wwkirk
Divine
Were you aware that UFOs play a large role in the theology of the Nation of Islam (NOI/Black Muslims)?
They believe that they are piloted by humans rather than extraterrestrials, and were created by the "original" (blacks, according to them) scientists. On their view, these craft may play a role in the “divine destruction of America.” Here's the description:
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us of a giant Mother Plane that is made like the universe, spheres within spheres. White people call them unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Ezekiel, in the Old Testament, saw a wheel that looked like a cloud by day, but a pillar of fire by night. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad said that that wheel was built on the island of Nippon, which is now called Japan, by some of the original scientists. It took 15 billion dollars in gold at that time to build it. It is made of the toughest steel. America does not yet know the composition of the steel used to make an instrument like it. It is a circular plane, and the Bible says that it never makes turns. Because of its circular nature it can stop and travel in all directions at speeds of thousands of miles per hour. He said there are 1,500 small wheels in this Mother Wheel, which is a half mile by-a-half-mile. This Mother Wheel is like a small human built planet. Each one of these small planes carry three bombs.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said these planes were used to set up mountains on the earth. The Qur'an says it like this: We have raised mountains on the earth lest it convulse with you. How do you raise a mountain, and what is the purpose of a mountain? Have you ever tried to balance a tire? You use weights to keep the tire balanced. That's how the earth is balanced, with mountain ranges. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that we have a type of bomb that, when it strikes the earth a drill on it is timed to go into the earth and explode at the height that you wish the mountain to be. If you wish to take the mountain up a mile, you time the drill to go a mile in and then explode. The bombs these planes have are timed to go one mile down and bring up a mountain one mile high, but it will destroy everything within a 50 square mile radius. The White man writes in his above top secret memos about the UFOs. He sees them around his military installations like they are spying.
That Mother Wheel is a dreadful looking thing. White folks are making movies now to make these planes look like fiction, but it is based on something real. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that the Mother Plane is so powerful, that with sound reverberating in the atmosphere, just with a sound, she can crumble buildings. And the final act of destruction will be that Allah will make a wall out of the atmosphere over and around North America. You will see it, but you won't be able to penetrate it. He said Allah (God) will cut a shortage in gravity and a fire will start from 13-layers up and burn down, burning the atmosphere. When it gets to the earth, it will burn everything. It will burn for 310 years and take 690 years to cool off.
-The divine destruction of America: Can she avert it?
In addition Farrakhan, the current Nation of Islam leader, testifies to his own UFO-related "vision":
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us for nearly 60 years that these planes exist. You call them Unidentified Flying Objects, they’re not that to us. They’re referred to in the writings of Ezekiel the Prophet as the wheel within a wheel that was seen by Ezekiel in a vision 595 years before Jesus was born.
“Now that as a backdrop I said, having believed of course, that these wheels exist … I was down in Mexico and I had a vision, and experience where I was carried up into not just the little wheel but into the major wheel which is, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, a half mile by a half mile, a huge mechanical object that is above our heads. … I was carried up in a vision into that wheel and I, in a room not unlike this, but with a speaker in the center, heard the voice of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad just like you are hearing my voice today.”
- Quoted originally in a Washington Post interview, and excerpted in a David Halperin blog post,
An African-American UFOlogy?
Halperin more recently discusses another academic interested in this topic:
UFOs, Louis Farrakhan, and the “Mother Wheel” – The Scholarship of Stephen Finley
Excerpt from the latter:
Ted Koppel, interviewing Farrakhan in 1996, called his “Mother Wheel” story “gibberish.” Stephen begs to differ:
“Without a doubt, Farrakhan’s experience of the Mother Wheel gives coherence to his religious life, and it serves as a lens through which we can, therefore, interpret his religious and political activities and discourses and those of the NOI.”
There's also an entire book about UFOs from the Nation of Islam perspective by one of it's members.
UFOs And The Nation Of Islam: The Source, Proof, And Reality Of The Wheels
by Ilia Rashad Muhammad
They believe that they are piloted by humans rather than extraterrestrials, and were created by the "original" (blacks, according to them) scientists. On their view, these craft may play a role in the “divine destruction of America.” Here's the description:
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us of a giant Mother Plane that is made like the universe, spheres within spheres. White people call them unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Ezekiel, in the Old Testament, saw a wheel that looked like a cloud by day, but a pillar of fire by night. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad said that that wheel was built on the island of Nippon, which is now called Japan, by some of the original scientists. It took 15 billion dollars in gold at that time to build it. It is made of the toughest steel. America does not yet know the composition of the steel used to make an instrument like it. It is a circular plane, and the Bible says that it never makes turns. Because of its circular nature it can stop and travel in all directions at speeds of thousands of miles per hour. He said there are 1,500 small wheels in this Mother Wheel, which is a half mile by-a-half-mile. This Mother Wheel is like a small human built planet. Each one of these small planes carry three bombs.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said these planes were used to set up mountains on the earth. The Qur'an says it like this: We have raised mountains on the earth lest it convulse with you. How do you raise a mountain, and what is the purpose of a mountain? Have you ever tried to balance a tire? You use weights to keep the tire balanced. That's how the earth is balanced, with mountain ranges. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that we have a type of bomb that, when it strikes the earth a drill on it is timed to go into the earth and explode at the height that you wish the mountain to be. If you wish to take the mountain up a mile, you time the drill to go a mile in and then explode. The bombs these planes have are timed to go one mile down and bring up a mountain one mile high, but it will destroy everything within a 50 square mile radius. The White man writes in his above top secret memos about the UFOs. He sees them around his military installations like they are spying.
That Mother Wheel is a dreadful looking thing. White folks are making movies now to make these planes look like fiction, but it is based on something real. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that the Mother Plane is so powerful, that with sound reverberating in the atmosphere, just with a sound, she can crumble buildings. And the final act of destruction will be that Allah will make a wall out of the atmosphere over and around North America. You will see it, but you won't be able to penetrate it. He said Allah (God) will cut a shortage in gravity and a fire will start from 13-layers up and burn down, burning the atmosphere. When it gets to the earth, it will burn everything. It will burn for 310 years and take 690 years to cool off.
-The divine destruction of America: Can she avert it?
In addition Farrakhan, the current Nation of Islam leader, testifies to his own UFO-related "vision":
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us for nearly 60 years that these planes exist. You call them Unidentified Flying Objects, they’re not that to us. They’re referred to in the writings of Ezekiel the Prophet as the wheel within a wheel that was seen by Ezekiel in a vision 595 years before Jesus was born.
“Now that as a backdrop I said, having believed of course, that these wheels exist … I was down in Mexico and I had a vision, and experience where I was carried up into not just the little wheel but into the major wheel which is, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, a half mile by a half mile, a huge mechanical object that is above our heads. … I was carried up in a vision into that wheel and I, in a room not unlike this, but with a speaker in the center, heard the voice of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad just like you are hearing my voice today.”
- Quoted originally in a Washington Post interview, and excerpted in a David Halperin blog post,
An African-American UFOlogy?
Halperin more recently discusses another academic interested in this topic:
UFOs, Louis Farrakhan, and the “Mother Wheel” – The Scholarship of Stephen Finley
Excerpt from the latter:
Ted Koppel, interviewing Farrakhan in 1996, called his “Mother Wheel” story “gibberish.” Stephen begs to differ:
“Without a doubt, Farrakhan’s experience of the Mother Wheel gives coherence to his religious life, and it serves as a lens through which we can, therefore, interpret his religious and political activities and discourses and those of the NOI.”
There's also an entire book about UFOs from the Nation of Islam perspective by one of it's members.
UFOs And The Nation Of Islam: The Source, Proof, And Reality Of The Wheels
by Ilia Rashad Muhammad
