This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise: The Religious World of Elijah Muhammad was first written as a Master’s thesis. Although his thesis was defended less than a year before September 11, the author has not based any of his changes on that horrific event. Elijah Muhammad stood at the helm of an organization called The Nation of Islam, but the religion of Mr. Muhammad is not the religion of today’s suicide bombers and pan-national Islamic jihadists. His religion was made in America, by him, for African Americans and other people ‘of color’ who were willing to renounce their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and follow him, Elijah Muhammad, into Paradise — a state of mind and being in which there would never be seen the ‘ungodly’ faces of any white man, woman or child.