Qa'im

Legendary thread.

https://bliis.org/essay/jeffrey-epsteins-occult-bookshelf/

https://bliis.org/essay/the-apostles-the-early-church-and-islam/

This so-called "Islamic Dilemma" seems to only convince Christian missionaries and their circle. Muslims in general are utterly unimpressed with this argument for a few reasons: The entire argument leans on the word "confirm" and what it means. It ignores that the Quran talks about the Jewish distortion of scripture (2:79), the misinterpretation of scripture (5:13, 5:41, 4:46, 2:75); and [it implies its] role as a criterion for what is correct in the previous books (3:3-4). It ignores that the Quran also hints that the prophets had the Torah (5:44) and the rabbis thereafter preserved part of the Torah (5:44, bima-stuHfidhu min kitabillah) It also ignores that the author of the Quran is clearly correcting aspects of the Bible: for example, the Samaritan is blamed for the golden calf instead of Aaron (20:85-97) who is a prophet and would not call his people to idolatry. The Quran leaves out the ideas that Noah got drunk, that Lot slept with his daughters, that David went with Bathsheba, that God killed all the Egyptian newborns, etc. What the author of the Quran chose to change or leave out is deliberate, because it all protects the honour of the prophets, who were killed or insulted by the previous nations. It ignores the earliest exegeses (tafsirs) of the Quran and the hadith literature, which talk of the distortion of the Bible. The Shi'a hadith literature in particular are clear that the Ahl al-Bayt had the "original" Torah, Psalms, and Gospel, and they would occasionally quote from them, and these quotes are not found in the extant Bible. It ignores the general consensus among secular academics that the Quran and the early Muslims were accusing the Jews and Christians of distorting their scriptures: see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh's "Tahrif", "Tawrat", and "Intertwined Words", Charles Adams' "Qur'an: The Text and its History", Walid Saleh's "Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries of the Qur'an", Gordon Nickel's "Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries of the Qur'an". It ignores the plain fact that there are indeed important differences between the Bible manuscripts, the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. It ignores that the Talmud claims that the Tanakh was lost and Ezra had to piece it back together, changing some things and redacting some things. So with all these things in mind, when we revisit the word "confirm", it is not a confirmation of every letter in the extant Bible. It is, at best, a general confirmation of these books and their central message, and a call to a return to textual authority for Jews and Christians. Taken altogether though, the Quran is supposed to be the guardian over the truths of the previous scriptures, which have been interpolated and misinterpreted.

https://bliis.org/essay/the-apostles-the-early-church-and-islam/

Wa alaykum assalam, It may disappoint people, but I believe that this is a sign in the End Times, and not something that happened in the Prophet’s life. Grammatically, the Quran sometimes uses the past tense to describe future events. It does so as a rhetorical device to show that something is so certain, that it is as though it has already happened. For example, the opening verses of Surat Infitar follow this same pattern, but no one would say that the events the surah described were already fulfilled. The (mostly Sunni) hadiths used to describe this event say that the Moon was literally cleaved in two, and that it wasn’t just an illusion to the Arabs. The problem is, if this was a historical, global event, we should have a lot of 7th century attestations to it. We don’t have any. It would’ve been one of the biggest events to happen in history, yet no one bothered writing about it? Some claim that an Indian king (Cheraman Perumal) saw it in Kerala, but that story comes many centuries later. Others claim that it is mentioned in Chinese poetry, but those 8th century poetic references to a “broken moon” could just be talking about eclipses, or the moon being covered by clouds etc. Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An investigation into Shi’a sources find very few hadiths on the matter. I found two, and I don’t think they’re reliable by isnād. The Quran often describes the polytheists asking for a miracle, yet the verses could’ve easily responded with “We split the moon”. You get the impression from these verses that physical miracles are not a primary feature of the Prophet’s mission. Some Muslims in the 2000s would point to valleys or craters on the moon as proof for the split. When it became clear that these were not indications to the moon being split in half (the moon just receives a lot of asteroids), we said that the miracle restored the moon perfectly as it was (no sign of a split). In the end, we can’t prove a negative, so I can’t definitively say that the event didn’t happen, but based on these reasons, I find it very unlikely. I know that’s a bit like telling Muslims that there is no Santa Clause, but remember that the truth of Islam never relied on this specific miracle anyway.

WS. There are some things I can’t say, but our FOIA request information is in the book toward the end, and you may be interested in the agencies that refused our requests.

Ws, I would love to see/hear those majalis if possible. As for why the FBI doesn’t disclose everything, clearly there is some national interest or institutional reputation etc in keeping Fard a mystery. Perhaps they want to keep the NOI alive so they can watch black militants and keep them disarmed.

Elijah may have been the last person to see him (excluding his 1934 letters). It is uncertain. Elijah reportedly said in 1960 that he dropped Fard off at the airport. But that is late. Really anything is possible. Elijah did appear to have unwavering faith in Fard for the rest of his life, which makes me more partial to the idea that Fard just left, changed careers, or died some other way. He disappeared at a time when Detroit and Chicago had enough of him and his group. When he would sneak back in or preach, he would get arrested. As for Fard’s ethnic origins: he claimed to be from Mecca in 1930, Beynon claimed he was Syrian in 1938, 1908 papers called him a Turk (but “Turk” was a catch-all term for Muslim at the time), he claimed to be from Shinka Afghanistan in his WW1 draft registration. Hazel claimed he was a New Zealander. He was light brown skinned. His face appears racially ambiguous to me. He could have been a mix. He told John Muhammad that his mother was a white skinned woman from Kashmir. Others thought his mother was from the Caucuses, but I concluded in the book that Kashmir was more likely. He called his mother “BabyG”, which may have been Bibiji (“respected lady” in Urdu). The forensic linguistics analysis came up with Urdu as his first language (based on his mistakes, conventions, and expressions when writing letters in English). He would kick Arabs out of the temple. He used a lot of non-Arabic words and names like Farad, Shabazz, Kalat, Osman, etc which hint at an origin more east than Arabia (unless he found those names in literature in America). My current hypothesis is that he came in pursuit of the American dream, but only found racism (always being considered a foreigner), legal troubles (Laura Swanson, Pearl Allen), and prison time (San Quentin was notoriously bad). I think these experiences radicalized him, and his way of getting back at the white man was by getting involved in black nationalist and pan-Asiatic movements. There are of course other possibilities. Maybe he was insane. Maybe he really was a conman. Maybe he was a segregationist who wanted whites and blacks to avoid integration. Maybe he was an imperial Japanese agent preparing a fifth column for Japan . It is difficult to reconstruct his intentions. But he was clearly a force of nature.

The newspapers reported some kind of upcoming "immigration hearing" that may have resulted in deportation in 1934. However, we have no records of that. Our book notes some of the possible evidence that he went to Mexico or South America. You are absolutely right that most people from south and central Asia were illiterate at that time. Fard was clearly literate (though he made mistakes in his English writing at least). It is possible that he came from an educated elite. Anton Batey and Kevin Morris found the ship that Fard arrived to America on. It was called the USS Coptic, and it came from China, stopped in Japan and Hawaii, and then arrived to San Francisco in 1907. Then, Fard started appearing in newspapers as a tamale vendor in 1908. Fard boarded the ship under the name "Wali Dad Khan", and people who came from South Asia would typically go east through the Pacific to the U.S. I've considered the possibility that Fard was just a white American, but that seems unlikely, because he was often reported to be a foreigner - the newspapers called him a Turk, a Greek; his followers called him an Arab; he had an accent, and our forensic linguistic analysis of his writing concluded that his first language was probably Urdu. In the new book, we noticed that more of Fard's doctrines were "native" to the U.S, rather than something that he came with from Asia. Morrow's book "Finding W.D. Fard" explored the esoteric Asian Islamic angle more, but I think one does not need to resort to that. Even if Fard spoke of 12 Imams, he could have learned about the 12 Imams in America (there were Shia Muslims in Detroit at the time). I note in the book that the 12 Scientists / 12 Imams doctrine was related to the Theosophical Society's 12 Ascended Masters / 12 Adepts - these are similar in number but technically unrelated concepts. As for Fard's pre-prison political activity, he was described in the 1920s as being a "street-corner politician", in the 1910s he had war news at his tamale stand, we found a possible Illuminati code in one of his newspaper ads, and he had Freemason connections in the 1910s (Laura Swanson being one of them). Fard may have been George Farr, who was involved in the UNIA around the time and place Fard was active. Michael Muhammad Knight speculated that Fard could've been involved in the Ghadar movement (Indian anti-British movement in 1920s west coast America). The prison he went to (San Quentin) had a prominent Garveyite presence in the 1920s. As for Hazel Barton (Fard's common-law wife) being tight-lipped about Fard, Hazel had her own criminal past that we discuss in the book. It is possible that she did not tell the FBI much about Fard because she was trying to cover up her own tracks. AK Aryan concluded that Fard's visit to Hazel was actually in July 1933 rather than 1934, which means Hazel was not the last person to see Fard. Remember that Fard's "voodoo killings" controversy happened in November 1932. He spent time travelling the country and writing letters back to the Nation of Islam in 1933. In 1933 he visited Hazel a last time, and he also revisited Portland (where he may have been reconnecting with Pearl Allen and her son). Fard is last seen sometime in the first half of 1934 (reports vary). His last letter is sent from the "southwestern part of North America"; and he sent English Lesson C1 from Mexico (according to John Muhammad). All of the post 1934 sightings so far have proven to be big nothing burgers. Fard definitely rubbed elbows with Japanese agents (like Major Takahashi). Whether he was an agent himself is undetermined. His constant changing of names (60+ aliases) and locations can imply this. It can also imply certain psychological tendencies (bipolar or schizophrenia). We need to do research in Japan. There are some San Quentin related papers and UNIA related documents that may give us more clues. One of the main holes in the narrative is that Fard likely had an alias he would use among whites in the 1930s. Finding that alias would give us a fuller picture. All in all, my belief at this point is that Fard was a political animal who was radicalized, in a time period where religions, cults and secret societies were useful to this end.

WS sir, thank you for your comment, Since this is an academic publisher, the book is pricey and I can't control it. I actually make a tiny percentage on it. That said, I'm happy that it is my first academically-published book, and it will be available at major university libraries soon inshallah. If you can't afford the book, you can always request your library to order it, and most of the time they will. Dr. John Andrew Morrow's previous book "Finding W.D. Fard" tied many of his teachings to ghulat Shiism, Alawism, Ahl e-Haq, Ismailism, etc. It is possible that some of his teachings had their roots in his native Asia. But he also spent most of his life (or at least his adult life) in America, and in this book I found many of these same teachings in the Theosophical Society, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups that were active in the same time and place. Ultimately, W.D. Fard was not one thing at the exclusion of another. He was not teaching a religion that was previously recognizable. His religion was a hodgepodge of naturalism, secret societies (like Freemasonry), Jehovah's Witnesses, Theosophy, the New Thought movement, Moorish Science, Garveyism, science and science fiction, as well as the Quran. It was a very bizarre religion, but it was also a product of its era and attractive to people at the heart of Jim Crow and the Great Migration. We explore his past life before the movement. I personally believe he was not a simple "conman", but rather an immigrant who pursued the American Dream, met lots of discrimination, joined the criminal underworld and eventually landed in prison, where he became a radicalized, political revolutionary. His teachings were the result of his study, his trauma, and his delusions of grandeur. A doctor who reviewed my book believed that he had a classic case of bipolar 1 (which was not yet discovered as a diagnosis at the time, that came in the 1980s). In the book we further debunk Warith Deen's theory (which was also debunked by previous books). We filed many FOIA requests with various government agencies to get more documents on Fard. As for Fard's ethnic origins, we make a compelling case based on forensic linguistics and other information (his mother's name, his mother's origin story, the aliases he used and names he gave, etc.) that he was most likely from modern day Pakistan. It is also possible and perhaps even likely that he was working with Imperial Japan at the time. Allah knows best.

W. D. Fard: The Man, Myth, and Mystery Behind the Nation of Islam” offers a bold, multidisciplinary investigation into the elusive founder of the Nation of Islam. W. D. Fard, known to his followers as Master Fard Muhammad, was the man of mystery whose teachings inspired Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and many figures involved in the separatist wing of the American civil rights movement. Fard disappeared without a trace in 1934, eluding adherents and scholars alike. Historians have debated his intentions: was he a missionary, a conman, or an agent? Why did this non-black teacher found a black nationalist movement? Drawing on theology, psychology, sociology, and archival research, John Morrow and Bilal Muhammad uncover Fard’s scriptural sources, apocalyptic influences, and esoteric affiliations. The book delves into Fard’s incarceration, love life, ties to Imperial Japan, and the conceptual origins of his teachings. The authors use cutting-edge tools, including AI, emotional recognition software, DNA testing, forensic linguistics, digitized newspapers, and anagram breakers to reveal the man behind the legend. This study pushes the boundaries of what is known about this controversial and momentous figure. “This book is essential reading for scholars, students, and anyone interested in religion, race, and resistance in the twentieth century United States. It is both timely and timeless.” – Jibrin Ubale Yahaya, Phd “W. D. Fard is a mystery. Yet these two historical detectives track down every record, mine every story, and turn over every rock to solve that mystery.” – Gene Rhea Tucker, Phd “After reading this genuinely magisterial work, W.D. Fard, the mystery man becomes far less mysterious. This very fact makes W.D. Fard: The Man, Myth, and Mystery Behind the Nation of Islam a scientific must-read for all Islamologists, as well as other researchers and readers keen to learn more about the history of the NOI” – Milan Vukelic, Phd Available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1680533886

The Isrā’īlīyāt Problem Isrā’īlīyāt (literally “things attributed to Israelites”) refers to a subgenre of Islamic sources that have a Jewish or Christian origin. After Islam swept the Near East in the seventh century, Muslims inherited a milieu rich with literature and lore. This tradition found its way into core Islamic texts, especially ḥadīth and tafsīr works. In some popular cases, Isrā’īlīyāt provides context to prophetic stories. Skeptics rejected these exegetical sources due to their dubious, pre-Islamic provenance. However, as we shall see, there is considerable evidence that the Isrā’īlīyāt had a subtler influence that has been difficult to detect until modern times. Since most Islamicists do not specialize in Jewish or Christian literature, it takes some interdisciplinary reading to detect this influence. https://bliis.org/research/the-israiliyat-problem/