One of the boldest icons of the Nation of Islam (NOI) is a simple blackboard. It is sometimes placed on the rostrum of NOI mosques. In the middle of the blackboard it is written, “WHICH ONE WILL SURVIVE THE WAR OF ARMAGEDDON?”. To the left, it says “CHRISTIANITY”, with an American flag, a cross, and a photograph of a lynching beneath. There are also the words “SLAVERY”, “SUFFERING”, and “DEATH”. To the right, it says “ISLAM”, with the NOI flag and the words “FREEDOM”, “JUSTICE”, and “EQUALITY” beneath.
While the content of the blackboard may have evolved over time, the blackboard itself was introduced by the enigmatic founder of the NOI, W.D. Fard. He drew the American flag and the NOI flag on it with coloured chalk during a speech to compare the two.[1] Fard styled himself as a “professor”[2] [3] and used a variety of resources in teaching his followers. The words on the blackboard were added by Elijah Muhammad, the purported Messenger and Apostle of W.D. Fard, sometime after Elijah Muhammad left prison in 1946.[4]
Through this blackboard, the NOI emphatically presented itself as a sort of doomsday religion. Perhaps the content of the board could even be seen as a declaration of war against the United States and the Christian world. Black people were drawn to Fard’s movement due in part to legitimate social grievances: Fard was active at the heart of the Jim Crow era during the toughest years of the Great Depression (1930-1934), and the vast majority of his followers were part of the Great Migration of Black people from the American South to the North.[5] Whilst they fled from violent discrimination in the South, they found racism in the North as well. But who, besides God, was expected to fight this “WAR OF ARMAGEDDON” between Christian America and Islam?
Fard’s teachings were rife with millenarian expectations. As recently discovered by Dr. John Andrew Morrow, one of the books that Fard taught from was Deliverance! by the second Jehovah’s Witness president Judge Rutherford.[6] It was always known that there was a connection between the NOI’s teachings and the Witnesses, as Fard “referred his followers to the writings of Judge Rutherford” and instructed them to buy radios to listen to his radio addresses.[7] Many of the early NOI members were former Jehovah’s Witnesses.[8] Elijah Muhammad wrote in his Message to the Blackman in America that white people “hated Judge Rutherford for his interpretation of the Bible”.[9] In 1970, W.A Maesen wrote about Watchtower influences on Black Muslim eschatology, which include the belief that 1914 was the beginning of the end of this world.[10] [11] Elijah Muhammad even wrote that “all religious scientists”, including Fard, agree that the “world of evil” expired in 1914.[12] [13]
Rutherford’s interpretation of the War of Armageddon differed from that of his predecessor Charles Taze Russell: while Russell taught that Armageddon would be an anarchic struggle for world domination,[14] Rutherford taught that God would eradicate all the nonbelievers, destroy all governments, and usher in a 1,000-year rule led by Jesus and 144,000 believers.[15] According to Russell, this millennial kingdom would come after the end of the 6,000 year history of man.[16] Rutherford wrote at length about Armageddon, reportedly dedicating about half the space available in The Watchtower magazine to the topic.[17] He regarded those who disagreed with him to be of the devil.[18] Indeed, all secular institutions were of the devil,[19] and the “commerce, politics and religion” were labelled as the devil’s chief instruments.[20]
Similarly, Elijah Muhammad taught that the rule of the devil (the white man, the Adamic race)[21] would last 6,000 years, after which God would come to usher in His 1,000-year rule.[22] He noted that Revelation 14:1 foretells 144,000 believers, but he hoped “to beat the old prophet’s predictions” and convert more people.[23] Pertinently, Elijah Muhammad wrote in How to Eat to Live that “a man can live up to 1,000 years if he eats the right food twice a week.”[24] Fard promised to totally destroy the white man, including “the one you walk side by side [with] every day, he is the devil, and I am going to destroy him from the face of the earth.”[25]
Both the NOI and the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the believers would survive Armageddon and build a New World right here on Earth.[26] Both groups believe that there is no life after physical death.[27] [28] Both groups believe that Armageddon will be brought about by God’s use of the forces of nature, including hail, earthquake, flooding, fire, and disease.[29] [30] Fard told Elijah Muhammad’s brother that it was “no time to get married right now” in 1934,[31] and Rutherford was similarly writing that it was not the right time to get married in 1938 due to the imminent battle of Armageddon.[32]
But Fard’s eschatology was not a simple copy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’. He did not limit himself to the Bible, which he would later attack[33] and call “the poisoned book.”[34] [35] Fard was purportedly a Muslim, and he had a reputation of being a “street-corner politician”.[36] His eyes were fixed on America as the first target of his war – he wanted to destroy “America first. Yes, not Europe, but America first.”[37]
The Nation of Islam and Imperial Japan
1930s Japan also had its eyes on the United States. In the years leading up to their famous attack on Pearl Harbour, Japan sent instigators to America to exploit racial tensions. In particular, Satokata Takahashi, a supposed major of the Japanese army and an affiliate of Japan’s ultranationalist paramilitary Black Dragon Society, founded the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World in Chicago in 1932.[38] This was a pro-Japanese Black movement that promoted the idea that Japan was the champion of Asiatic people. NOI literature frequently refers to Black people as Asiatic, and Japan was looking to ally with the Muslim world; there was even a wily rumour in the early twentieth century that the Japanese emperor was considering converting to Islam.[39]
W.D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad were friends with Major Takahashi, and Takahashi’s wife, Pearl Sherrod, was a member of the NOI.[40] Japan funded the Black Muslims through Takahashi, and the FBI was watching these subversive activities.[41] Takahashi and his Filipino companion Ashima Takis would lecture at Elijah Muhammad’s temples.[42] In the 1930s, the FBI raided Takahashi’s organization in Detroit and seized a poster of four guns with the word “Asia” written on them aimed at the United States, with a picture of Takahashi in the middle, titled “Calling the Four Winds”. The same poster was found in the house of Raymond Sharrieff, the son-in-law of Elijah Muhammad, in 1942, except it had a picture of Fard in the middle.[43] According to FBI transcriptions of Elijah Muhammad’s sermons, he frequently taught that the “Japanese will slaughter the white man.”[44] Japan was a part of this Asiatic nation, and the Japanese army and navy were “only waiting on the word” of Fard to destroy the devil.[45] Fard taught that “our Asiatic brothers” designed and built the “Mother Plane” – a UFO-like airship that would release smaller ships to drop poison bombs on the United States.[46] Elijah Muhammad said that the Mother Plane’s bombs were the same type that gave the Earth its mountains, and that they would dig one mile deep into the Earth.[47] [48]
This is where Fard’s Armageddon diverges from Rutherford’s. For Fard, the War of Armageddon was a literal war between the Asiatic world and the white world. It was not the divine chastisement of a “spook God” that didn’t exist. As Elijah Muhammad said of Fard, “He did not say, ‘I or Allah will do this and that,’ but I noticed him carefully saying, ‘We do this or that.’”[49] In other words, “we” – the God, the Muslims, Black people, Japan, the Asiatic world – would bring down the judgment on white America. The feared Mother Plane was not an otherworldly ship, but one built by mortal hands in Japan. Of course, despite Japan’s technological output, we know of no such airship in reality.
In 1942, Elijah Muhammad was indicted for his sympathies with Japan. Japan went on to lose the war, and Elijah was released from prison in 1946. With his unshakeable faith in Fard’s words, Elijah Muhammad persisted in his doctrine that America would soon be destroyed. The burden of this War of Armageddon shifted away from Japan and toward a divine intervention from God. The Mother Plane still played a prominent role in his eschatology and that of his ideological successor, Louis Farrakhan. The NOI still patiently await the burning of the country, but who will bring that about? A spook God, a natural disaster, Black aliens, or an unconfirmed 1930s Mother Plane of an extinct empire? Was the Empire of the Rising Sun supposed to be the Sun rising from the West, as per the prophetic tradition?
The disappearance of W.D. Fard is as mysterious as his identity. Researchers in the future may need to dig deeper into his connections with Imperial Japan and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. For now, we are at least one step closer to understanding his teachings.
[1] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 44.
[2] Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 6 (May 1938), pp. 896.
[3] Ironmuhammad68, “Saviours’ Day 2007: One Nation Under God”, YouTube, 31:50 to 32:00, https://youtu.be/q3_0SndoBCc
[4] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 44.
[5] Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 6 (May 1938), pp. 897.
[6] John Andrew Morrow, W.D. Fard’s Bible of Islamism Identified: A Century-Old Mystery is Solved, https://bliis.org/essay/w-d-fards-bible-of-islamism-identified-a-century-old-mystery-is-solved/
[7] Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 6 (May 1938), pp. 900.
[8] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 81.
[9] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 191.
[10] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 26
[11] C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, pp. 77.
[12] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 88.
[13] Ibid, 18.
[14] Alan Rogerson, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, pp. 47.
[15] https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101992009 , https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2008241
[16] https://web.archive.org/web/20070928021839/http://www.a2z.org/wtarchive/docs/1935_Calendar_Golden_Age.pdf
[17] Tony Wills, A People For His Name, pp. 154
[18] M. James Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, pp. 70.
[19] Ibid, 183.
[20] Ibid, 200.
[21] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 84.
[22] Ibid, pp. 11-12, 88.
[23] Ibid, pp. 34.
[24] Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live Part 1, pp. 47.
[25] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 71, 100, 143.
[26] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 36-37, 165-166.
[27] https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/wp20150801/what-happens-after-death/
[28] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 63.
[29] https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/battle-of-armageddon/
[30] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 18, 106, 163, 172.
[31] Shah-Allah Shabazz, “Q&A With the Supreme Minister”, 28:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLbSV1lVW-Q
[32] Judge Rutherford, Watchtower, November 15, 1938, p. 346
[33] Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 6 (May 1938), pp. 895.
[34] C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, pp. 78.
[35] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 62.
[36] John Andrew Morrow, Finding W.D. Fard, pp. 179.
[37] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 71.
[38] https://web.archive.org/web/20060513065118/http://www.umass.edu/afroam/downloads/allen.tojo.pdf pp. 3.
[39] Derk Boddle, “Japan and the Muslims of China”, Far East Survey, 15:20 (Oct 1946), pp. 311-313.
[40] Jacquelin Bobo, The Black Studies Reader, pp. 453.
[41] Ernest Allen, “When Japan was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism”, The Black Scholar, Vol. 24, No. 1, Black Cultural History, Winter 1994, pp.23-46.
[42] Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, pp. 164.
[43] Sylvester A. Johnson, The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security before and after 9/11, pp. 151.
[44] Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, pp. 127.
[45] Ibid, pp. 127.
[46] Ibid, pp. 116.
[47] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 24.
[48] Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 173.
[49] Hatim Sahib, The Nation of Islam, pp. 71.
