Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [76]
Despite the NOI’s heterodoxy, Elijah Muhammad perceived his sect as part of a global brotherhood, the ummah, which transcended the distinctions of ethnicity, nationality, class, and even race. NOI ministers were trained to see themselves as dedicated warriors in a spiritual struggle against God’s enemies. Such an imam can be described as a mujahid, one who devotes his life to the service of Allah, but who also practices spiritual self-discipline.
Members of the Nation of Islam with a more sophisticated knowledge of orthodox Islam found allegorical reasons for believing that the sect would ultimately grow away from its heretical roots and rejoin more conventional Islam. They compared Elijah’s flight from Detroit to Chicago and the hegira of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. The persecution of the first Muslims was subsequently experienced by Elijah and his early followers who resisted the U.S. draft. Perhaps most persuasively, all Muslims knew that the Holy Qurʹan was a book of Muhammad’s recitations compiled over a period of twenty-two years. Muslims believe that the work contains a unitary message; nevertheless, the focus and content of the surahs, or chapters, changed over time. In a similar fashion, Elijah distributed “lessons” to his followers to be studied and committed to memory. Each lesson reflected a “divine truth,” yet together they were incomplete, to be superseded by subsequent revelations. As Elijah’s connections with the larger Islamic world grew, the likelihood for some sort of theological evolution, or “Islamization,” also increased. In fact, this is exactly what happened upon Elijah’s death in 1975, when his rebellious son Wallace took over the leadership of the Nation; he instituted a total rejection of the Nation’s dissident religious dogma and accepted orthodox Islam.
One decisive step occurred, curiously enough, through global politics. The Nation of Islam had always viewed African Americans as “black Asiatics,” and in its realm of the saved there was no distinction between Asians and Africans. Consequently, the NOI took special note when in April 1955 representatives from twenty-nine African and Asian nations met in Bandung, Indonesia, to plan how they might cooperate politically. Participating states included Burma, Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, India, Thailand, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Ethiopia, and the Gold Coast, but by far the largest contingent was made up by nations with majority Muslim populations: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen. In the opening address, the Indonesian president Achmed Sukarno declared the gathering the first transnational conference of colored peoples in history.
Revolution against the old colonial rule had been in the air. The conference came only six years after the triumph of the Communist Party over the Kuomintang in China. In Vietnam in 1952, the popular forces of Ho Chi Minh had routed the French colonial army at Dien Bien Phu, leading to a French withdrawal two years later. In Sudan, a revolt broke out in August 1955, forcing the British to airlift eighteen thousand troops into rebel areas.
But it was in the Muslim ummah that the struggles for independence were most inspirational. In Morocco, the French decision to depose Sultan Mohammed