A few months ago there was a dispute inside the Muslim community in Belize City. It happened that I had very good friends on opposing sides in the power struggle. Ismail Shabazz, with whom I have been friends since 1968, was prominent in one faction, while a young brother I have known from his childhood, was vocal, and even physical, on behalf of the other faction.
I have chosen now to discuss this matter, partly because I want “enlightened Europeans” like Kirby and Christina Salisbury of Orange Point in Toledo to benefit from some background where Islam in Belize and UBAD are concerned.
Way back when I was a young man I explained that Malcolm X’s autobiography had done a great deal to change my life. I think I read Malcolm’s story in 1967, about two years after he had been assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. The key thing to understand about Malcolm is that he had been the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s most brilliant and famous Minister in the Nation of Islam, until the year 1964, when Malcolm made the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca and took on orthodox Muslim beliefs, which do not discriminate amongst human beings on the basis of race or color. (Following the assassination of U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Malcolm X made public comments which caused the Hon. Elijah Muhammad to suspend him from his Ministry at Mosque No. 7 in Harlem.)
Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam was a substantially unorthodox version of Islam. The Nation of Islam condemned Europeans as “devils,” because of their enslavement and exploitation of African people. Unorthodox as it was, the Nation of Islam, as presented by Malcolm X in the late 1950s and early 1960s, became very, very appealing to hundreds of thousands of so-called Negroes in America, especially those living in the big cities.
For those of us young, university-educated blacks who became involved in the process of liberation in that era, the most important aspect of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s program was that it was self-financed. All the other prominent black organizations in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s were being financed, in whole or in substantial part, by white people. Because of this independent and self-sustaining component, Hon. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam demand and deserve respect from all black freedom fighters.
Belize’s three active followers of the Nation of Islam early in 1969 when UBAD was founded, were the late Charles X “Justice” Eagan, Ismail Omar Shabazz, and Rudolph Farrakhan. Justice and Shabazz became foundation officers of UBAD, and remained so until Justice went to jail in January of 1971 and Shabazz resigned from UBAD in November of 1972.
Remember, in the United States there were many followers of Malcolm X, including his widow, the late Dr. Betty Shabazz, who believed that the Nation of Islam was responsible for Malcolm’s murder. In Belize, however, this was never an issue between myself, as a disciple of Malcolm, and the three aforementioned followers of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. Again, although I subscribed to Malcolm’s socio-political beliefs, I never became a Muslim. Justice and Shabazz, however, were so prominent and powerful in UBAD, that much of UBAD’s flavor came from their Nation of Islam beliefs.
Imam Nuri Muhammad, who had been a UBAD member as “Bert Simon” in the early UBAD, returned from California in late 1972 and convinced Ismail Shabazz to resign from UBAD. The Muslim community here was then re-organized under Nuri Muhammad’s leadership. Charles X Eagan, the pioneer apostle and de facto leader of Belize’s original branch of the Nation of Islam, was still in jail at the time.
It was around this time that the UBAD leadership began to quarrel and divide over the issue of the Unity Congress, which formally became the UDP in September of 1973. As UBAD became weaker, the Nation of Islam, referred to by some in the streets of Belize City as “UBAD church,” became stronger. UBAD came to an end in November of 1974. When Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam’s leading Minister at the time, visited Belize in 1975, Islam in Belize received a big boost.
It was in that same year, however, that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad passed away, leaving one of his sons, Wallace Deen Muhammad, as his successor. Wallace Deen, who had been a friend of Malcolm’s, almost immediately took the Nation into orthodox Islam. Louis Farrakhan dutifully followed, but became frustrated in 1977 and re-organized his own Nation of Islam, according to the mould of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.
Just exactly how things developed in Belize Islam after Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, I can’t say. All I know, basically, is that after a surge of popularity in the middle 1970s, Belize Islam began to decline. At what point Nuri Muhammad gave up leadership, again, I can’t say, except that it would have been at some point in the middle 1980s. Incidentally, in the recent ferment, Nuri Muhammad, who became politically active with the PUP some years ago, was in the same faction as Ismail Shabazz.
My sense is that today the main group of Muslims in Belize are definitely orthodox in their Islamic beliefs. In fact, the younger Muslim friend of mine to whom I referred in the first paragraph, spoke disparagingly of Elijah’s Nation of Islam when I finally sat to speak with him. During the peak of the instability in the masjid, I had avoided the younger brother. The reason was that I had instinctively supported Ismail Shabazz. I explained to the younger brother on the occasion of his criticism of the Nation of Islam, that there were reasons why the Nation deserved our respect.
Earlier, I mentioned Kirby and Christina Salisbury. I have been reading their book, Treehouse Perspectives (published in 2009), and I am enjoying the read. At some point soon, I will comment in more detail.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.