The Supreme Wisdom Lessons - A Scripture of American Islam - Michael Muhammad Knight
The Lessons as Tradition: The Five Percenters and Ansaru Allah Community
The Supreme Wisdom Lessons - A Scripture of American Islam - Michael Muhammad Knight
Michael Muhammad Knight [+]
University of Central Florida
Description
Chapter 6 broadens this treatment with a look beyond Warith Deen Mohammed’s post-Nation community and Farrakhan’s Nation revival to the Five Percenters, also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE). As I’ve mentioned, Five Percenters generally reject self-identification as Muslims and consider their tradition to be completely distinct from the Nation of Islam (with some exceptions) but share with the Nation an investment in the Lessons. In this chapter, I look specifically to the significance of the Lessons in the Five Percenters’ origins and ongoing development as an interpretive tradition. I also examine the Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews, among other names (presently known as Nuwaubians), who performed what I have called a “polemical embrace” of the Lessons, appropriating the Lessons to undermine the claims of other communities and leaders (such as Warith Deen Mohammed, Louis Farrakhan, and Allah, the former Clarence 13X) and bolster their own narratives.