Wallace Delaney Mohammed, who later changed his name to Warith Deen (or W. D.), was the leader of the Nation of Islam, an American organization advocating black pride and independence. W. D. brought the Nation of Islam more in line with the mainstream of Sunni Islam, reversing or altering many of the more radical teachings of his father, Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975). Elijah, who took over leadership of the Nation of Islam when its founder, Muhammad Fard, mysteriously disappeared in 1934, introduced many unusual teachings. He taught, for example, that all white people are ruled by Satan but that Allah, who is black, permitted them dominion over Allah’s people until the imminent apocalypse, in which all the “white devils” would be destroyed. He also taught that Fard was not a mere prophet but rather Allah embodied in human flesh.
Raised in the shadow of his father, W. D. quickly rose within the Nation of Islam’s ranks, becoming the leader of its Philadelphia temple. In 1961, however, he received a three-year prison sentence for refusing the military draft. While in prison, W. D. assiduously studied the Qur’an and the sunna, which caused him to see glaring differences between his father’s teachings and those of the rest of the Islamic world. Consequently, W. D. defected from the Nation of Islam upon his release from prison and formed a splinter group called the Afro-Descendant Upliftment Society. He rejoined the Nation of Islam after the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1963. Over the following years, W. D. was repeatedly expelled from the organization because of his dissenting teachings, but he succeeded his father as leader of the Nation of Islam after Elijah’s death in 1975.
Upon taking control of the Nation of Islam, W. D. enacted several sweeping reforms. Rather than directly attacking his father’s teachings, he altered them to fit mainstream Islamic belief. He claimed that Elijah’s teachings were intended to bolster and elevate black Americans but that the teachings were purposefully rendered absurd so that followers would naturally seek a more enlightened path once they overcame their mental and physical oppression. He then opened up the Nation of Islam to all nonblack people, disbanded the militant wing of the Nation of Islam (the Fruit of Islam), and enacted educational reforms, including the study of the Qur’an and the five pillars of Islam. The Nation of Islam also went through several name changes, finally calling itself the American Society of Muslims. W. D.’s changes upset several of Elijah’s closer followers, most notably Louis Farrakhan, who broke from W. D.’s organization in 1978 and later formed the “restored” Nation of Islam.
W. D. spent the later years of his life advocating a unified American Islamic community and interfaith efforts against poverty and injustice. He was honored with numerous awards and chairmanships from such notable leaders as U.S. president Bill Clinton, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and Pope John Paul II. He was also the first Muslim to offer morning prayers on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
See also Muhammad, Elijah (1897–1975); Nation of Islam
Further Reading
Herbert Berg, “Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73, no. 3 (2005); Zahid H. Bukhari, Sulayman S. Nyang, Mumtaz Ahmad, and John L. Esposito, eds., Muslims’ Place in the American Public Square: Hope, Fears, and Aspirations, 2004; Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims in America: A Short History, 2009; Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 1997.
ANDREW POLK