In and Out of This World

In and Out of this World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam by Stephen C. Finley provides an incisive analysis of the Nation of Islam (NOI) by looking at how their beliefs connect race and religion with the physical body. Using Mary Douglas’ conceptualization of “dirt” from her study Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), Finley builds on the idea of “culture’s concern with purity and contagion” (3) via the notion that black, gendered, and classed bodies in the NOI (a religious movement that was responding to the white gaze of the black body in America) are “in” and “out” of place. Using literary ethnography, Finley maps the NOI’s complex, varied, and cosmological views of the black body by outlining the teachings and discourses of male leaders of the NOI.

Chapter 1 describes Elijah Muhammad, the prophet of the religious movement, and his use of the Myth of Yakub, a teaching he received from Fard Muhammad that defines the NOI’s cosmology and theodicy in relation to racialized bodies. Finley delineates the Myth of Yakub into five periods. Events in these periods include the creation of the original peoples on Earth, Mars, and Venus, and the remnants of some of these communities surviving in “East Asia.” The surviving communities are used to draw the genealogy of the original black people as Muslims. In one of these different periods, a black god-scientist named Yakub creates the white race through various scientific experiments. This narrative was used to place black people as “Muslim and righteous by Nature” and Islam as the only site for “freedom, justice and equality” for “the black race” (45), especially against Christianity. In this instance the myth explained black bodies cosmologically, but also socially and theologically.

Chapter 2 further builds on Elijah Muhammad’s conceptualization of black bodies by considering how he privileged “symbolic out-of-placeness” against “social out-of-placeness” (46). This tension then allowed him to shift his focus away from the violent and genocidal world of white supremacy by considering a future in which black bodies would be transcendent, especially when the Mother Plane (space craft) returns. However, this teaching still required refinement of the body in this world, which informed NOI rituals. For instance, the Muslim Girls Training Program can be seen as a response to Victorian era gender and sexuality norms, one that specifically emphasizes women’s embodiment and its domestic role within nuclear black families (for example, the demand for modesty and dietary restrictions). Finley identifies these as examples of “exoteric praxis,” with the goal to refine both the material and metaphoric dimensions of the black body (49). Elijah Muhammad’s focus on the body as symbolic (over material and physical) also includes a fascinating discussion of the esoteric dimensions of the NOI, especially its connection with theosophy, which has not been given much scholarly attention.

Whereas Elijah Muhammad’s focus on the Myth of Yakub tended towards millenarianism and apocalypticism, Malcolm X’s project was focused on the social and political realities of out of place black bodies in his time. So, this chapter situates some of the differing perspectives that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X took to black bodies, the Myth of Yakub, the teachings of the Mother Plane, the place of white people, and black liberation (79). What distinguished Malcolm X’s strategy from Elijah Muhammad’s was that despite having initially aligned with many of Muhammad’s teachings, Malcolm X did not hold that one should wait for change, even from God. Malcolm X took up social and political responsibility in this world. And so, for him, the social out of placeness of black bodies could not be ignored; while being meaningful and symbolic, black bodies gained more meaning in their own liberation, as evident in Malcolm’s political trajectory and liberation projects (98).

With the passing of Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Mohammed became the successor of the NOI movement. Mohammed took the NOI through a Sunni reform, which not all members aligned with. Finley showcases how Mohammed tried to balance the worldviews of both his father and Malcolm X. Mohammed perceived black bodies as “doubly” marginalized: not only did Mohammed have to consider blackness against white America, but also blackness against immigrant Muslim communities in America (107). Thus, Mohammed’s focus was on “Islamic” black bodies, which were “out of place symbolically,” which led to tensions between universal dimensions of Islam and the particularities of race.

Chapter 5 considers the role of the body for the NOI under the leadership and teachings of Louis Farrakhan, specifically the visions he experienced that led to theologies of the Mother Ship (space craft). The latter led to a pivot to extra-terrestrial cosmologies that unfolded under his tenure. His visions of the Mother Ship opened transcendental possibility for the black body. This chapter will be especially interesting to scholars who work on Afro-futurism, Muslim futurism, UFOs, and new religious movements. Finley’s use of psychoanalysis to frame Farrakhans’ visions is insightful and convincing.

Following the conclusion, Finley’s epilogue crucially situates the gendered reality of black bodies in the NOI, particularly through the relationship between the Mother Wheel and the “womb” and its consequences for indexing women in the NOI movement. Finley references some important published and unpublished scholarship on gender and the NOI, such as works by Dawn-Marie Gibson, Jamillah Karim, and Ula Yvette Taylor. Here again, Finley points out that the limited treatment of women and gender analysis in the NOI by religious studies scholars has led to some misunderstandings of women’s experiences within the movement. Finley gestures towards future possibilities for scholarship to further explore how the racio-religious logics of the NOI intersect with gender.

The books’ focus on black bodies is theoretically generative and will be of interest to scholars who think about embodiment, materiality, gender, and race, while the consistent thread of scientific, inter-planetary, and extra-terrestrial worldviews are insightful for understanding cosmological rhetoric expressed by the NOI over the course of its development. Finley productively captures the utility of using religious studies analysis (cosmology, theology, praxis, etc.) to better grasp the deeply complex relationship between the NOI and the black body across the movement’s development. The book is a model of religious studies theory, method, and methodology.

Merin Shobhana Xavier is an associate professor of religion and diaspora at Queen’s University, Canada.

Merin Shobhana Xavier

Date Of Review:

September 30, 2023