Warith Deen Mohammed

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Warith Deen Muhammad

The Honorable al-Imam Warith Deen Mohammad (born Wallace D. Muhammad on October 30, 1933) is an influential American Muslim leader. He is the son of Clara and Elijah Muhammad.

[edit] Biography

Warith's father, Elijah Muhammad, was the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975, an organization that preaches a form of Black nationalism. Elijah Muhammad died on February 26, 1975.

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After his father's death, Warith Deen Muhammad was accepted by followers of the Nation of Islam as their leader. He brought about many reforms, which brought the followers of the Nation of Islam closer to traditional Islam. He renamed his organization a number of times. He is now the leader of a new project called The Mosque Cares, and most of his followers make up a portion of the worldwide Muslim community and have accepted traditional Islam. He also changed the spelling of his last name from the Nation of Islam’s preferred “Muhammad” to the more accepted “Mohammed.”

He rejected the literal meaning of his father's theology and Black-separatist views. For example, the Nation of Islam taught that Black people were God's original people. With his new understanding, based on his life long study of the Qu'ran and the life of Muhammad, he accepted whites as fellow worshippers and attempted to forge closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, including Latino Muslims.

A number of dissident groups resisted the changes in the Nation of Islam. Among these was to first in 1977 to re-establish the Lost-Found Nation of Islam Inc, were Savior Silis Muhammad and a coupled of months later Louis Farrakhan broke ranks with Wallace and announced a revival of the Nation of Islam name for his group in 1981.

W.D. Mohammed gave the first invocation in the U.S. Senate ever by a Muslim. In 1993, he gave an Islamic prayer during the first Inaugural Interfaith Prayer Service of President Bill Clinton, and again in 1997 at the second Interfaith Prayer Service.

Marking 70 years since the Nation of Islam was founded in America, in 2000 Imam Warith Deen Mohammed and Minister Louis Farrakhan publicly embraced and declared unity and reconciliation at the annual Savior’s Day convention.

In comments to the audience, Imam Warith Deen Mohammed said the following:

“

Dear Muslim brothers and sisters, it is not difficult for Minister Farrakhan and Wallace D. Mohammed to embrace each other. That’s easy for us. When I first met him in the early ’50s, I liked him on first sight, and I became his friend and his brother. And I have not stopped being his friend and his brother. Maybe he has not understood, but I have always been his friend and his brother. For me, this is too big a cause for our personal problems and differences. Allah-u Akbar (God is great). FCN, February 25, 2000

”