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Another major appeal is the sect's commitment to rehabilitation. The Nation of Islam runs counseling programs for prisoners, drug addicts, alcoholics and ) street-gang members. This is partly a recruiting tactic. But it can turn around lost lives. N.A.A.C.P. president Chavis, who played a role in bringing together Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus, sees substance abuse as devastating the black community, and he credits the Nation of Islam's strict code of behavior with providing effective rescue. The issue carries personal urgency for Chavis: he has an alcoholic daughter and a son who was using crack cocaine.
Much of Farrakhan's power comes from the street effectiveness of the Nation of Islam's bow-tied young soldiers. They can be contemptuous of civil liberties -- a former Washington chief of police says, "They want to operate outside the law" -- but they are undeniably effective at chasing away crime and drugs in communities where nothing else works. Charles Manso has sold ice cream and sundries for 20 years from a battered white truck on a desolate corner in northeast Washington, an area without grocery stores, barbershops, even Laundromats. "There used to be shootings all the time," he says. "Drug dealers used to surround my truck. The Muslims keep them away."
In Chicago a security firm allied with the Nation of Islam already patrols three state-funded housing projects, and has been hired by the Chicago Housing Authority for eight high-rises at Rockwell Gardens. Says Chicago Housing Authority chairman Vincent Lane: "I've seen what black Muslims have done with hardened criminals -- they go into the penal system and work with these young men, so when they come out they are no longer on drugs and respect their women and neighbors." In New York City tenants association president Janet Cole proposed having Nation of Islam members provide security for the 3,100-unit Queensbridge Houses. The plan was blocked by Jewish protest. Says Cole: "I have no desire to become a Muslim. I just want to live, and I want my son to live."
The idea of returning to Islam as the ancestral religion of black Americans dates at least to the early years of this century. Many blacks rejected Christianity as a slave religion -- although many, many more continue to practice it today -- and were looking for ethnic heritage and pride. Although the early days of the Nation of Islam are murky, the official version is that Wallace D. Fard founded it in Detroit in 1930, allegedly upon arrival from Mecca. He disappeared a few years later and was replaced by Elijah Poole, renamed Elijah Muhammad, who reigned until 1975 over a black nationalist ! business and religious empire. Among its most celebrated converts was boxer Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali.
The sect has long been riven by factionalism. The most celebrated split was the 1964 departure of Malcolm X, who turned to orthodox Islam and was murdered by three of Elijah Muhammad's followers in 1965. While Farrakhan, who joined in 1955, seems to have played no role in the killing, he gave a speech beforehand implying that Malcolm X deserved to die.