[Muhammad's] greatest contribution to African Americans was in restoring their sense of pride and offering them an alternative to Christianity, for which slavery left a bitter aftertaste, ... But his greatest failure was in refusing to lead them beyond the pride of race and to do what his son Wallace has done: to guide black people beyond a race-based version of Islam to orthodox Islam. |
Asking that is tantamount to quizzing college freshmen on the nature of 'truth': it will beget answers as varied as the faces in the classroom, |
His murder filled me with a nearly uncontrollable rage ... so yes, I changed the spelling of my name to make it sound more Islamic -- or so I thought. But I never joined. |
Muhammad himself fostered this idea and, for years, tried to convince his family that he, Elijah of Gilead, and the 7th century prophet Muhammad were one and the same. |