Nation of Islam: Cult of the Black Muslims/Chapter 2
II. BACKGROUND OF NOI
A previous monograph explained how the Nation of Islam originated as one of many militant and cultist groups which had arisen in the northern industrial cities of the United States following World War I.
Briefly, the NOI, known at various times as Allah's Temple of Islam and the Muslim Cult of Islam, developed in Detroit, Michigan, out of the teachings of one W. D. Fard. Fard was a door-to-door peddler in the Negro neighborhoods of that city. To stimulate his sales, he told his customers that his products came from their home country from which he also had come. His rather mystic personality apparently entranced his customers, and before long he was instructing small gatherings with tales of their "true origin." In this way, the tenets of the cult were developed. Little factual data was ever learned concerning Fard; and after May, 1933, when ordered by local authorities to leave Detroit, he dropped out of sight and no trace of him has ever been found.
Following Fard's disappearance, one of his followers, a Georgia-born Negro named Elijah Poole, assumed leadership of the cult. Poole explained that Fard had been Allah himself, had renamed him "Elijah Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah," and had ordered him to continue teaching "the lost-found black people in the wilderness of North America."
Elijah was active in Detroit until late in 1934, when, because of trouble with local authorities over the operation of the cult school, he moved to Chicago. There, he established Temple No. 2, which became and remains the national headquarters of the NOI.
During the succeeding 30 years, Elijah Muhammad's teachings aroused the interest of many persons who joined the NOI. But Elijah's unorthodox approach and his demands for absolute control over the cult and its members disenchanted many after only short periods of membership. Still, the cult has a certain influence and a considerable following. There are now 38 numbered temples or mosques, one of which is inactive, and 31 unnumbered groups in the United States. Most are centered in the Midwest and the East, with a few groups in the South and a few in the Far West.