Bilalian News

By Ellen McLarney

After Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son Warith al-Deen Mohammed became head of the Lost Found Nation of Islam in the West. The NOI’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks was one of the principal ways WD Mohammed announced changes in the direction of the organization toward Sunni Islam. Some of those changes included the institution of fasting during the month of Ramadan and praying the traditional Islamic prayer in the mosque. 

Another change was in the name of the newspaper from Muhammad Speaks to Bilalian News in tribute to one of the first converts to Islam, the formerly enslaved Bilal ibn Rabah. He served as the Prophet Muhammad’s muezzin, or caller to prayer. The masthead of the October 24, 1975 issue of Muhammad Speaks features another title behind the original—Bilalian News— with the new title written in faded letters behind the old. Over the next three issues the lettering of the new title would gradually become superimposed on the old and eventually displace it—signaling the Nation’s new directions.

The front page of the October 24, 1975 issue of Muhammad Speaks includes the headline “MASTER BILAL” written in large block letters. Below the headline is an illustration of a muezzin calling Muslims to prayer, his hands cupped behind his ears to hear the acoustics of his own voice. In the illustration, sonic waves emanate from the call like rays of the sun. What looks like a rising sun suggests the dawn prayer, the fajr, an awakening, a new day, or the Muslim sunrise in the West.

In the word bubble above the muezzin’s head, the call “Come to Worship” is written in Arabic and translated into English. Below is written other words from the call “Come to Growth by Cultivation.” The NOI artist Eugene Majied (Hussain 2021) also signed his name in Arabic, rather than the Latin letters he used previously. Around the sun’s aureola appear the words “honey of one color from many flowers”—referring to Sufi interpretations of verses 68 & 69 of the Qur’an chapter “The Bee.” These words speak to WD Mohammed’s embrace of the diversity of color in Islam as something sweet.

This diversity is reflected in the illustration of the crowd listening to the call as well as in the photographs inside the issue that show Muslims of different backgrounds and orientations joined in prayer. In the photographs, WD Mohammed leads the prayer at Chicago’s Temple No 2 with the caption: “MUSLIMS OF ALL nationalities and colors kneel en masse in prayer.”

Two weeks later, the November 7, 1975 issue of Muhammad Speaks featured another illustration of Bilal on the Women’s page “New Frontiers” that was created and edited by the poet Sonia Sanchez (McLarney 2026, 226-27). The illustration shows Bilal issuing the call to prayer with Muslims lined up prostrating themselves in a mosque. Alongside the illustration by Charles 6X [Baucom] is an article authored by Sanchez about Bilal and the call to prayer. Entitled, “Did you know?,” the article is signed under Sanchez’s new Muslim name Laila Mannan, which WD Mohammed gave her during Ramadan of that year. Sanchez’s article discusses biographical details about Bilal from the Islamic tradition. She also transcribes the words of the call to prayer, including Allahu Akbar (“God is Great”), in both transliterated Arabic and in English translation.

The basmallah (“In the name of God”) written in Arabic appeared for the first time in April 1975 after Elijah Muhammad’s death. It was the culmination of three issues of Muhammad Speaks devoted to “The Second Resurrection” of Islam in the West. In NOI teachings, the first resurrection is the resurrection of Islam under Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, and WD Muhammad talked about a second resurrection as he turned the NOI toward Sunni Islam (Jackson 2005, 6). 

The first issue of Bilalian News reinterpreted the traditional masthead of Muhammad Speaks by placing thebasmallah at the very top. It also reinterpreted Eugene Majied’s classic image of two Black men from Asia and Africa joining hands across the globe, the sun rising behind their clasped hands. In the new illustration for Bilalian News, the sun no longer rises over the US, but as the light of truth from the Qur’an, shining on the “Universal Nation of Islam” (Curtis IV 2002). The Bilalian News sought to root the community in a universal nation of Islam while still paying tribute to its Black roots—signaled by the figure of the Ethiopian Bilal as one of Islam’s first converts and its first muezzin calling Muslims to prayer.