Is the Nation of Islam Muslim?

Submitted by Ronnie Schreiber (United States), Oct 25, 2002 at 16:03

Though Muslim apologists in the US like AMC and CAIR close ranks with the NOI, the fact remains that the relationship of the NOI to orthodox Islam of any variety is not clear, beyond the jargon and appeals to the Quran.

The NOI, like Scientology and Mormonism, believes that their origins are from the stars, other planets or space ships. I'm no serious scholar of the Black Muslim movement, but it seems that the early leaders chose to use Islam as a model more in reaction to Christianity, the 'slave' religion, than in trying to chose something authentically African. Most blacks in America are descended from West Africans, who were more likely to have been sold into slavery by Muslims than be Muslims themselves.

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