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Nation of Islam
Muhammad Speaks, now known as the Muslim Journal, was one of the most widely read newspapers ever produced by an African-American organization. It was the official journal of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad. After Muhammad's death it was renamed several times. A number of rival journals were also published, claiming to continue the message of the original.
Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad began the publication on May 1960. Its first issue bore the title Some of this Earth to Call Our Own or Else. A weekly publication, it was distributed nationwide by the N.O.I. and covered current events around the world as well as relevant news in African-American communities, especially items concerning the Nation of Islam itself.
The paper was sold door-to-door and on street corners by Nation of Islam members (Fruit of Islam), at select newsstands in major cities and in the temples of the Nation of Islam. In his The Autobiography of Malcolm X, activist Malcolm X claimed to have founded the newspaper, but this has not been independently confirmed. According to the current Nation of Islam, Malcolm X helped create Mr. Muhammad Speaks, a different newspaper distributed locally in New York City. It is also believed that Jabir Herbert Muhammad had a hand in starting the paper also.
In addition to NOI-based ventures, Elijah Muhammad had used the nation's African-American press to publicize the organization and his views. In the 1950s his regular column in the Pittsburgh Courier, at the time the nation's largest black-owned newspaper, generated more letters to the editor than any other feature in the newspaper.
Following the death of Elijah Muhammad, his son and successor Warith Deen Muhammad renamed the newspaper Bilalian News in 1975. The title was a reference to Bilal ibn Rabah, the first known black African follower of the prophet Muhammad. The renaming was part of Warith Deen's project to realign the Nation of Islam with mainstream Sunni Islam.
The newspaper was renamed once more in 1981, becoming World Muslim News, and was finally given the name Muslim Journal, which is still in circulation today.
In 1979, Minister Louis Farrakhan founded The Final Call, a newspaper published in Chicago, that serves as the official communications organ of the current Nation of Islam, which had been re-founded in reaction to Warith Deen's reforms. The title derives from the original newspaper of The Nation of Islam, called The Final Call to Islam, published by Elijah Muhammad in the 1930s. The Final Call is currently the only National Black newspaper in America.
There are a number of publications that hold claims to continuing in the tradition of the original paper, such as "Muhammad Speaks Newspaper" published out of Detroit, Michigan, by Minister Levi Karim, and one of the same name published by Minister Wasim Muhammad in Camden, New Jersey. The Muhammad Speaks in Detroit and Camden is published by followers of Elijah Muhammad who assert that they hold on to the traditional practices of Elijah Muhammad.
- Lincoln, C. Eric (1994), The Black Muslims in America, Third Edition, William B. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company), p. 275.
- Lincoln (1994), The Black Muslims in America, p. 127.
- Edward E. Curtis, Islam in Black America: identity, liberation, and difference in African-American Islamic thought, SUNY Press, 2002, p. 74.
- Muhammad, Askia (March 10, 2000). "Muhammad Speaks A Trailblazer in the newspaper industry". Final Call. Retrieved March 23, 2009.
- Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, Duke University Press 1996