
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995                   TAG: 9510250008
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

RACIAL SEPARATION A FOUNDING PRINCIPLE

Nation of Islam traces its roots back to the 1930s, when a traveling salesman named Wallace D. Fard began preaching to blacks in Detroit about a ``natural religion of the black man.'' His message of racial separation caught the attention of a black Baptist preacher from Sandersville, Ga., named Elijah Poole. Embracing the mystical Fard as ``Allah's messenger,'' Poole changed his own name to Elijah Muhammad and began preaching a nationalist theology that gave a special black American twist to the worldwide Islamic faith.

He said that white people were devils, created by a black, mad scientist named Yakub. Through gene splicing and cloning, Yakub devolved from ``the original man'' - who was black and from the African continent - a race of white-skinned, straight-haired, often blue-eyed, devils. They had the personalities of snakes and were biologically incapable of doing what was just, pure or clean. He said these devils ultimately would be destroyed by the black Allah, or God.

- Los Angeles Times

by CNB