Talk:Nation of Islam

The article currently (and at the time of its recent passage of WP:GA) has a section about accusations that NoI is a hate group, antisemitic, etc. This section is, quite appropriately, titled "Accusations of prejudice". Another editor boldly changed this to the argumentative title "Prejudice and racism", which I reverted because it does not fit the section contents and also violates WP:NPOV. That editor has reverted again (and thrown in some personal attacks); I am opening this section for other editors to weigh in on which heading is better. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 03:02, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

The accusations are entirely about 'race', so I find the newer title more specific and don't find it at all offensive. The text itself makes very clear that these are accusations, not facts, though various NoI leaders' anti-semitism is widely documented, so I don't find it non-PoV. The oldertitle could be seen as a bit weasel-ly, so I slightly prefer the newer. If the old were used, it probably should be "Accusations of racism", since all the accusations relate to 'race', to broadly include Jewish-ness.Pincrete (talk) 06:26, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Antisemitism is only partly about race, and the section also mentions anti-LGBT prejudice. Moreover, the actual content of the section is two types of sentences: attributed accusations and uncharacterized quotes. If you think there’s a problem with that, you should start with the text (or maybe the sources, I haven’t looked deeply), not the section heading. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 12:26, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I haven't edited the section heading, I'm simply responding to your post, and largely disagree with your analysis, though I would never have bothered to make the initial change. I'm sorry, but anti-semitism is a form of racism, that Judaism may not be wholly about 'race' (which is a pretty nebulous term anyway), is largely academic. The anti-LGBT prejudice is little more than a passing mention in the SPLC sentence. The section is largely about various forms of racial prejudice, and it's hardly novel that NoI has often been seen (in its leaders' rhetoric at least) as anti-semitic and/or racist. The text is what mainly counts anyway, the heading is secondary and that clearly states the charges against NoI and some of its leaders as 'accusations'. If there are unattributed quotes then they should go, not 'weasel' the accusations IMO. Pincrete (talk) 17:44, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think you and I disagree very much. I agree with you that the section is mostly about race, I objected only to your statement that "all the accusations" were about race. To clarify the last sentence of my previous message, which included an imprecise use of the generalized "you": I meant that if there's a problem here, it should be addressed by addressing the content of the section first, not by changing the section header. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 19:07, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

The biggest issue I see is that the section paints the entire century-old organization with too broad a brush. You have white-passing W.D. Fard who calls all non-believers "devils" and recommends the teachings of Rutherford and Ford. You have Elijah Muhammad, who's decidedly anti-white but probably not much more anti-Semitic than your typical 1930s Detroiter. You have Warith Dean Muhammad, who is explicitly anti-racist, and then you have Farrakhan who was probably one of the most prominent voices of open anti-Semitism in his era.

Which is just to say, lots of work to be done. Feoffer (talk) 19:24, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

The established section title, "Accusations of prejudice", is a lot more neutral than an alternative like "Prejudice and racism". Best to keep it as it is, in my view. Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Re: Members of the NOI study the Quran, worship Allah as their God and accept Muhammad as their prophet This text was recently added, removed, restored by me and then removed by Midnightblueowl on the grounds that "This text is really quite misleading and overstates the similarities between NOI and Islam" . The source used is here and is part of a longer 'summary of beliefs' on a US gov website: "Members of the NOI study the Quran, worship Allah as their God and accept Muhammad as their prophet, while also believing in notions of Black Nationalism".

I think MBO and myself don't fundamentally agree that NoI and mainstream Islam are very different from each other, however, I thought it useful to briefly record how they 'overlap' in their beliefs before recording how they differ. The centrality of Quran/Allah/Muhammad seems a big 'overlap', even if NoI interpret these in an idiosyncratic way. Pincrete (talk) 04:35, 25 February 2025 (UTC) typo correctedPincrete (talk) 07:10, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

It sort of depends what era we're talking about. Fard's NoI may or may not have taught that Fard himself was Allah. Elijah's NoI did, Warith Dean's did NOT, Farakhan's certainly used to but I'm uncertain where they are modernly. They've even incorporated Scientology now. Feoffer (talk) 05:07, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing the issue to Talk, Pincrete. My concern revolves principally about accuracy, as I have severe doubts as to the reliability of the U.S. government source being cited here. The webpage offers a very short overview of the NOI (it is only seven sentences long) and gives no information as to who wrote this overview or what their credentials are. I suspect that the author is likely a government employee with little or no background knowledge regarding the NOI or other NRMs, but rather someone simply tasked with putting together a quick overview alongside their many other duties. Just because the website is a government source, doesn't automatically mean it's a WP:Reliable Source.

Part of the reason I say this is that some of the claims on that website contravene (or at very least misrepresent) what all of the Reliable Sources say regarding the NOI. The text on that website says that "Members of the NOI study the Quran" but the Quran does not appear to be a central aspect of the NOI's practice; as sources cited in the article make clear, the NOI has no central sacred text of its own but draws on elements of both the Bible and Quran. Emphasising the Quran in the opening sentence of paragraph two thus gives considerable WP:Undue Weight to something that is not a significant aspect of NOI belief.

The government website also states that the NOI "worships Allah as their God". This is technically true, in that the NOI does venerate a deity named Allah, however their concept of who and what this Allah is differs profoundly from that in Islam. For Muslims, Allah is an omnipotent, non-anthropomorphic monotheistic divinity. For NOI members, there is not one Allah but many, each taking on the role after the death of their predecessor, and these multiple Allahs are all mortal men. Adding "worships Allah as their God" to the article thus gives a highly misleading impression of NOI theology to the reader.

The third part of the problematic sentence states that the NOI "accept Muhammad as their prophet". Again, this is not necessarily untrue, but whereas Muslims typically understand Muhammad as the final and most important prophet of God, for the NOI he was simply one prophet among many, and has been followed by various more recent prophets. As reliable sources cited in the article make clear, the NOI places greater importance on Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, the founder and second leader of the NOI respectively, that they do on Muhammad the Arabian prophet. For this reason, stating that the NOI "accept Muhammad as their prophet" at an early juncture of the lead is yet more misleading undue weight.

All things considered, the existing GA-rated text at the start of paragraph two is a far more helpful and accurate introduction to NOI belief than the proposed addition. The latter is profoundly misleading and will undermine the article's GA quality. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:01, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for delay in replying, real world commitments! I don't think that we fundamentally disagree that NoI's interpretation of Islam is novel, to say the least and that many of its tenets and practices would be blasphemous or bizarre to mainstream/old-world Muslims (but that isn't unusual with US 'home grown' religious groups). However NoI does claim to be Islamic and its members believe themselves to be Muslims (some of its most prominent members have gone on to adopt 'Islam proper'), so I thought it worth recording where it aligns with 'Islam proper', before recording where it differs. On balance, you may be right, however, the addition may be too simplistic, as implied by Feoffer. Pincrete (talk) 05:07, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

This edit changes the description of NoI's theology from a quote of "completely divorced" from to WPVOICE completely distinct from. I have two objections.

Firstly it is logical nonsense to be completely distinct (or half distinct, 95% distinct etc). Distinct means something like "easily recognisable/distinguishable from". You can be very distinct, but not completely so, nor very distinct from. You can be also be completely different from, but that is probably even stronger than completely divorced from, which implies they were once connected.

Secondly the word waters down the source in ways which I'm not sure are appropriate. By analogy, the beliefs, rituals and liturgies of the various European/traditional branches of Christianity are all distinct (easily recognisable/distinguishable from each other), but noone would say that Christian Orthodoxy's, Protestantism's, and Roman Catholicism's theologies are "completely divorced" from each other, they all literally follow the same defining creed in much the same way that the Five Pillars define the central tenets of Islam.

I presume that the change is born out of a wish to be neutral, but if most independent sources think that NoI's theology is completely different from Islam's, as opposed to 'distinct from' (which I suspect they do), we should say so. Either way we should alter the bad English of completely distinct from. Pincrete (talk) 06:42, 5 December 2025 (UTC) I've reverted the change until it has been discussed. Pincrete (talk) 07:13, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing your concerns to the Talk Page, Pincrete. My initial edit was a response to a comment given by Noleander at the ongoing FAC. Noleander was concerned that we had a direct quotation in the sentence but without any in-text attribution; they suggested either adding that attribution, or paraphrasing in Wikipedia's own voice. For the sake of brevity, I went with the latter option, but I appreciate your concerns about the words I selected as replacements. To that end, I will make a change that aligns with the other option, which is to add attribution to the sentence. Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:56, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

We could equally paraphrase to "very/completely different from", though I think the 'divorced' metaphor better expresses a "have drifted apart" situation. I leave the choice to you. Pincrete (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

The opening (ie defining) sentence of the lead has recently been changed from characterising NoI as an 'organization' to a 'movement', edit reason being 'as per FAC suggestion'. This term is generally reserved for belief-trends which are bigger and broader than any specific org, eg anti-Iraq war, Civil Rights, Black Lives Matter etc. How is that true of NoI? Which sources describe NoI as a 'movement', as opposed to a religious group/org? (I have to say that 'as per FAC suggestion' isn't a very helpful edit reason if we have no idea what the suggestion was or why it was made - it's effectively 'privatises' the article to those taking part in the FAC discussion).

Somewhat clumsily, the lead continues NoI "is a religious movement founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A centralized and hierarchical organization, the NOI is committed to …". So NoI is a movement which is a single centralized, heirarchical organisation? This barely makes any sense at all, if it is an attempt to address the matter of NoI having had a number of distinct 'phases', IMO it obfuscates, rather than addresses that issue. Pincrete (talk) 07:24, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

Thinking further about this, the change could be motivated by the wish to cover the fact that NoI has social and political dimensions, parallel with the religious ones. If that is the case, my reaction firstly is that this meaning is not clear from the text, which appears to me to contradict itself. Secondly, how does NoI having 'extra-religious' convictions and activities differ from any other religious organisation campaigning outside of its strictly religious functions? Many religious organisations are active in campaigns as diverse as opposing abortion to remedying poverty in their own societies or in the broader world, or other 'good works'. Crucially, do the majority of sources describe it as a 'movement' or an 'organization'?

Since nobody can has offered any expanation of how an organisationa suddenly became a movement (which is simultaneously a centralised hierachical organisation|) I have reverted. The defining sentence has been in place for many years (20 years ago it was briefly described as "AKA Black Muslim Movement"), since then (continuously I believe), it has been a "religious and political organization". Also, we have AFAIK, almost no content in the article as to how/in what way NoI exists as a movement outside of the specific religious/political organisation. This religious organisation does of course have specific political aims/views/activities, but that doesn't intrinsically make it a 'movement', rather a part of various other movements (eg seperatism). I know of no other movement which is bound by the limits of a single organisation.Pincrete (talk) 11:07, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing your concerns to the Talk Page, Pincrete. I really don't think "and political" should be in the lead, and it hasn't been in place there for at least a year (it isn't in this version I randomly selected from October 2024, for instance). Accordingly, it isn't in the version that FAC reviewers have been looking at and scrutinising in recent weeks. Claiming that the NOI is a "political" group in the opening sentence is certainly WP:UNDUE and does not reflect the manner in which the Nation is commonly described in Reliable Sources. Yes, there are political dimensions to the NOI's beliefs, but the same could be said for virtually every religious community across the world. If we don't open the articles on the Catholic Church or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by calling them "political" groups, we really should not be doing so with the NOI. Moreover, to quote one scholar, Stephen C. Finley, the NOI is "first and foremost a religious community", as opposed to a political one.

As to the other point, which perhaps warrants wider discussion and maybe a range of opinions, I shifted from "organisation" to "movement" following comments by one FAC reviewer, Borsoka. They pointed out that the article describes how the NOI has existed in two different organisational forms, one succeeding the other, and raised concerns that simply calling the group an "organisation" in the opening sentence failed to capture this. I thought that "movement" would thus do a better job of reflecting that we are dealing with two successive organisations. Furthermore, as the "Definition" section makes clear, there are quite a few Reliable Sources that do describe the NOI as a "movement", so it is certainly not an inaccurate statement to make. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:06, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

If we don't open the articles on the Catholic Church or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by calling them "political" groups, we really should not be doing so with the NOI. Mormonism I know almost nothing about, but to the best of my knowledge, the RCC doesn't have as one of its aims fundamentally changing the make-up and constitution of the state(s) in which it operates - as does NoI with its belief in racial seperatism for the US, so that is one of the many reasons why the comparison is wholly invalid, apart from being inherently 'whataboutist'. There are times and situations when it might be helpful to compare WP coverage of one group with coverage of another, but, until the RCC revives its ancient habit of assassinating leading apostates by burning them at the stake, this isn't one of them IMO. Whatever faults or virtues NoI has are its own.

I had forgotten though that the and political phrase has been out for a year and am not going to object to NoI being treated primarily as a religious group that also has political beliefs and actions (and social programs).

My first guess about the reason for the change to 'movement' was largely right then (though I could not find why/where it was suggested, when I did find the FAC discussion). I've already given my reasons for objecting above. Primarily it simply doesn't 'read' IMO, nor is it covered in the article as being how the 'movement' exists outside the specific organisation. If it is important to record that NoI has had distinct phases, let's do so explicitly (personally I don't think it central or defining. Crudely there was a period under WDM when he sought to get NoI to embrace mainsteam Sunni Islam, when NoI didn't thrive. Other than that, the phases are largely matters of style and emphasis. These phases are covered later in the lead and are not easily summarised).

The present lead however reads as being very muddled IMO. A 'movement' is inherently a set of beliefs/goals which are broader than any specific active group (feminism, MAGA, Stop the War etc), then we follow it by saying that this particular 'religious movement' is a 'centralised and hierarchical organisation'. Nowhere do we say what the aims of this 'religious movement' are/were. At best this is muddled IMO. Pincrete (talk) 08:07, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

How about the following: "The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious group founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A centralized and hierarchical organization,[...]"? This avoids the swift repetition of "organization" two sentences in a row while also accounting for some of the concerns that led to me proposing "movement". Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

That's fine as far as I'm concerned (in fact it's so splendidly simple, I wish I had thought of it myself!). I've no idea whether it chimes with the language used by sources, but 'group' puts the emphasis on the people themselves, those who are members, rather than on the institution to which they belong, which I'm OK about. Pincrete (talk) 16:01, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your message, Pincrete. I'll make the change. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:15, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I think the opening paragraph should include the mentions of the NOI being a hate group, as well as its controversial beliefs and statements.

I know it’s already listed down below, but it would be more fair to include it in the opening considering its infamy for such views. CG7000 (talk) 10:25, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

USER:CG7000, In May 2022 an RfC decided that these 'criticisms' should be in para 4, (where they are now). Previously they had been in para 2 for many years. While the text has changed in the interval (due to a major overhaul by another editor), the criticisms would be unlikely to be moved to 'pole position' in the article. Pincrete (talk) 15:37, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose putting the views of the Nation's critics in the opening paragraph of the lead. That would be completely WP:UNDUE and would clearly constitute an attempt to promote a critical and hostile view of the Nation to Wikipedia's readers. Mentioning these views in the fourth paragraph of the lead is perfectly sufficient because it allows readers to gain a very basic, neutrally worded understanding of the Nation's history and key beliefs before presenting them with the views of its critics. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:50, 15 February 2026 (UTC)