Islam sects

Factual Questions
1

Just out of curiosity, is “The Nation of Islam” Shiite, Sufi or Sunni ?

2

IANAM, but based on my reading of the NoI history, it’s neither.
It’s a very Americanized-version of Islam.

For more information, check out their web page at Nation of Islam .
Specifically check out:

http://www.noi.org/history_of_noi.htm?history=&Nation+of+Islam=&noi=

XicanoreX

3

You left out “none of the above.”

First off, they are clearly not Sufi (which is more of a method of thinking and worship that is not one of the significant divisions of Islam: one may be Sunni or Shi’ite and still practice Sufism).

While I will let Tamerlane or someone else more knowledgeable deal with the issue of who is a “true” Muslim, the fact is that the Nation of Islam holds a number of beliefs that are clearly in contradiction to the Quran and the Hadith, so no major division of Islam is going to go out of their way to acknowledge them. I have never seen anything from the NOI that claimed to link them to the Sunni or Shi’ite beliefs.

As an example of the conflicts with no claim that this represents any more than the typical range of opinions held by anyone who can log onto a computer, check out this clip of a newsgroup thread that includes NOI adherents (or, at least, advocates) exchanging brickbats with (other?) Muslims:
http://www.beliefnet.com/boards_mini/index.asp?boardID=688

4

Ok, thanks.

5

Insomuch as the modern Nation of Islam is anything, they are probably closest to Sunnism. The reforms that transformed at least part of the NOI of the 70’s into the modern “Bilalian” Muslims pretty much brought them into the Sunni mainstream. However those folks are not the NOI of today. The Nation of Islam today, the one run by Farrakhan et al, is a breakaway section of the older NOI that refused to accept the reforms ( like the rejection of racial supremacy notions and Elijah Muhammed’s standing as a prophet ) that transformed the majority of the movement into more or less mainstream Muslims ( albeit of a distinct flavor ) by the mid-80’s.

The Nation of Islam today is largely regarded as pretty heretical by most Muslims, in part because of the reasons that I mentioned above. Whether they are “true Muslims” is a thorny issue. Personally I suppose I would be philosophically inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and label them as a very, very heterodox sect of Islam, since they do self-identify as such and base their faith on the Qur’an et al. But they’re mighty close to the line of being a separate religion, especially in their veneration of Fard Muhammed and Elijah Muhammed ( as I understand it ). An alternate view would be that like the Druze or Baha’i, they might be better regarded as a offshoot of Islam, rather than a Muslim sect per se.

  • Tamerlane
6

I’ll be gentle:D

Salaam u alaikum

Eid Mubarak

Ok. The Nation of Islam has historically had little to do with mainstream Islam. Theri basic assertion that Allah came to Earth in the form of Wallace Fareed/Wali/Fard. or whatever he has been called directly contradicts the basic tenets of the Islamic faith. They go on to claim that Elijja Muhammad was the Prophet of this manifestation of God firther seperates them from genuine Islam.

here are a couple of their various doctrines.

There is Mothership that Allah used to put mountains on the Earth during Creation. It still orbits, loaded with superscience gadgets ready to blast the White Devils should they ever make a decisive attack on the Nation.

The Evil Dr Yakub was the creator of the White devils. You see, we, (I being a whiteman) were supposed to be a soulless race of robotic servitors, but the Dr. messed up and made us the epitomy of Evil. We are the Devil. When his mistake was realized, we were placed on the continent of Europe as a kind of exile.

Didn’t keep, I guess.

That should do for now.

I must mention that Louis Farrakhan has officially taken Shahada, the Islamic Testimony of Faith, and the organization’s rhetoric is now more in line with mainstream Sunni Orthodoxy. There is some suspicion that this is a reaction to declining membership and a comparison to his former rival, Warith Deen Muhammad’s success in spreading Islam among African-Americans, (sic) and others in the US.

We can hope he is sincere.

Yours,

Martin