Knight, Michael Muhammad. The Supreme Wisdom Lessons: A Scripture of American Islam. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox, 2024. Hardcover. List Price: $92.83.
In a Muslim world marred by mediocrity, rumination, and regurgitation, Michael Muhammad Knight (b. 1977) shines brightly as one of the most original and creative Islamic writers of our times. Whether his works are fiction or academic, they are always entertaining and illuminating. As one can only expect, his latest work, The Supreme Wisdom Lessons: A Scripture of American Islam, the sole academic title devoted to such a seminal subject, was eagerly awaited and anticipated by experts in the field.
Michael Muhammad Knight’s 289-page work features seven sections: the introduction, Fard’s Syllabus, Thirty Years in the Wilderness, 1904-1934, Making the Lessons, Renewing the Lessons, The Lessons as Tradition, the conclusion, a series of appendices on the Lessons and Problem Book, as well as a bibliography and index. Professionally produced, and properly peer-reviewed, the work is required reading for anyone fascinated with W.D. Fard, the mysterious and nebulous founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as those interested in the history of Islam in the United States.
On a positive note, Knight’s work makes fascinating contributions to the field. He suggests, for example, that W.D. Fard, or whoever he originally was, did not merely ship out from Hong Kong, but was originally from there; not as a Chinese person, of course, but as a resident of Asian parentage from what was Afghanistan, Pakistan, or India (61-63, 68, 218). Although it is a long shot, there might be documents tying Fard to Hong Kong. That might explain why, to all appearances, he came to America with a knowledge of English. As Knight notes, he was proficient in English during his Fred Dodd years (82). While not new, and suspected by previous scholars, Knight’s claim that Elijah Muhammad edited or tampered with the Lessons seems sound based on comparative literary analysis (15-16; 122-163, 269).
Fard’s potential association with the Ghadar movement is particularly interesting; however, Knight merely touches upon the topic (68). Specialists were expecting much more. Knight also provides further details into the background of George Farr (69-73). Especially welcomed is Knight’s detailed informed regarding San Quentin, the Theosophic presence in the prison, the revelations regarding the educational opportunities that were offered when Fard was imprisoned there, the large size of its library, with over 12,000 books, and the fact that correspondence courses were offered through the University of California system (75-85). This confirms Elijah Muhammad’s claim that W.D. Fard studied at a university in California. Not only was San Quentin a “national model for prisoner education,” it housed “the largest and most comprehensive prison school in the nation” (83). For Fard, going to San Quentin was quite literally like going to university. Far from procrastinating, he put his time to effective use. He did the time. He did not let the time do him. If he was not a street or lay intellectual when he arrived, he was most certainly one by the time he came out. For legal authorities, of course, he reformed the wrong way. Not only did he become more educated, but he became more radicalized.
The greatest contribution made by Knight to the biography of W.D. Fard resides in filling in existing gaps and plugging previous information holes. To bones and a skeletal structure he has provided flesh. Knight gives life to history. As a result, Fard’s biography gets richer and fuller, colored, and lively. The fact that Hazel Barton, with whom Fard was “living in sin,” and with whom she had a son, had criminal associations is eye-opening (67). She was not the lily white, innocent housewife that she pretended to me. To avoid spoiling things for readers, no more details are provided in this review. The middle paragraph on page 67 is a veritable gold nugget and a fantastic find. When being interviewed by the police decades later, Hazel was just covering for Fard. She wanted to avoid incriminating herself as well.
On a negative note, Knight’s work falls short in some regards. He mentions the son that W.D. Fard, then going as Fred Dodd, had with Pearl Allen, a teenager from the Klamath Nation (66). While this was a possibility mentioned in Finding W.D. Fard, further research by Bilal Muhammad has demonstrated definitively that this was not the case. Readers are referred to the article “Did W.D. Fard Have a Son with Pearl Allen? A Century Old Mystery Solved?” which was published on BLIIS on January 14, 2024. And while Knight discloses the terrible news that the treasure trove of Fard documents that was discovered in 2002 is now locked in a vault, he fails to provide further information (9). They belonged to the Burnsteen Sharieef Muhammad’s family. They were put on the auction block. The Nation of Islam, one presumes, claimed to own them. What did the court rule and why? Who legally owns the documents? And how could scholars access them? These questions beg to be answered. An entire page or even a chapter could have been devoted to this frustrating dispute. Why are Fard’s documents being held hostage? What are they trying to hide?
Knight’s claim that W.D. Fard was only deified by Elijah Muhammad after he disappeared is debatable (10-13; 220). It relies in part on the recollections of Burnsteen Muhammad, W.D. Fard’s secretary, that were first published in 2011, and which were ostensibly written down up to sixty years after the events unfolded. Knight fails to acknowledge that the Reformer, as she was called by Master Fard, had long abandoned his doctrines, and has sided with Warith Deen Mohammed’s (d. 2008) reforms, unlike her husband Supreme Minister John Muhammad (d. 2005), who remained faithful to them. Not only was her Islam sanitized, or “Sunnitized,” but she fell under the spell of Salafist ideology. Her brief autobiography or memoirs are not a period source. As memory science has shown, each time people invoke memories, they reformulate them. Clearly, her account was colored.
If we rely on newspaper, police, and hospital accounts from the 1930s, published when Fard was present in Detroit, it does appear that he claimed to be God, not exclusively, but in the sense that the divine resides in all human beings. From this philosophical perspective, no person is God individually. However, people are God collectively. It is through knowledge of self that people can attain God-consciousness, annihilate themselves in the Divine, and become at one with the One. The evidence from the period is quite clear that Fard and Ugan Ali described themselves as “gods of the Asiatic nation,” that Fard claimed to be “the Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” and that he suffered from delusions that he was a divinity. This is not up for debate. What can be disputed is the meaning attributed to such grandiose claims.
As for the doctrines that Fard was the Son of Man, the Second Coming of Christ, and God in Person, those appear to be the theological work of Elijah Muhammad and the result of his Christian upbringing. Like Fard, who initially preached solely from the Bible, gradually introducing the Qur’an, and then solely preaching from it, Elijah appears to have been intent on drawing Christians to the fold and transitioning them into a syncretic form of the Muslim faith. Fard, however, may not have approved of such accolades in his time. Either Elijah Muhammad misunderstood and misinterpreted him, as would be reasonable to expect someone with a fourth-grade education, or he exaggerated his status beyond bounds, as early Christian did with Christ. With Prophet W.D. Fard exalted to the status of the Divinity, when he probably only preached of the divine potentiality of people, Elijah Muhammad positioned himself as Allah’s Final Messenger.
Knight also claims that attempts to identity Fard’s native Islam are “overly speculative and poorly evidenced, relying chiefly on superficial coincidences and essentialisms” (14-15). While it is true that we find “no significance for ‘Ali” (22) in Fard’s teaching, it could be contested that we find “no concept of Shi’i imamate, no Shi’i specific reference to the Madhi… no Shi’i specific vocabulary… or no self-evident use of any Shi’i text or authority” (22). Not only does Finding W.D. Fard provide compelling evidence to the contrary but, to all evidence, Knight never read “Malcolm X and the Twelve Imams of the So-Called “Extremist” Shiites.” As I concluded, “the Twelve Imams played a pivotal role in the theology of W.D. Fard that was taught by Elijah Muhammad.” The beliefs in question “fit well into the mold of Ghulat Shiism in its multifarious manifestations and bifurcations.” Let readers read and decide for themselves.
While Knight’s attempt to zoom out, and focus on the broader cultural picture of Fard, in the times and places that he moved and operated, is both valid and valuable, one should not push back against or belittle the equally valid and valuable attempts to examine his ideas under a microscope (14-15, 52). We should encourage all approaches. We need to examine microcosms as well as macrocosms. What is more, Knight’s attempts to identify potential sources of ideological influence in Fard’s writings, drawing from Theosophical and Freemason literature (33-36; 42-53, 75, 212, 259, 264, 269), could also be cast aside as overly speculative, superficial, and essentialist. The fact of the matter is such findings are fascinating, suggestive, and stimulating. Knight has done a fantastic job unearthing further potential influences on the thoughts of W.D. Fard. The list of sources and citations is outstanding. One can only hope that a specialist in Freemasonry will sift through the Lessons, Fard’s letters, and Elijah Muhammad’s teachings. Such a scholar could uncover even more Masonic elements. Some could trace back to Fred Dodd’s entanglement with Laura Swanson.
Rather than dialogue with scholars, Knight, at times, seems to be preaching to the choir. When have previous scholars claimed that Fard was one thing to the exclusion of others? Who has ever claimed to have a “master key” to unlock his secrets? (14). Who has tried to tie Fard to a single set of sources? (15). Few scholars speak in such exclusive and exclusionary fashion. Whether they trace Fard’s ideas to one source or another, they view him as an eclectic appropriator who cooked up a syncretistic theological gumbo full of disparate elements from East and West. Where have they claimed that his past predetermined his present? As Rakim (b. 1968), the legendary lyricist and rapper asserted in “I Know You Got Soul,” “It ain’t where you’re from / It’s where you’re at.”
While identifying Fard’s biology, nationality, ethnicity, and religiosity can help provide answers, they obviously do not explain how he became what he became. That is more a matter of psychology and sociology than history. At one point, however, Knight dismisses the value of tracing the paternal DNA of Wallace Max Ford (d. 1942), the son of W.D. Fard and Hazel Barton (d. 1977). He does not believe that the results could provide us with any meaningful information. One’s biological makeup does not determine one’s beliefs, and if Fard belonged to a particular faith community, he would have been sui generis, if not a deviant or an outcast. However, DNA information could pinpoint his racial, national, and ethnic origin. Perhaps he was Asian, maybe from Afghanistan, Iran, Baluchistan, Pakistan, India or Azerbaijan. Maybe he was an Arab of Syrian-Lebanese ancestry. Could he have been Moroccan? What if he was actually European or white? Perhaps a Greek or a Turk? Maybe a mulatto from the southern United States who came north? How about a Jew? And what if he was First Nations? Wouldn’t that throw a wrench into all of our research? The findings, whatever they might be, would not be inconsequential. It is possible we have been looking in all the wrong places.
Finally, although Patrick D. Bowen, the author of A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, had intimated that Michael Muhammad Knight would be publishing new evidence regarding the origin of W.D. Fard on the Brother Garfield podcast, on March 20, 2024, no such information appears in The Supreme Wisdom Lessons: A Scripture of American Islam. Why? And if anyone was hoping to find out what happened to Master Fard after 1934, readers will be sorely disappointed. “So far,” concludes Knight, “Fard has escaped history” (107).
Works Cited
Morrow, John Andrew. “Malcolm X and the Twelve Imams of the So-Called ‘Extremist’ Shiites.” BLIIS (March 27, 2020). Internet: https://bliis.org/research/malcolm-x-twelve-imams-extremist-shiites/
Morrow, John Andrew. Finding W.D. Fard: Unveiling the Identity of the Founder of the Nation of Islam. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
Muhammad, Bilal. “Did W.D. Fard Have a Son with Pearl Allen? A Century Old Mystery Solved?” BLIIS (January 14, 2024). Internet: https://bliis.org/research/did-w-d-fard-have-a-son-with-pearl-allen-a-century-old-mystery-solved/
