An Introduction To Elijah Muhammad Studies

First published in 2009, this ground-breaking work introduced a new field in Africana studies and laid the groundwork for positioning the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in academia. Today, this work remains a rare opportunity for scholars and lay persons to a preview the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and its multifaceted, interdisciplinary scope. This book has the potential to change the philosophical and practical methods of education. In this revised edition, new terminology for Elijah Muhammad Studies is coined Elijahmatology. It additionally includes updated references and expanded discussion about the impact of Elijah Muhammad’s teachings in the 21st century. The book lays a foundation for situating the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in academia, identifying Africana Studies as the discipline from which it could develop into a field of study.

Elijah Muhammad and the Supreme of Literacy explores how Elijah Muhammad framed the term literacy as contrasted with its generally known definitions and applications. The text frames a construct for understanding why Elijah Muhammad considered the science of literacy essential to the success of the Blackman and woman in America specifically, and people in general. It outlines the scriptural foundations of Muhammad’s teachings, drawn from both Bible and Qur’an. A detailed review of the course of study prescribed for his followers supplies Elijah Muhammad’s the unique perspective on both literacy and language. Examples of his study curricula are offered. A brief history of Muhammad’s own educational process is presented, with an emphasis on the pedagogy of literacy as practiced by Muhammad’s teacher, W.D. Fard. Material on the early educational focus of The Nation of Islam is introduced. And finally, general commentary on the teachings is made known through the lenses of three men in their role as teachers: W. D. Fard, teacher of Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad himself, and Minister Louis Farrakhan, student of Elijah Muhammad.

Africana Islamic Studies highlights the diverse contributions that African Americans have made to the formation of Islam in the United States. It specifically focuses on the Nation of Islam and its patriarch Elijah Muhammad with regards to the African American Islamic experience. Contributors explore topics such as gender, education, politics, and sociology from the African American perspective on Islam. This volume offers a unique view of the longstanding Islamic discourse in the United States and its impact on the American cultural landscape.

This work is the first to examine the educational philosophy of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam and a pivotal leader in America's history. This timely book outlines Elijah Muhammad's educational ideas in relation to critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and critical white studies, a branch of "critical race theory", a theory popularized in the mid-1970s that reaches across disciplines to explore the relationship among race, the justice system, and society. This is a must-read for those dedicated to creating a new paradigm that can transform individuals, schools, societies, and the world. Features new to the second edition include a foreword by Tynnetta Muhammad, wife and student of Elijah Muhammad; opening comments by world renowned mathematician Dr. Abdulalim Sahabazz; a new chapter co-authored with Dr. Dorothy Blake Fardan; plus guided questions and power point notes to stimulate discourse around Elijah Muhammad's educational ideas.

Liberation Pedagogy: Elijah Muhammad and the Art of Soul Crafting places the work of Elijah Muhammad in an educational context. Drawing from concepts in critical educational theory and Black liberation theology, it introduces to readers the contributions that Elijah Muhammad made to the education of oppressed people. It includes a comparative analysis of Paulo Freire’s work and its similarities to Elijah Muhammad’s teachings.A highlight of this book is that it explores the lives of Elijah Muhammad’s students—Minister Malcolm X, Imam Warith D. Mohammed, Minister Muhammad Ali, and Minister Louis Farrakhan—to demonstrate how his teachings touched the souls of these unlettered personalities. This book offers a liberation pedagogy that educators can use to inspire students to become life-long learners, enabling them to see the acquisition of knowledge as the vehicle to discover their unique gifts and talents.

Afrocentric Innovations in Higher Education steps beyond the traditional texts centered on limited improvements to higher education by reconceptualizing and outlining Afrocentric interventions that enhance and improve the education of specifically people of African descent. This volume includes seven essays that highlight the transformative power of Africana Studies as a fundamentally liberatory discipline. In these thought provoking essays, readers encounter Afrocentric concepts that reevaluate the intent and design of higher education as a precursor for improving the educational outcomes and experiences of Black students. Afrocentric Innovations in Higher Education provides well-researched and pioneering perspectives on student services, teacher preparation, Africana Studies, career preparation, and the role of Africana Studies in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

One critical priority of the discipline of Africana studies is applied memory, specifically, how the record of the culture’s survival and agency reveals usable and reproducible knowledge and behavior. In terms of how Muhammad Ali, as an historical actor, has left an heroic legacy that bequeaths to us a sort of inheritance, the critical task at hand is to systematically explore this historical actor’s life, feats, philosophy, grit, worldview, and even his folkloric antihero to decipher his Africana cultural memory value. At the core of this edited collection is a commitment to enhance the cultural storytelling about Muhammad Ali and to critically itemize the lessons we garner from his life as allegory. The ancestral life is one that is remembered and recalled. The contributors’ research uncovers Ali’s local, national, and global encounters that are legacy worldviews. These perspectives give us direction for mining the critical depth of Ali’s encounters which map his memory in terms of culturally sustaining confidence, self-esteem, reinvention, immortalization, and empathy. These are the fertile seeds of Africana cultural memory which bloom into powerful markers and monuments of an epic life of hyperheroic activity relevant to cultural memory, sports, history, politics, health, and aesthetics.

Almost four decades after his death Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) remains by far the most influential African American Muslim. Leader of the Nation of Islam movement for over thirty years and a mentor to Malcolm X, Muhammad was responsible for introducing hundreds of thousands of African Americans to Islam. In this fascinating biography Herbert Berg assesses the impact of Muhammad’s unique and intriguing perspective on Islam, and seeks to understand why he formulated it. Careful to consider Muhammad’s career within the context of the significant racial tensions of his time, this volume investigates a figure whose formulation of Islam, however divisive, forced Muslims and scholars alike to evaluate their often normative definitions of this religious tradition.