View Book

The Supreme Wisdom Lessons

ID: 3193 - View Book Page - Edit In OJS

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: Sep 30, 2024

Series


Section Chapter Authors
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
Conclusions: The Stranger and the Apostle Michael Knight
Appendix
Appendix: The Lessons and Problem Book 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