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The Five Percent Nation



Islam always played a relatively huge role in the spiritual life of the Afro-Americans from the 1920s especially in the inner cities of the big metropolises. The primary appeal was its relatively colour-blind approach toward people. In today’s hiphop culture we can find two major Islamic group: The Nation of Islam and The Five Percent Nation, which is an NOI spin-off. The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 by W. D. Fard and was further improved by Elijah Muhammad who considered himself to be the messenger of Allah. The basic doctrine of the Nation was that mankind was from the “Asiatic” (Black) man and that all white man were “devils” who are the cause of the present state of the Blacks, but their rule will end and the “normal” state of the earth will be restored.



The Five Percent Nation or as its members call it, the Nation of Gods and Earths was founded by Clarence Jowars Smith or Clarence 13X around 1964. He was student minister in the 7th Temple in New York City when he was escorted from the Nation for his preaching or gambling activities (the very reason of his escorting were never to be known). He said that he was God, renamed himself Allah and started spreading his thoughts on the streets of Harlem among the youth. The original meaning of the five percent is coming from the NOI (the 5 percenters borrow heavily from the NOI’s teachings). It appeared in the “Lost found Moslem Lesson No. 2”, a forty-question catechism written by W. D. Fard. The 85% are those without the knowledge, the mentally blind, deaf and dumb who are bent on self-destruction. The 10% are the bloodsuckers of the poor, those who have knowledge and power but who use it to mystify and abuse the 85%. The 10% include the "grafted" white devil as well as the orthodox Muslims and Christian preachers who preach that god is a "spook" or a "mystery god." And the remaining 5% are the poor, righteous teachers, who are aver all of the ‘dealings’ of the 10% and their mission is to rescue the 85%. The basic of the Five Percent Nation was that the black man was the Supreme Being also known as God. Clarence 13X also made the Supreme Alphabet and the Supreme Mathematics (Further on the teachings: “What we teach ”). The percenters’ science is based on these, in which every number and letter has a further meaning, like the 7th (the “perfect number”) letter of the Supreme Alphabet, g, stands for God (Five percenters greed each other ?‘Wassup G?’, which is a commonly used statement in hiphop, too).
In the early years the group had around two hundred members. FBI files described them as a gang of youth. But Clarence 13X built a close relationship with Mayor John Lindsey and in 1967 they got a house in Harlem. The "Allah School in Mecca"(Harlem was renamed as Mecca and Brooklyn as Medina, the further relocation of Allah) still serves as the Five Percent headquarters.
But in 1969 the organisation’s life took a huge turn, when Father Allah (Clarence 13X) was killed. The crime is still remains unsolved, there are different theories on who committed the crime, whether they were members of the NOI or the homicide was related to gambling. Since then the Nation doesn’t have a leader, it has meetings, called parliaments, which usually occur in public spaces.