This film made me think about how religion is affected mostly by people’s environment and circumstances. Like the documentary portrayed, for example, it was easy for many Black people to believe in Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam’s message because they had seen directly the vast horrific and hellish harm caused by white people towards them. Like Malcom said, they had been stripped of their religious and cultural heritage to Africa, and were made to feel inferior, and sometimes worship the white man. It makes sense that they would want to see themselves reflected in their religion and in history (depicting Jesus as a pale man). In Nation of Islam, Black is Divine, as opposed to every negative adjective many Black people were made to believe.
This is also backed up by a lot of the NOI’s doctrine, which is highly racialized and claims God as Black, the original people of the Earth as Black, as well as the scientists that ruled over it and a rogue scientist which created the white race which took over. This would all change in the 20th century, according to Elijah. Malcom X’s talks, though, drew crowds due to the activist side of things–of preaching freedom, self-sufficiency, and liberation to a group of people who’d been brutalized and oppressed by America. Elijah Muhammad was not interested in Black liberation like Malcom was, and was in all ways a false prophet. He was murdered hand in hand by members of the NOI after his split from them and the US government, like many Black revolutionaries at this time. The super-charged movement towards Black liberation ended in blood, and what replaced it was nothing of any real threat or opposition to American capitalist, white supremacist hegemony. I think that is clear with what we are seeing today.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/malcolmx-elijah-muhammad-and-nation-islam
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