While searching the Web today, I noticed that, while there were a lot of sites that refered to W.T. Fard (founder of the Nation of Islam), none of them seemed to be well-informed as to who this person was. Moreover, the information presented tended to follow the bias of the author towards the NOI. Has anyone ever done serious research into this man?
any chance you mean W. D. Fard?
He is indeed a man of mystery, having just sorta disappeared. I have read that some believe his ethnicity might have been some Pacific Islander, but who knows. . .
Thank you, it is W.D. Fard I was thinking about (moderator, change the T to a D, please). For some reason, I dismissed it as being W.D., possibly because of a later leader of NOI used the same initials.
Any answers? As I said before, nothing I’ve found on the Web seems to be well-informed).
BTW, Earl, to show how contradictory the matter available is, I’ve seen his name in a dozen or so different ways (W.D. Fard, in my mind, was safest as an approach), his birthyear and birthplace ranging, and his ethnicity as Pacific Islander, African, European, Arabic, or mixed-ethnicity.
Here’s some info I found a while back. It’s not much, and I can’t vouch either for the bias/impartiality of the site, or the accuracy of the info.
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I already found it, and
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Some of the opening comments on it suggest that this was produced by evangelist (sic, if I mispelt it) Christians.
If you have the patience, you can read the 816 pages of government documents about him released under the Freedom of Info Act. See http://foia.fbi.gov/alpha.htm
The site is indeed an Xian missionary site with the project of telling the world about the errors of Islam. That obviously contains a certain… bias.
In the book The Judas Factor, about the plot to assassinate Malcolm X, investigative journalist Karl Evanzz turned up documents saying that Fard was from New Zealand and his ancestry was half English and half Maori.
Reading through the link just now, it appears the FBI files support the New Zealand connexion and that the fellow returned to Australia.
While this sort of thing should be taken with a grain of salt – that is the quality of the information and the connexions drawn – I personally would not bet against it being true.
Clegg’s biography of Elijah Muhammad has it that Wali Dodd Fard (his original name) was half English and half Bengali.
Whoops, got the wrong author; I meant Evanzz.
Evanzz changed his mind?
In The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcom X (1992), he says Maori.
In Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (1999), he says Bengali.
I haven’t read the latter book. Does he explain in it what evidence he found to change his mind after he wrote the former book?
According to some of the information I’ve found on the Web, Jomo, it appears that Ms. Fard thought that he was from New Zealand (and, therefore, Maori), while Muhammad thought that he was Bengali.
That doesn’t really answer the question, but it’s still interesting to know.
Didn’t anyone except Collounsbury read the thread to which I linked. Original documents on his parents, their apparent origins, etc?