by Nuri Muhammad

BELIZE CITY, Tues. Mar. 21, 2023

(Writer’s NOTE: It was 15 years ago, during the month of Ramadan, that I wrote this piece after receiving the sad news of the passing of Imam Waraith ud Din Mohammed, Imam and Spiritual leader to millions of Muslims.)

Imam W Deen Mohammed returned to Allah (G-d) on 9th September, 2008, and 9th Ramadan, 1429, at his home in Markham, Illinois, a suburb outside of Chicago. He was 74. Inna-lillahi-we-inna-ilaihi raji-un (From Allah we come and to Allah is our return).

The Imam came into national leadership in February 1975, after the death of his father, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam (NOI) for forty-two years. After attaining leadership, the Imam began the transformation of the teaching of the NOI from its black nationalist, race-based theology of self-help to Al Islam, based on the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, which is followed by over two billion Muslims throughout the world. While focusing on the transition of the NOI to pure Al Islam, the Imam also maintained his father’s emphasis on business development and self-reliance of the community.

Despite the media focused on the charismatic leadership of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Imam Mohammed, at the time of his death, was the leader of the largest group of American Muslims in the United States.

I will always remember Imam Mohammed as the person who, in 1975, opened the door of knowledge that led me and so many millions of others into the practice of Al-Islam. Five years earlier, I had joined the NOI led by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, and by 1972 had become one of his ministers, responsible for Belize. As a child of the sixties, having experienced the melodrama of that period, I was yearning for a formula that would answer the burning questions that plagued my young mind.

While the NOI seemed to provide that formula for me, and despite the immense benefit I gained from adhering to its ‘teachings,’ there was still a missing link, an unfilled piece of my personal puzzle that did not find fusion until I heard Imam Mohammed in 1975. It was purely by destiny that I happened to be in Chicago in February 1975 attending my first Saviors Day convention, a yearly event in the NOI’s calendar. Because of how slow news moved in those days, when I left Belize I had no idea that Mr. Muhammad was sick and close to dying, so when I arrived at the Chicago airport and saw the newspaper headlines: “Elijah is dead”, I was literally blown away and confused. That confusion, however, was short-lived because when the Nation of Islam introduced its new leader, Supreme Minister, Wallace D Muhammad, the confusion quickly dissipated.

In his first major address, one day after his father’s passing, the Imam said: “… and all of us are men and women of knowledge, and when the strong gush of wind coming from the forces of emotion come against this house … this is a house formed by knowledge, and men of knowledge just don’t fall down on the floor and weep and moan and cry like babies when the winds of emotion come …”

It was also purely by destiny that I was among the first ministers to meet the then Supreme Minister a day after he assumed leadership. This was a momentous occasion for so many reasons, but especially because it was the day that he told me that our community in Belize should not consider itself a member of the NOI because our historical circumstances were different from those that produced the NOI. He said we in Belize should be an autonomous body with only an affiliation with the NOI. Needless to say, this was a one hundred and eighty degree turn from the position held during the time of his father’s leadership, but it was not hard for me to accept. From that moment I had found the missing piece to my personal puzzle and felt a heavy burden being lifted off my shoulder. It was based on his advice, that we in Belize began the process of legal incorporation as an autonomous body, which led to the establishment of the Islamic Mission Belize (IMB) forty-six years ago.

Another interesting event that took place in that first conversation with the Imam was his conferring on the leadership in Belize our Muslim names, so, Allan X Waite became Seifuddin Mustapha, Beresford Bulwer became Abdus Salaam Ahmad, Charles X Egan became Ibrahim Abdullah, Evan X Hyde became Alif Ansar Mujahid, Carol X Supall became Sakinah Muhammad, Iris X Waite became Safiyyah Mustapha, and this writer, Bert X Simon became Nuri Muhammad.

That was also a time when names like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Rashad sparked the popularity of Muslim names in the Belizean mosaic; but what really had a balloon effect was when hundreds of a booklet titled: ‘Book of Muslim Names’, authored by Imam Muhammad, were given out freely to hundreds of women, as a gift, at the Maternity Ward at the old Belize City Hospital. This was around 1976 up to 1980, but by that time it had caught on. Check the first and second names of children born around that time and after. Today there are thousands of persons with Muslim names in Belize that have no idea how they got it.

This new direction opened a new chapter in the mission of Muslims in Belize, and we became, as it were, agents of change and energetic participants in the Belizean development process. Muslims became a part of the pre-independence and post-independence conversation about national development. This period also opened a new phase of relationship with the government of Belize, and that year, 1975, there was an exchange of invitations between the new leadership of the NOI (which by then was called World Community of Islam in the West, WCIW) and the Government of Belize. This resulted in an invitation being extended to Imam W. Deen Mohammed to visit Belize and a reciprocal invitation to a Belize government official to visit the WCIW Headquarters in Chicago. Imam Mohammed, however, because of a demanding schedule, asked Minister Farrakhan to represent him in Belize, which accounted for the first visit of Minister Farrakhan to Belize in 1975. The following year, the Deputy Premier, Hon. C. L. B. Rogers, visited the Imam in Chicago and toured the Headquarters of the WCIW.

“Brother Imam”, as he was popularly known, was a humble but very dignified leader and not your typical egocentric religious or political leader who sought out the extravagance of media attention. Unlike other charismatic speakers in the former NOI, he intentionally cultivated a low-key posture and presented his speeches more like university lectures than the rousing melodramatic style of his contemporaries. He drove his own Volkswagen Beetle when he was is at home in Chicago. As the seventh child of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, he was known for his spiritual qualities from very early in his life. Malcolm X (Al hajj Malik Shabazz), in his autobiography, credited the Imam as having the greatest spiritual influence on him during his early days in the NOI.

I was fortunate to travel with Imam Mohammed to Geneva, Switzerland in 1985 at the invitation of Dr. Ahmad Sharif, Secretary General of the Islamic Call Society of Libya. One of the highlights of that trip was an invitation to have dinner with the revolutionary leader of the Algerian revolution, Ahmad Ben Bella, who at the time resided in Switzerland. It was also on the way back from that trip that the Imam invited me to come to Chicago to work as his assistant. Upon my return to Belize, I resigned from my position as Imam of IMB and moved to Chicago, where I served as associate editor of the organization’s newspaper, Muslim Journal.

One of the most profound impacts the Imam W D Mohammed has had on me was his encouragement to be an independent thinker. While encouraging us to read extensively, he insisted that original thought was more valuable than imitating scholarship. He said that “the best source of knowledge was the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad” and those were a life-long study.

We pray that Allah will shower His mercy on Imam W Deen Mohammed and admit him to an esteemed place in the paradise. Our condolences again to his family and all those associated with his leadership, and to the believers in general