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Karl Evanz. The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. New York: Pantheon, 1999. Pp. ix + 667. $28.50 (Cloth).
L. Conyers, Jr.
L. Conyers, Jr.
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BR35.pdf
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"Karl Evanzz has produced an intriguing full scale biography of the late Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The name "Messenger" was used of Muhammad as a term of endearment, prophecy, and spiritual sobriety. This study illuminates the life of this African American leader from a journalistic lens. The biography is organized into nineteen chapters, which range from the early background and life of Muhammad to the fall of the Nation of Islam. Throughout the middle chapters of the book Evanzz illustrates how Muhammad was consistently involved in African American activism, first by exploring his membership in the Moorish Science Temple, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Allah Temple of Islam, and then by noting how he became the central and driving leader behind the Nation of Islam. Muhammad is often misunderstood for his spiritual, theological, and historical teachings. He blended the teachings of Islam, Pan Africanism, Black Nationalism, and Metaphysics. Evanzz attempts to provide a rationale for these political philosophies and the praxis of African Americans during the 1930s - 1950s. Being born in Georgia and witnessing first hand the cruelties of Jim Crow and Blacks being lynched, Muhammad drew upon his historical and cultural experiences of survival. [2] The Nation of Islam had its beginning in 1930 with Master Wallace Fard Muhammad’s ministry to a few committed aspirants. By 1933, because of internal and external strife in the Detroit community, as well as the departure of Fard and Ugan Ali - two of the early ciphered leaders in the Allah Temple of Islam - the labor of instruction and management of this assembly was transmitted to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. During this early period of Muhammad’s leadership, the organization went through an ideological transition. "(pg1)
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2000
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With permission of the license/copyright holder