Browsing by Subject "Nation of Islam"

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    Islamizing the Black Body: Ritual and Power in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam
    (Cambridge University Press, 2002) Curtis, Edward E., IV
    Ever since C. Eric Lincoln published The Black Muslims in America, in 1961, many observers of the Nation of Islam (NOI) have seemed convinced by his claim that the movement was neither very “religious” nor “Islamic” in nature. In that classic study, currently in its third edition, Lincoln conceded that “the Black Muslim movement constitutes a legitimate religion within the definition of the sociology of religion” but also maintained that “religious values have a secondary importance.” For Lincoln, the success of the movement stemmed not from the particular nature of its religious activities but from its ability to provide a sense of “group solidarity” to the dispossessed black working class. According to Lincoln, this sense of community was produced through the group's embrace of black nationalism, which he understood to be “first a defensive response to external forces—hostile forces that threaten their creative existence.”
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    Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam
    (UC Press, 2016-08) Curtis, Edward E., IV; Religious Studies, School of Liberal Arts
    This article explores the centrality of science and technology to religious thought and practice in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam from the 1950s through the 1970s. Tracing the dynamic meanings of scientific knowledge in the context of the postwar United States, the article’s central argument is that like other UFO and extraterrestrial religions, the Nation of Islam emphasized scientific, material, and empirical over spiritual and supernatural understandings of religion. It also suggests how members of this new religious movement studied and attempted to live according to the scientific and mathematical principles derived from their prophet’s cosmological, ontological, and eschatological teachings on the nature of God, the origins and destiny of the black race, and the beginning and end of white supremacy.