“W. D. Fard: The Man, Myth, and Mystery Behind the Nation of Islam” removes Wakanda-friendly fantasy from all schools of speculative matriculation on the matter. When I opened its pages I expected resolution and evidence enough for orange jump suits to fly off the shelves and reopen Alcatraz. JA Morrow and Bilal Muhammad instead tell a more tragic tale of grand mal deception that has since been socialized as truth. The facts and testimonies presented stick to historical veracity and documentation so throughly one wants to slap them silly at times. But if you are a select member of the jury, the verdict is in. You just need to read the evidence.
The writers take extraordinary care to protect dignity and purse for all concerned. Their attention to detail inspires confidence and confirms the impressive effects that creative theology has on the unlearned margins of any society. It seems Mr Fard was a straw man full of straw man mysteries: an artfully dodging con who sold half-truths, magic names, charm and chauvinist solidarity to disadvantaged borderline personalities on the wrong side of American tracks. Although not entirely exhaustive, for reasons made forensically clear on and in-between the lines of this carefully written account, we now know that full disclosure awaits Judgment Day.
The reader learns that Mr Fard was an Urdu speaking phantom; a white man from the “East” who hid agenda and biogrpahy while preaching doctrines he chose like a child in a candy store from the most convenient shelves available–the sweeter and more colorfully exotic and fanciful the better. His comfortable enough niche amongst complete strangers at the bottom of America’s social ladder did not last half as long as his successor after the tongue and pen of Malcolm-X opened the gates of affluence. But that part of the story is known.
We meet a charming light-footed/fingered megalomaniacal foreigner without portfolio who persuaded negroes from the most poorly informed dregs of urban America that he is God Almighty and that they should worship him while adopting his speculative accretions and self-deification as absolute truth. This approach to negro salvation needed no John the Baptist. The game became a depression-driven faith movement that cleaned what became NOI streets while spawning knock-off convents and many a spider-web in temple closets and nurseries. The short of it is that Mr Fard successfully turned honky-tonk recidivists into imposing thanes aplenty on jive street corners. Most of that was a good thing considering alternatives.
For anyone doubting your assessment of the NOI saga as the lesser evil, our care-driven authors make it clear you are not wrong. Those on the fence between truths and lies need to read four-hundred odd pages that definitively demonstrates Mr Fard was an impressive fraud and that genuine revenants of our earthly sojourn left NOI clutches when Malcolm-X returned to his senses. Whatever occult, criminal, or salacious mysteries remain are carefully guarded by Warith’s embarrassed apologists and sundry gendarme spooks who still manipulate them. Of course, true believers will await the mothership until the Epstein files are unredacted.
Historically, this book makes it clear that the NOI cartel has become its own “Upstairs-Downstairs” milieu positioned downstream from just about everyone else. After reading I am convinced they have gone the way of all organized religions in record time; which includes a few devotees and significant relatives and paramours who absconded with enough means to sustain them in Mexico for quite a while. Thank you for finding them gentlemen.
The authors clarified much for which I am grateful and for which I congratulate them. However, I still expect a full socio-psychological assessment of the NOI juggernaut to be written by a post-modern seer who escapes the narcissistic psychosis that spawns wee gods like Mr Fard’s phantom and their devoted supplicants.
dr omar zaid (aka L J Owsiany) / 20 Dec 2025, Liberty KY