Warith Deen Mohammed

The following day, on his 28th birthday, Mohammed was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone to begin a term for having refused induction into the United States military.

He could have performed community service, but his father pressed him to accept the jail time.

He spent most of that time studying the Quran, the main Islamic holy book, and the Bible.

He became convinced that the Nation of Islam had to change.

Warith Deen Mohammed (born Wallace D. Muhammad; October 30, 1933 – September 9, 2008), also known as W. Deen Mohammed, Imam W. Deen Muhammad and Imam Warith Deen, was an African-American Muslim leader, theologian, philosopher, Muslim revivalist, and Islamic thinker.

He was a son of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1933 to 1975.

Mohammed was born Wallace D. Muhammad on Yemans Street in Hamtramck, Michigan in 1933.

From 1934 until he died in 1975, Elijah Muhammad led the Nation under the title, "the Messenger of Allah."

Named to honor Wallace Fard Muhammad (Fard), the founder of the Nation of Islam, Mohammed grew up in Chicago as one of seven siblings.

His elementary education came from the Muhammad University of Islam (MUI) school system (later known as the Clara Muhammad Schools, or Muhammad Schools).

He briefly studied Arabic as a youth under Jamal Shakir Diab, a Palestinian who was later hired by his father to teach at the MUI in Chicago.

Mohammed became a minister under his father in late 1958 and served in Philadelphia during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

While serving in Philadelphia, W.D. Mohammed commenced an extensive study of Ahmadiyya doctrines under Philadelphia-based Ahmadi missionary Muhammad Abdullah.

On October 29, 1961, Mohammed was arrested for failure to report to Elgin State Hospital.

In 1963, he was released from prison and resumed studies under Muhammad Abdullah.

Close also to Malcolm X, who the NOI had expelled, he found that by this time his viewpoints deviated significantly from those of his father, whom he no longer believed to be a prophet.

Because of this conclusion, he was excommunicated five different times; by 1974, he returned permanently to the NOI.

In 1975, upon Elijah Muhammad's death, he became the Nation of Islam's national leader (Supreme Minister).

This organization was called the Bilalians (1975), World Community of Al-Islam in the West (1976–77), American Muslim Mission (1978–85), and finally the American Society of Muslims.

Farrakhan's NOI and the previous Final Call claim that they are direct continuations of the pre-1975 NOI and the pre-1975 Final Call.

Upon his father's death on February 25, 1975, Mohammed was unanimously chosen as the leader of the Nation of Islam and introduced to the NOI membership at the annual Saviours' Day convention on February 26, 1975.

In 1976, he disbanded the original Nation of Islam (NOI) and transformed it into an ostensibly orthodox and mainstream Sunni Islamic movement.

He rejected the previous deification of Wallace Fard Muhammad, accepted whites as fellow-worshippers, forged closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, and introduced the Five Pillars of Islam into his group's theology.

Among the first changes Mohammed instituted, he dropped the title Supreme Minister and took the titles Mujaddid, Chief Imam, or simply Imam, in 1976.

The same year, he unveiled a new flag for the NOI community.

These were just two of the many reforms which Mohammed introduced.

Among others, he eliminated the NOI dress code, disbanded the military branch of the NOI, clarified the concept of the devil, and introduced an eclectic, esoteric interpretation he labeled, The Divine Mind/Body-Christ. According to WD's former Special Aide Dr. Na'im Akbar, WD's Teachings are not restricted to WD's followers but "will provide for the social community a series of readings which will cultivate and grow them more effectively as social human beings... based on the most renowned religious teachings of a teacher in the West."

Similarly, via his various written works, Muhammad Speaks newspaper, and public speeches, he gradually introduced and explained Islam's Five Pillars.

He stated that Fard was not divine and that his father was not a prophet.

All of the over 400 temples were converted into traditional Islamic mosques.

He also renamed the community several times before finally settling on the American Society of Muslims to reflect the new thinking.

Mohammed was frank about his intentions to evolve the movement.

However, he also encouraged African Americans (Bilalians) to separate themselves from their pasts, in 1976 calling upon them to change their surnames which were often given to their ancestors by slave masters.

He forged closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, including Latinos.

Splinter groups which resisted these changes were formed after Elijah Muhammad's death, particularly under Louis Farrakhan, who would revive the name Nation of Islam (from Final Call) for his organization in 1978.

On November 19, 1978, he spoke on the "Evolution of the Nation of Islam" at the American Academy of Religion in New Orleans.

Mohammed's changes reached deep into the philosophy of the movement which his father had led for so long.

He rejected literal interpretations of divine scriptures, his father's theology, and Black-separatist views, and based on his intensive independent study, history, and theology, he accepted whites as fellow worshipers.

In 1992, he changed his legal name to Warithuddin Muhammad, Warith Deen Muhammad, which translates to 'Inheritor of the Religion of Muhammad'.

His parents were Clara and Elijah Muhammad, both highly active in the Nation of Islam (NOI), the organization that preached a form of Black nationalism and its own version of Islam.