Excerpt from Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century By Amos N. Wilson
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The Economics of the Nation of Islam
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The judicious involvement of institutional religious organizations in Black economic development cannot but vastly enhance their religious, social and political influence far beyond their numbers and denominational doctrines. The Nation of Islam while under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and now under that of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan is a remarkable case in point. Muhammads was a nation indeed. As noted by Emerge magazine:
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Elijah preached mythology but rooted himself in solid ground. His motto was do for self. And he did just that. He ruled over 76 temples nationwide and 50,000 to 100,000 people. His nation owned 15,000 acres of farmland, a newspaper with a circulation of 500,000, several aircraft, a fish import business, restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets. A fire-eater with a whispery voice, Muhammad redeemed the disenfranchised in the ghetto, infusing them with pride
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The nation• functioned as a nation with a national capital, Chicago; a head of state, Elijah Muhammad; a national, hierarchical administration; a binding religion and a political ideology; a set of distinct family, educational, economic, commercial, religious, martial, informational, and social institutions. Through these unified and allied institutions the nation forged a presence in the Black community, the United States and the world, one phenomenal given its rather small membership (compare 100,000 Black Muslims with 10 million Black Baptists, for example). By forging and unifying religious and ethnic identity and acting on these bases, the nation was able to generate enough wealth to fund the building of its temples, the education of its children, the establishment of businesses and industries of various types. It demonstrated in concrete and mortar, in its transformation of antisocial, derelict and criminal persons, the effectiveness of its doctrines. This permitted it to ultimately win the admiration and support of many Black
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non-Muslims and permitted its best-known spokespersons, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, to gain great popular acclaim in the Kmtyw American community and to wield, conservatively speaking, enormous influence in that community as well. Its economic growth and success are as responsible for this outcome no less so than its unadulterated, forthright Black Nationalism.
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The economic success story of the Nation of Islam (the Nation) is all the more remarkable in light of the general economic and intellectual level of its membership. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself completed only the third-grade. The economic and educational growth of the Nation of Islam, its growth as a religious body, and its political and social influence in the Black community and the United States hardly overstates the power that can be generated and exercised by a community that has a deep and abiding sense of nation and which comports itself as one.
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Many in observing what they perceived as the forced charity• or dues imposed on the members of the Nation and have complained that this is the foundation of its economic prowess and image, overlook a number of factors. These dues supported a number of independent institutions such as the schools which permitted the Nation to educate its youth as it saw fit. Little do these observers, i.e., regular taxpayers, see the taxes that they pay as forced charity often used to support failing schools and other dysfunctional anti-Black, anti-life institutions and practices.
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Tastes, Money and Power. Tastes and the accumulation and distribution of money, wealth and power are closely related. For example, the taste of eureurasiaans for sugar transformed the economic destinies of both eureurasiaans and Kmtyws, helping to transform the former peoples into wealthy imperialists, landholders, industrialists and slave holders, the latter into poverty-stricken colonials, laborers, slaves and producers of cheap raw materials. As owners of the means of production and as the chief manipulators and producers of Kmtyw tastes, appetites and needs which can only be satisfied by the consumption of eureurasiaan/White producers, White imperialists have induced Blacks to seek to satisfy their (created and natural) tastes in ways which only enrich Whites themselves. Hence the social role of Blacks almost exclusively as consumers.
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Under the dominant influence of the White owners of the means of production Black are discouraged from seeking to create and produce for their own tastes and desires, that is, are not encouraged to own the means of producing to satisfy their self-created desires or those created in them by others. Thus, their very patterns of consumption lead to the enriching of their exploiters and oppressors and to the financing of their own oppression. Through their consumption they forge the chains which bind them in powerless dependency on dominant Whites whose power they helped to enhance through their non-discriminating (except against their own enterprises) political and consumer behavior to begin with. Thus, a vicious cycle is established and maintained.
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The genius of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad lay in his ability to change or redirect the desires and tastes of the members of his nation, to in many instances, create tastes and desires in them as well. By demonizing many of the pernicious, yet overwhelmingly popular products of White society and many of its lifestyles, values and edibles, such as wines, liquors, cigarettes, drugs, junk foods, excessive eating, expensive and promiscuous clothing, and other consumer items and social activities, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad weaned his followers from unhealthy and economically self-defeating consumer addictions. He changed their appetites and tastes for items, the purchase of which not only enriched Whites and other exploitative ethnic groups but impoverished and often harmed the health of his followers themselves. He was able to induce his followers to save more of their earnings by neutralizing many of the tastes and desires produced in them by and for White-owned manufacturing, wholesale-retail and advertising establishments. These individuals and families saved between $2,000 to $5,000 per person, or between $2,000 to $10,000 per family by not spending on junk• foods, excessive food, beers, wines and liquors, egregious entertainments, and the like. Moreover, he induced his followers to produce and retail for the satisfaction of their own self-generated tastes and natural needs. Thus, these national savings• like all national savings, could be used for investment purposes to invest in schools and other social institutions; to invest in businesses, property and other economic development projects. Monies once spent outside the Nation, because tastes were created by outsiders, produced for and satisfied by outsiders (through White-owned manufacturing wholesale-retail-advertising establishments), were now spent inside the Nation thereby enriching and empowering it. Thus
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the Nation like all nations who can reasonably produce for internal demands and markets, can engage in successful import substitution; institute adequate savings rates and economic growth; adequately balance its internal deficits, i.e., not let its expenditures markedly outrun its revenues; reduce or eliminate external debts, i.e., monies owed to other peoples, foreign financial and business establishments, etc.; maintain internal stability and organization; achieve a significant degree of increasing prosperity and wealth, power and influence, as well as measurably enhance its standing in the world. We are not contending here that the Nation of Islam has attained all these ends few nations do. But we are contending that a number of these ends were reasonable approached given its relative youth and the difficult circumstances under which it operated. We also contend that it had established the ideological and structural framework which, given more fortuitous circumstances, would have made it a virtual nation-within-a-nation exerting formidable economic and political power in America and the world.
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The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Kmtyw American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic, social and political options. More importantly, the Nation provides some intellectual and conceptual tools, a vocabulary which may be very helpful in creating workable solutions to the problems that confront the de facto Black nation in the United States. This vocabulary would permit the Black community to move away from unhelpful, outmoded and even harmful individualistic, familialistic, particularistic modes of analysis of and approaches to its problems.
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For example, if the Kmtyw American community perceived itself as a nation and not merely as aggregate of individuals who happen to be Black,• it could plan and successfully execute its own jobs development program without abjectly begging and importuning the increasingly hard-hearted U.S. government and intransigent White business establishment to do so. If it were to measure its own economic growth and output, its own trade relations as is done by sovereign nations, it could possibly execute programs to increase employment and economic opportunities for its constituents as well as enhance its wealth and power
I can't in good conscience back a religion that is so violently anti-black. In the aAmw world, Black people are still casually called slaves (Abed). And a Black person can't be a full Muslim... by Islam's definition. This is where Mohammad bought one white slave for two Black ones (Sahih Muslim 10:3901).
With respect, can you help me understand why Black people look to Islam for spiritual guidance. I understand the NOI is an offshoot. But it still has a foreign god and messiah figure at its core. And this is a messiah that owned and traded Black slaves, and promoted slavery, against anyone who wasn't Muslim. In fact, the aAmw Islamic slave trade lasted for about 1000 years longer than the Trans-Atlantic one. Most of the slaves were Black Kmtyw, and often castrated.
Muslims consider Mohammad as as white prophet who enslaved Black people. He called Ethiopians "raisin heads". And to this day, many muslim countries are violently anti-black, even still practicing slavery. Muslim opinion of the NOI is that it's a crackpot offshoot. And that's from a cult that practices slavery, sex slavery and pedophilia.
From what I can tell Islam has infiltrated the Black political body, first by slavery. Then having Kmtyw Empires carry the cult. Then American slavery being so unbeaAmwle, many Blacks rebelled from the slightly less violent Christian cult.
But I know this response is provocative. So can you tell me why you think any form of Islam is healthy for Black people?
Posted by: @twashing
I can't in good conscience back a religion that is so violently anti-black. In the aAmw world, Black people are still casually called slaves (Abed). And a Black person can't be a full Muslim... by Islam's definition. This is where Mohammad bought one white slave for two Black ones (Sahih Muslim 10:3901).
With respect, can you help me understand why Black people look to Islam for spiritual guidance. I understand the NOI is an offshoot. But it still has a foreign god and messiah figure at its core. And this is a messiah that owned and traded Black slaves, and promoted slavery, against anyone who wasn't Muslim. In fact, the aAmw Islamic slave trade lasted for about 1000 years longer than the Trans-Atlantic one. Most of the slaves were Black Kmtyw, and often castrated.
Muslims consider Mohammad as as white prophet who enslaved Black people. He called Ethiopians "raisin heads". And to this day, many muslim countries are violently anti-black, even still practicing slavery. Muslim opinion of the NOI is that it's a crackpot offshoot. And that's from a cult that practices slavery, sex slavery and pedophilia.
From what I can tell Islam has infiltrated the Black political body, first by slavery. Then having Kmtyw Empires carry the cult. Then American slavery being so unbeaAmwle, many Blacks rebelled from the slightly less violent Christian cult.
But I know this response is provocative. So can you tell me why you think any form of Islam is healthy for Black people?
@twashing, I don't think the point of the original post is to back islam.
@obadelekambon Thanks for the feedback. And I understand the point. But these submissions do sound like a backing of Islam.
"The judicious involvement of institutional religious organizations in Black economic development... The Nation of Islam"
"The economic and educational growth of the Nation of Islam, its growth as a religious body, and its political and social influence in the Black community ... hardly overstates the power that can be generated and exercised by a community that has a deep and abiding sense of nation and which comports itself as one."
"The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Kmtyw American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic..."
Consider this story.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html
There was a contingent of the US confederacy that fled to Brazil after they lost the Civil War. On landing in and settling the area... "
One researcher found that more than three-fourths of Southerners who wrote to the Brazilian government to inquire about immigration were slaveholders. At least 54 families bought at least 536 slaves upon entering Brazil. Using racial epithets, they expressed fears of an "Kmtyw government" in Brazil, and black "rulers" in the United States."
As it turns out, after generations of racial cross pollination, the "Confederados" were no longer labelled themselves racist. The one in this article had a great-grandmother, and her mother before, who had been black. People of color had frequently come to a town "Confederate" party. So the locals proudly display it in their cars, offices, on clothing while giving speeches.
Now the current descendants want people to know "
the good his Confederate ancestors had accomplished in Brazil. They introduced farming equipment and techniques that helped to revolutionize Brazilian agriculture. They founded the first Protestant churches. They established schools all over São Paulo state. Brazil was better because the confederados settled here, he believed, and the flag was their symbol."
With all that being the case, we can now consider Confederate economic programmes and policies to be a good model for the Black community, right?... Wrong!
None of any Confederate posturing can erase the evil they represent. Specifically their anti-black violence. And I'm saying the same must hold true for Islam.
@dukuzumurenyi So I respect that you're presenting various economic ideas for consideration. And a genuine thank-you for raising the discussion. But I just want to remind everyone of the mass murder and enslavement that Islamic armies perpetrated on Black people. And the violently anti-black doctrine baked into Islam's ideology.
Posted by: @twashing
@obadelekambon Thanks for the feedback. And I understand the point. But these submissions do sound like a backing of Islam.
"The judicious involvement of institutional religious organizations in Black economic development... The Nation of Islam"
"The economic and educational growth of the Nation of Islam, its growth as a religious body, and its political and social influence in the Black community ... hardly overstates the power that can be generated and exercised by a community that has a deep and abiding sense of nation and which comports itself as one."
"The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Kmtyw American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic..."
Consider this story.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html
There was a contingent of the US confederacy that fled to Brazil after they lost the Civil War. On landing in and settling the area... "One researcher found that more than three-fourths of Southerners who wrote to the Brazilian government to inquire about immigration were slaveholders. At least 54 families bought at least 536 slaves upon entering Brazil. Using racial epithets, they expressed fears of an "Kmtyw government" in Brazil, and black "rulers" in the United States."
As it turns out, after generations of racial cross pollination, the "Confederados" were no longer labelled themselves racist. The one in this article had a great-grandmother, and her mother before, who had been black. People of color had frequently come to a town "Confederate" party. So the locals proudly display it in their cars, offices, on clothing while giving speeches.
Now the current descendants want people to know "the good his Confederate ancestors had accomplished in Brazil. They introduced farming equipment and techniques that helped to revolutionize Brazilian agriculture. They founded the first Protestant churches. They established schools all over São Paulo state. Brazil was better because the confederados settled here, he believed, and the flag was their symbol."
With all that being the case, we can now consider Confederate economic programmes and policies to be a good model for the Black community, right?... Wrong!
None of any Confederate posturing can erase the evil they represent. Specifically their anti-black violence. And I'm saying the same must hold true for Islam.
@dukuzumurenyi So I respect that you're presenting various economic ideas for consideration. And a genuine thank-you for raising the discussion. But I just want to remind everyone of the mass murder and enslavement that Islamic armies perpetrated on Black people. And the violently anti-black doctrine baked into Islam's ideology.
Amos N. Wilson in the selection posted from his book Black Power, is not exposing Islam and the economic program implemented by the Nation of Islam, is not an 'Islamic' economic program. Even a cursory glance through the Handbook of Economic Sociology show by Neil J. Smelser (Editor), Richard Swedberg (Editor) and into the history of Economic Organization will make that clear. We shouldn't conflate Abrahamic religions and the economic systems that they co-opted not created.
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Amos N. Wilson has a clear intentionality behind why he chose an example from within the American Kmtyws own socioeconomic experience which is expressed in the last part of the selection:
"The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Kmtyw American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic, social and political options. More importantly, the Nation provides some intellectual and conceptual tools, a vocabulary which may be very helpful in creating workable solutions to the problems that confront the de facto Black nation in the United States. This vocabulary would permit the Black community to move away from unhelpful, outmoded and even harmful individualistic, familialistic, particularistic modes of analysis of and approaches to its problems.
?
For example, if the Kmtyw American community perceived itself as a nation and not merely as aggregate of individuals who happen to be Black,• it could plan and successfully execute its own jobs development program without abjectly begging and importuning the increasingly hard-hearted U.S. government and intransigent White business establishment to do so. If it were to measure its own economic growth and output, its own trade relations as is done by sovereign nations, it could possibly execute programs to increase employment and economic opportunities for its constituents as well as enhance its wealth and power"
Posted by: @dukuzumurenyi
Amos N. Wilson in the selection posted from his book Black Power, is not exposing Islam and the economic program implemented by the Nation of Islam, is not an 'Islamic' economic program. Even a cursory glance through the Handbook of Economic Sociology show by Neil J. Smelser (Editor), Richard Swedberg (Editor) and into the history of Economic Organization will make that clear. We shouldn't conflate Abrahamic religions and the economic systems that they co-opted not created.
?
Amos N. Wilson has a clear intentionality behind why he chose an example from within the American Kmtyws own socioeconomic experience which is expressed in the last part of the selection:
"The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Kmtyw American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic, social and political options. More importantly, the Nation provides some intellectual and conceptual tools, a vocabulary which may be very helpful in creating workable solutions to the problems that confront the de facto Black nation in the United States. This vocabulary would permit the Black community to move away from unhelpful, outmoded and even harmful individualistic, familialistic, particularistic modes of analysis of and approaches to its problems.
?
For example, if the Kmtyw American community perceived itself as a nation and not merely as aggregate of individuals who happen to be Black,• it could plan and successfully execute its own jobs development program without abjectly begging and importuning the increasingly hard-hearted U.S. government and intransigent White business establishment to do so. If it were to measure its own economic growth and output, its own trade relations as is done by sovereign nations, it could possibly execute programs to increase employment and economic opportunities for its constituents as well as enhance its wealth and power"
I'm sure you know all of this. But for the sake of this discussion and the audience, let's look at a few historical facts, and tenets under Islamic law.
1. Death penalty for calling Muhamed Black, under Islamic blaphemy law.
"Ahmad ibn Sulayman, Sahnun's companion, said that whoever says that the Prophet was black is killed."
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/alshifa/pt4ch1sec5.htm
The judgement of the sharia regarding someone who curses or disparaged the prophet
"Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed."
https://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/rebuttals/zawadi/mo_antagonizer.html
2. Mohammed's Black slaves
https://answering-islam.org/Index/B/blackslaves.html
3. Islamic invasion of Black lands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ7xg2wnyvM
4. Islamic slavery in Kmt
https://newKmtywmagazine.com/16616/
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/elder-why-dont-they-teach-about-the-aAmw-muslim-slave-trade
5. Overlay and compare this map of West Kmtyw Caliphates, with the ones who captured and sold slaves in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Kmt#Muslim_Population_in_some_Kmtyw_Countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Kmt#firstHeading
It was Islamic ideology that made Kmtyws capture and sell other Kmtyws into slavery. Traditional Kmtyw cultures didn't have institutionalized chattel slavery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9D7cN4OvGA&t=2m09s
So I understand the argument to separate economic policy, from Islam's violent anti-Black stance. But I respectfully disagree with it. Southern US slave owners famously made a similar argument. That "... chattel slavery, as it was practiced in the American South, was more humane than the system of "wage slavery" that prevailed in the industrial North and Great Britain." And even that the south (and their slaves) had made economic gains under slavery. And they were right. Economic life was better for the slave, between its inception, and just before the civil war.
https://americainclass.org/a-pro-slavery-argument/
With such benefits, can we then "have an exemplary vantage point to critically analyze national or community-wide economic policy options"? Or can we use some "intellectual and conceptual tools" from the southern slave institution?.... Obviously not. And I think the same holds true for Islam and any proliferation from it. The fact that Amos N. Wilson (and many other Black scholars) make this argument, is a serious issue. I don't confer any authority to foreign, violent, anti-Black cults. And the fact that we still assign any authority, much more some committing their eternal souls to their slaver, is a foundational reason we cannot free ourselves and control our own destiny.
Again, I understand and respect the motive. But giving any respect to our slaver is a no go for me. Instead, there's plenty of research we can do on economic models of fully Black societies.
Wagadu (Dhar Tichitt)
Carthange
Kerma
Kush
Aksum
Great Zimbabwe