A Door That Opened on Real Pain
Picture a young Black man who has been told, in a hundred ways, that he does not count. Men in bow ties call him brother. They call him to a clean life and a strong family, and they tell him to lift his head. They explain why the world has treated him as it has, and they offer him a new name. Malcolm X met this message in prison, through a letter from his brother.
The Nation of Islam began in Detroit in 1930. It is small today, with an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 members (Britannica). But it has marked American life far beyond its size. Malcolm X preached for it. Muhammad Ali announced his membership in 1964 and left it for Sunni Islam in 1975. Its leader, Louis Farrakhan, helped organize the Million Man March of 1995. You may well meet its teaching at work, in a prison ministry, or in your own family.
This study must tell the truth about the wound that gave the Nation a hearing, and the truth about its teaching. A reader who has carried that history in his own family should find both here: honesty about what was done, and a Savior who belongs to no race's pride.
We regard the Nation's teaching as a cult in the sense defined in What Is a Cult?: it uses Christian words such as Messiah, Son of Man, and resurrection, and it teaches another God and another Jesus. It is also not the historic faith weighed in Islam. We use the word only as a theological category, measured from the group's own sources. It is no judgment on anyone's pain, on the good the Nation has done, or on any person's heart. Labels do not save and they do not damn.
Loading the rest of this article
For Deeper Study
- Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the GospelAmazon Eric Mason, ed.Black evangelical writers on the Nation of Islam, Hebrew Israelites, and other movements in Black communities. We differ with some contributors.
- A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global IdentityAmazon Vince L. BantuAn evangelical scholar shows that Christianity was global from the start, in Africa and Asia as well as Europe. Academic in tone.
- One Race One Blood: A Biblical Answer to RacismAmazon Ken Ham and A. Charles WareYoung earth creationists. Shows from Genesis and Acts 17:26 that there is one human race.
- The Autobiography of Malcolm XAmazon Malcolm X with Alex HaleyA primary source. It will help you hear what the Nation meant to him and why he left it.
- Message to the Blackman in AmericaElijah MuhammadThe primary source, by the movement's second leader. Read what your friend has been taught before you answer it.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
As an Amazon Associate, Theologica earns from qualifying purchases.
Islam
Islam calls people to submit to one God through the Qur'an and the Five Pillars, honors Jesus as a prophet while denying that He is the Son of God or died on the cross, and leaves the believer hoping for a mercy he cannot be sure of, while the Gospel offers a finished salvation in Christ.
Open Doctrine