In and Out of This World

Stephen C. Finley is Inaugural Chair, Department of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, and coeditor of The Religion of White Rage: White Workers, Religious Fervor, and the Myth of Black Racial Progress and Esotericism in African American Religious Experience.

• Acknowledgments  ixIntroduction. Black Bodies In- and Out-of-Place: Rereading the Nation of Islam through a Theory of the Body  11. Elijah Muhammad, the Myth of Yakub, and the Critique of “Whitenized” Black Embodiment  152. Elijah Muhammad, Transcendent Blackness, and the Construction of Ideal Black Bodies  463. Malcolm X and the Politics of Resistance: Visible Bodies, Language, and the Implied Critique of Elijah Muhammad  744. Warith Deen Mohammed and the Nation of Islam: Race and Black Embodiment in “Islamic” Form  1005. Mothership Connections: Louis Farrakhan as the Culmination of Muslim Ideals in the Nation of Islam  131Conclusion. (Re)forming Black Embodiment, White Supremacy, and the Nation of Islam's Class(ist) Response  158Wheels, Wombs, and Women: An Epilogue  174The “Louis Farrakhan” That the Public Does Not Know, or Doesn’t Want to Know?: An Afterword  189Farrakhan’s Swan Song? A Postscript  198Notes  201Bibliography  235Index  245

“Finley offers here a well-crafted interpretation of the religious symbols of the NOI as efforts to liberate black identity from social and symbolic confinement. . . . In addition to being an informative work on The Nation of Islam, this book is a dexterous literary ethnography, particularly affluent in insights on religious anthropology.” - Abdessamad Belhaj (Social Identities) "In and Out of This World peels back closely guarded beliefs and practices and gives readers the context to understand them not as fringe lunacy but a logical endpoint to a diverse and robust cosmology. Dr. Finley does what the best historians do-makes us care about people while giving us the information to understand their ideas and beliefs." - Christina Ward (Shepherd) "In and Out of This World places bodies at the heart of an engaging redescription of the Nation of Islam. . . . Emphasizing the ties between body and religion in the NOI, Finley makes a welcome contribution to the collection of scholarship that points to the role of religion in African-American racial formation and self-fashioning." - Nick Andersen (Body and Religion) "In and Out of this World is an ambitious study and is noteworthy specifically for its creative attention to the implications of obscure [Nation of Islam] doctrines. . . . Broad readerships in the fields of religion and African American studies will find additional value in the volume’s potential ties to Afrofuturistic discourses and what role alternative religio-racial movements play therein."- Darrius Hills (Nova Religio) "An incisive analysis of the Nation of Islam ... The book is a model of religious studies theory, method, and methodology."- Merin Shobhana Xavier (Reading Religion) "A strength of Finley’s book is his attention to the theological content of the NOI, which all too often is ignored or even dismissed. . . . This book should transform our understanding of the NOI, placing it firmly among other ufological and esotericist movements." - Benjamin E. Zeller (Journal of the American Academy of Religion) "In and Out of This World by Stephen Finley is an eye-opening and sharp reassessment of Nation of Islam (NOI) discourse that offers wide-ranging interventions in the study of Black religions, Islam in the Americas, and material religion. . . . The book in its entirety would be useful in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses. Whether for research or teaching, readers will find Finley’s detail-oriented project stimulating and novel." - Max Johnson Dugan (Material Religion)