U.S. Black Muslim Group Adopts New Name

The nation’s largest African American Muslim group has adopted a new name designed to give it a clearer Islamic identity and organizational focus at a time when its rival, Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, has staked a claim to the Muslim mainstream.

The Muslim American Society is the latest name used by the loose-knit African American Muslim movement led by Imam W. Deen Mohammed. The movement claims about 2 million adherents. But some independent observers of the American Muslim community say the figure is inflated and that a more accurate number is several hundred thousand at most.

The new name--announced in the Muslim Journal, the movement’s weekly newspaper--is the fourth to be associated with Mohammed’s followers since 1975, the year he took over the old Nation of Islam after the death of his father, Elijah Muhammed.

Within a year, Mohammed changed the name of his organization to the World Community of al-Islam in the West and abandoned his father’s race-based, unorthodox brand of Islam for mainstream Islam. The movement was later called the American Muslim Mission and, until the latest name change, the Ministry of W. Deen Mohammed.

The name change comes at a time when Farrakhan has again announced that he has embraced traditional Islamic beliefs, a move that could increase his base of support among mainstream Muslims, observers say.

Imam E. Abdulmalik Mohammed, a spokesman for W. Deen Mohammed, said the new name was selected to highlight the group’s Islamic connection and facilitate its interaction with other Muslims. He said the change had nothing to do with Farrakhan.

However, Lawrence Mamiya, a longtime observer of African American Muslim movements, said W. Deen Mohammed’s attempt to better define his movement is a response to concerns that Farrakhan--should he gain widespread acceptance among mainstream Muslims--could cut into Mohammed’s African American support, and erode his considerable standing in the larger Muslim world.

“It’s largely Farrakhan-inspired. If Farrakhan really does come around and takes a mainstream path,” said Mamiya, a professor of religion and Africana studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., “he can unify African American Muslims because he has the necessary charisma and tightknit organization. W. Deen Mohammed has neither.”

But Mamiya also said he doubted that Farrakhan will fully embrace the Muslim mainstream.

“He has too much to lose. If he goes mainstream, what’s to distinguish him from Mohammed or other Muslim leaders?” Mamiya said. “He’d lose followers who are attracted by his firebrand, anti-establishment rhetoric.”

In 1977, Farrakhan took command of a Nation of Islam faction that rejected W. Deen Mohammed’s move toward mainstream Islam. Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam is believed to have 10,000 to 40,000 members.

But Farrakhan’s influence stretches far beyond the African American Muslim community, which constitutes about half of the nation’s Muslim population, generally said to be between 3 million and 6 million people.