The Supreme Wisdom Lessons
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From its beginnings in 1930s Detroit, the Nation of Islam has relied on a guarded series of texts, known as the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, to initiate and educate members. These texts appear primarily as exchanges between Nation founder Fard Muhammad and his student, Elijah Muhammad. Memorization, recitation, and interpretation of the Lessons have been of central importance to the Nation throughout its history. Even after Elijah Muhammad’s passing in 1975, the “orthodox” reforms of Elijah’s son Wallace Muhammad (later Warith Deen Mohammed) were grounded in part on Wallace’s authority to derive new meanings from the Lessons. The Lessons are also foundational for the Five Percenters, a community that emerged in 1960s Harlem through former Nation members’ reinterpretation of the Lessons.
This monograph, the first dedicated exclusively to the Lessons, places the Lessons in conversation with their historical milieu, exploring political and metaphysical discourses that informed Fard Muhammad’s world. Attention is also given to the education programs offered to convicts at San Quentin, where Fard Muhammad was incarcerated in the 1920s, for insights into his pedagogy. This monograph additionally performs deep dives into the text of the Lessons, exploring the Lessons’ process of codification, tracking differences between versions, and calling attention to points at which Elijah Muhammad appears to have performed edits within the text. Finally, The Supreme Wisdom Lessons looks at the diverse interpretive traditions surrounding the Lessons, and includes an annotated edition of the Lessons themselves.
Published: Oct 22, 2024
Series
| Section | Chapter | Authors |
|---|---|---|
| Prelims | ||
| Acknowledgements | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 1 | ||
| Introduction | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 2 | ||
| Fard's Syllabus: The Lessons in Their World | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 3 | ||
| "I Came to North America by Myself": Thirty Years in the Wilderness, 1904-1934 | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 4 | ||
| Making the Lessons | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 5 | ||
| Renewing the Lessons: Nation(s) of Islam | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 6 | ||
| The Lessons as Tradition: The Five Percenters and Ansaru Allah Community | Michael Knight | |
| Chapter 7 | ||
| Conclusion: The Stranger and the Apostle | Michael Knight | |
| Appendix | ||
| Appendices: The Lessons and Problem Book | Michael Knight | |
| End Matter | ||
| Bibliography | Michael Knight | |
| Index | Michael Knight | |
Reviews
The Supreme Wisdom Lessons is the most interesting, original, and significant book on the Nation of Islam that I have read in the last 25 years. In tracing the inspiration, history, and use of the Lessons, Michael Muhammad Knight illuminates everything from the origin of Fard Muhammad and the development of and struggles within the NOI to the formation of the Five Percenters. He shows how this scripture has been far more influential than the Bible or the Qur’an in the development in American Islam. Until now, it has been not given the scholarly attention it merits, and there is nothing I have written about the Nation of Islam that would not have been greatly improved had Knight’s book existed when I was writing them.
Herbert Berg, Professor emeritus, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Responding to prison authorities’ heavy-handed repression of a minority Black religious group – the Five Percenters, aka the Nation of Gods and Earths – Michael Muhammad Knight has produced a fascinating and well-documented study of the scriptures used by the Nation of Islam and related movements. By situating the teachings of the enigmatic W. D. Fard in the milieu of alternative spiritualities such as freemasonry, theosophy, and apocalypticism, Knight provides a highly original and persuasive demonstration of how to understand religious movements deemed suspicious by the state.
Carl W. Ernst, Wiliam R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Michael Muhammad Knight (b. 1977) shines brightly as one of the most original and creative Islamic writers of our times. Whether his works are fiction or academic, they are always entertaining and illuminating.
Required reading for anyone fascinated with W.D. Fard, the mysterious and nebulous founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as those interested in the history of Islam in the United States.
Dr John Andrew Morrow, Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies