Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam for more than three decades, has said that he first heard about Scientology 35 years ago from a former Nation minister who became a Scientologist. But the story of how Farrakhan came to embrace it concerns a Nation minister in Los Angeles named Tony Muhammad. In 2005, Muhammad was beaten by the LAPD at a prayer vigil hed helped organize for a young man killed in a drive-by shooting. The incident plunged him into an agitated, depressed state. A concerned friend introduced him to Scientology, which he credits with saving his life. When Farrakhan later met with Muhammad, he was amazed by the transformation and, as Muhammad tells it in an audio clip posted on YouTube, exclaimed: Whatever youre onI want some of it.
The first large-scale introduction of Scientology to Nation members took place in August 2010, when hundreds of believers from around the country traveled to Rosemont, Illinois, near the Nations headquarters, for a seminar in Dianetics, a foundational belief system of Scientology. There, they were guided through auditing sessionsa kind of hybrid between hypnosis and confessionin which a Scientologist purges painful experiences from his subconscious in the presence of an auditor. At the end of the seminar, Farrakhan told the group he wanted everyone in attendance to become a certified auditor.
Jesse Muhammad, a 34-year-old writer and community organizer who joined the Nation of Islam as a teenager at the urging of an older brother, had driven overnight from Houston for the event. He took this goal seriously. Those who follow Farrakhan, we trust his guidance, so we jump to it, he told me. After three weeks of intensive training with Scientologists in Houston, he became certified. The Nation refused to comment for this story, but according to its newspaper, Final Call, as of this spring, more than 1,000 members have become certified auditors and another 4,000 were studying some aspect of Scientology.
Ishmael Bey, a former assistant Nation minister, told me that years ago hed heard from a top official that headquarters was flirting with a white church in L.A. Initially, Farrakhan never mentioned Scientology in public. Instead, he cryptically alluded to the study of a technology that would help his people. His caution made sense: after all, the Nation was explicitly conceived as a black separatist organization and a repudiation of Christianity, which Nation leader and prophet Elijah Muhammad derided as the slave masters religion. Farrakhan himself has called white people a race of devils and the Nation teaches that the apocalypse will involve a UFO, or mother plane, that will eradicate all Caucasians.
However, there are some striking theological overlaps that might help explain how Farrakhan came to adopt a religion invented by a white man. There is, of course, the attachment to science fiction: Scientologists believe in an alien dictator, Xenu; the Nation holds that the white race was created by a mad scientist named Yakub. More significantly, though, at the core of both religions is a never-ending pursuit of a better self. In the case of Scientology, that best self is clear of residual traumas buried in the subconscious. In the Nation, that self is free of the hang-ups of white culture that black people have internalized to their detriment. Scientology, Farrakhan seems to believe, provides a new path toward black empowerment. Ive found something in the teaching of Dianetics, of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, that I saw could bring up from the depth of our subconscious mind things that we would prefer to lie dormant, he said to his Chicago congregation in early summer. How could I see something that valuable and know the hurt and sickness of my people and not offer it to them?
