligious exchange. He was a traveller that never stayed very long in the same place, and he absorbed various influences from every place he went to. While he did not literally measure the Earth in his travels, we can at least measure where this part of his teaching came from.
[1] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, pp. 18.
[2] Louis Farrakhan, “The True Mission Of The Hon Elijah Muhammad”, Muhammad Mosque #1 in Detroit, Michigan on November 15, 1998. YouTube. 0:15:50-0:16:40. Ironmuhammad68. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DagNGD3qYW8
[3] W.D. Fard, The Supreme Wisdom, Problem No. 13.
[4] Ibid, First Term Examination Assignment, Q. 21.
[5] Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, pp. 127.
[6] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 41.
[7] Edward E. Curtis, “Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam”, The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 20, No. 1 (August 2016), pp. 5.
[8] Louis Farrakhan, “The Greatness of MASTER FARD MUHAMMAD”, The Final Call, https://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/featuredFarrakhanArticle/The-Greatness-of-MASTER-FARD-MUHAMMAD.shtml
[9] Ken Ringle, “Farrakhan’s Figures”, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/10/22/farrakhans-figures/50ddb5fb-21e1-4250-b324-b92176d3f6a4/
[10] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 27.
[11] Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 6 (May 1938), pp. 900.
[12] John Andrew Morrow, “W.D. Fard’s Bible of Islamism Identified: A Century-Old Mystery is Solved”, The Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies, https://bliis.org/essay/w-d-fards-bible-of-islamism-identified-a-century-old-mystery-is-solved/
[13] Tatiana Morales, “World Almanac’s Top 10 Stories”, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-almanacs-top-10-stories/
[14] Ibid.
[15] W.D. Fard, The Supreme Wisdom, Actual Facts.
[16] The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1928, Press Publishing Company (The New York World), pp. 752.
[17] https://archive.org/details/worldalmanacbook1921unse
[18] The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1923, Press Publishing Company (The New York World), pp. 440.
[19] https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=the+world+almanac+and+book+of+facts&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&searchType=0&recCount=25&sk=en_US
