“Elijah Muhammad is not a Moslem,” said Imam Talib Ahmad Dawud in 1960. “He is just plain Elijah Poole of Sandersville, Georgia.” Dawud, an American Negro and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood USA, was then locked in a bitter struggle with the Black Muslims over the question of their religious authenticity. But the Imam’s remarks couldn’t have been more ill-timed. Even as Dawud was denouncing the Black Muslims, Elijah was packing his bags for a trip “back home where I can visit and pray with my own people.” Several days after he departed from New York, Elijah placed his credentials before the eagle-eyed _hajj_ committee, the final judge of who may march to Mecca and pray. Elijah Muhammad was admitted without delay, and Black Muslims--the word was cabled back and came over the wire services--held meetings of praise and thanks all over the nation. That was that. Muhammad was admitted to the _hajj_, he made the holy walk to Mecca. Who, then, is to dispute his religious credentials? Muhammad’s journey to Mecca brought an end to all the arguments about his true affiliation with traditional Islam. When Mike Wallace and I were preparing a TV documentary on the Black Muslims, the orthodox Moslems denounced the movement. “They teach race hate,” one Islamic spokesman told us, “and that means they couldn’t be Moslems.” The Federation of Islamic Associations of Chicago is the official Moslem organization in the United States and Canada. They have denounced Elijah; they have praised him for conducting the largest Arabic school in America and for accepting the Koran as law, but federation officials are “suspicious” of him. These Moslems, however, are largely of European descent, although their ranks are peppered with a few Negro converts. Their rejection of Elijah rests on his argument concerning racism, and they flinch when Muhammad calls himself “The Messenger of Allah.” Rejection from such a group is grist for the Black Muslims’ mill. Malcolm X holds them up to high ridicule and scorn, saying they have been corrupted by Christianity and that they look very much like “the blue-eyed devil who enslaved us and took away our culture.” In his “University Speech” (see Part Two of this book) Malcolm rains fire upon these “European Moslems” who have “passed us by in an attempt to make our slave masters Moslems.” There are several clear differences between Black Muslims and orthodox Moslems. Whether these differences read Elijah and his followers out of the Islamic brotherhood is a matter to be determined by Islamic officials. These are some of the differences between the two groups: --The Black Muslims will not allow white persons in their temples; orthodox Moslems accept worshipers of all races. --The Black Muslims maintain a separate movement; there seems to be little or no organizational link with the orthodox Moslems. The Black Muslims do not visit the orthodox Moslem temples, and the orthodox Moslems do not come to hear Malcolm X.