W.D. Mohammed: A Sober Voice is Silenced

2008-09-15
By Salim Muwakkil

Hundreds of Muslims gathered to mourn the death of Imam W. Deen Mohammed on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and there was an underlying symmetry to the two observances.  The suicide pilots were Muslim extremists who killed nearly 3,000 people and triggered a “war on terrorism” that concurrently has cast the religion of Islam in an increasingly hostile light.

Moreover, many Muslims see this multifaceted “war” as a crusade against Islam. Indeed, without mediating forces and sober voices, we may find ourselves lurching into the war of civilizations long predicted (and prompted) by neoconservative theorists.
 Mohammed, who died at 74 of heart disease and diabetes on Sept. 9, was one of those sober voices of mediation and his passing complicates our prospects for progress and reconciliation.  Mohammed was an Imam (Muslim spiritual leader) who was globally respected in Islamic circles for his theological rigor. Yet, he was a fierce American patriot. Mohammed saw no contradiction in those positions and his example offered a potent model of how Islamic piety and western pluralism could fruitfully coexist. 
He was born Wallace Delaney Muhammad on Oct. 30 1933, to the late Honorable Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, and Clara Muhammad.  After his father died in 1975, he was selected to lead the Nation. This surprised many who expected Louis Farrakhan, Elijah’s charismatic national representative, to take over.  Wallace had been a rebellious son who had been excommunicated several times for publicly disagreeing with various aspects of the group’s doctrine. 
Close observers surmised WD got the job because his mild-mannered demeanor suggested he could be easily manipulated and because he was somewhat of an outsider with no connections to the feuding internal factions.  Few expected this soft-spoken son of Elijah to make such dramatic doctrinal changes.
Almost immediately, he repudiated the primary features of the Nation of Islam’s unique catechism: its eugenic theology. No longer were white people “Jakub’s grafted devils” or the personification of evil.  And no longer was divinity manifested in human flesh, a belief formerly stressed in Elijah’s nation where all sermons were prefaced with thanks to “Allah, who came in the person of Master Fard Muhammad.”
He began phasing out the group’s Black Nationalist ideology, its paramilitary style of organization and its bourgeois capitalist business model.  He brought the Nation into theological accord with the tenets of Sunni orthodoxy.  Remarkably, he engineered these major transformations without sparking the bloody divisions and succession struggles many observers predicted would follow Elijah Muhammad’s death.
Wallace Delaney became Warith Deen and he altered the spelling of his last name to Mohammed to demonstrate further his doctrinal shift.  In 1976, he changed the name of the group to the World Community of al-Islam in the West and changed it to the American Muslim Mission two years later.  When he formally resigned from leadership in 2003, his group was the American Society of Muslims.
Through all these name changes, he retained the allegiance of tens of thousands of African-American Muslims who were attracted to his unique Qur’anic interpretations, his inclusive social message and his humble personal style.  He is reported to have led the largest identifiable constituency of Muslim Americans.
He didn’t please everyone, however.  Mohammed’s enthusiastic embrace of American citizenship angered many who agreed with the Nation of Islam’s previous beliefs that the US is implacably racist and unworthy of black people’s allegiance.  Many also criticized his attitude toward U.S. leadership as overly deferential. 
Farrakhan initially went along with the theological changes wrought by his late leader’s son, accepting them as teachings of the “Second Resurrection” that many members said Elijah prophesized. But the younger Mohammed’s strident disavowals of his father’s teachings and his enthusiastic embrace of American citizenship increasingly alienated Farrakhan.  He broke away in 1977, taking hundreds of members with him to revivify the moribund Nation of Islam – which he has done.  Again, this monumental split occurred without the kind of bloodshed many expected, a tribute to the leadership skills of both Farrakhan and Mohammed.

The two traveled different paths since then, occasionally arguing over religious fine points.  In 2000, Farrakhan and Mohammed officially reconciled and they had grown closer as Farrakhan has moved the Nation closer to the Islamic orthodoxy Mohammed espoused.
 
Mohammed’s value as an Islamic ambassador has obscured his important role as a salve in the black freedom movement. Almost singlehandedly, he challenged the notion that black supremacy was an appropriate response to white supremacy and by altering the influential Nation of Islam’s first principle, he changed the face of black activism.

Salim Muwakil is Senior Editor of In These Times.