The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (Vintage): Amazon.de: Karl Evanzz: Englische Bücher

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This well-documented biography by Karl Evanzz of The Washington Post shows how a poor, Georgia-born mulatto preacher and laborman named Elijah Poole, who moved to Detroit in the 1930s to escape the brutality of the South, reinvented himself as the leader of the controversial Nation of Islam. Evanzz sifts through years of rumors and myths to uncover a proud and politically shrewd demagogue whose frail, asthma-prone body contrasted his fiery antiwhite rhetoric and proclamations of black self-reliance. "To millions of African Americans," Evanzz writes, "Elijah Muhammad was not so much a prophet as a self-schooled psychoanalyst who, like the highly celebrated Sigmund Freud, advanced theories about the nature and role of religion and race in mental dysfunction."

Painstaking research reveals how Muhammad synthesized the philosophies of Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington, as well as updating tenets of Freemasonry and the Moorish Science Temple to create the Nation's dogma. Evanzz also recounts Muhammad's imprisonment for draft dodging, one of many run-ins with law enforcement, and his efforts to build schools for the children of his followers. Among the biographical details uncovered with the help of recently declassified FBI files is the identity of Muhammad's greatest teacher, the mysterious W.D. Fard, as well as confirmation of the many children Muhammad fathered out of wedlock. The FBI files also add insight into the treachery, distrust, and violence that gripped the Nation after the 1965 assassination of Muhammad's former second-in-command, Malcolm X. By and large, Evanzz presents a fair, scholarly account of one of the 20th century's most infamous and influential Afro-American figures. --Eugene Holley Jr. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Kirkus Reviews

As in his biography of Malcolm X, the author is as much an anguished messenger bearing bad news as chronicler of an extraordinary African-American, Elijah Muhammad, the co-founder and ``Prophet'' of the Nation of Islam. Evanzz excels at evoking the historical context of his subject, offering a masterful account of the rise and fall of the Nation of Islam and its impact on African Americans. He is not as successful in keeping the focus on Elijah, who is often overwhelmed by events and prolific documentation. Elijah, born Elija Poole in Georgia in 1897, was deeply religious, but, like many blacks, felt Christianity had failed to deliver after slavery ended. As Reconstruction was followed by segregation, lynching, and economic hardship, Poole began to hate whites and question his old faith. In 1923, he moved to Detroit in the hope of making a better life for his family. But Detroit was no better, and Poole began drinking heavily. His life changed when he met Master Fard, and, with Fard, founded the Nation of Islam. Fard, a New Zealand mulatto who claimed to be Asiatic, preached that he'd been called to free blacks from whites, the human devils,'' a message that had great appeal for many poor blacks. From the beginning, the sect, a mix of Islam, pseudo-science, and history, was separatist, anti-Semitic, and intolerant. And as Elijah became powerful, he also became corruptseducing young women, fathering illegitimate children, and enriching his family at his followers' expense. Evanzz also details Louis Farrakhan's rise to power; the counterintelligence operations of the FBI; the sect's brutal treatment of dissent; and its role in the assassination of Malcolm X and the Hanafi massacre. The outcome is bloody and the epitaph bleak: Elijah, Evanzz contends, sold his followers into ``spiritual slavery instead of leading them to the liberation of true faith.'' An important, if disheartening, book. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Welcome Insight into the NOI 12. Juni 2000

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

In a nutshell the long awaited biography of such a controversial figure was well done and I highly recommend this book for not only people who want to be enlightened but also for the naysayers who follow these type of organizations blindly. I can only hope that this book wakes up folks who follow religious (supposedly) doctrines blindly. The NOI and for that matter cults such as Jim Jones, Jim Baker and countless other factions continue to hoodwink and bamboole (using Malcolm X's words) folks to no extreme. One can only think of if Malcolm X and Martin Luther King weren't assassinated and how the African-American community would be different. And to think that Fard was a White guy. Incredible! I've always been cynical towards these types of organizations and this only reaffirms my dismay.

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A Very Good Read... 12. April 2000

Von the-consultant

A Very Good Read...Karl Evanzz has done a painstaking work which has born good fruit. I think that to date it is the best work put forth on Elijah Muhummand thus far. For those who have given there lives to the NOI, Farrakahn, or even the Moorrish American Belief systems , it will be an extremely large pill to take! None the less, it remains a neccessary pill to take. Evanzz would have to done an even better job had his presentation been less "editorialized" in some of the last chapters. Those who could presently use it the most will surely dismiss it out of hand, offered by a "Hypocrite". Anyway, I fould the book to be an agrreeable read including much of the story lines I was only able to get from the remaining participants...and the few old guys that were still alive in the late 80's from the UNIA days long past. I recommend this book but please do not fail to follow up your reading to the primary sources (FBI FILES, etc)). Reading his other work "Judas Factor", and ,and the work by Zack Condo, "Conspiracy to Destroy Malcomlm X", should help paint a slightly more coherent picture. Lastly, Evanzz does not give a dispationate analysis (any at all) of the benefits Africans in American derived from the NOI. Let us not FORGET that the popular History of America, the History of Africans in America, and US's relationship with us is, is indeded a MADE UP--Perverted--Self Serving--Farce that has been used to gain and maintain Power over African People.

Been there... 1. April 2000

Von Evelyn E. Browne

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I was raised in the Boston Mosque, so some of it was hard to read about. Who can say if it's all true, but I tell you Mr. Evanzz has hit very close to home.

Although we may not like some of the things that the Messenger did, he did opened the door to Islam in America. And many of us thank him for that.

Also the ideals of the Nation kept many Black families from becoming statics. He was not able to relocate us phsically, so he did the next best thing in refocusing our minds on your own development and self reliance and off the White man.