Scripture Status Inside and Outside the Movement

Message to the Blackman in America does not replace the Quran in Nation of Islam practice, temples under both Elijah Muhammad and his successors have continued to use the Quran alongside Elijah Muhammad's own writings, and the movement has generally described itself as Muslim rather than as following a separate scripture. In practice, though, the book carries an authority inside the Nation of Islam that functions very differently from how a convert congregation typically treats the Quran on its own, because it is the text that supplies the movement's distinctive doctrine, Fard's divinity, Elijah Muhammad's messengership and the movement's account of racial history, none of which the Quran itself teaches and all of which depend on Elijah Muhammad's own writing for their authority.

Scholars of American religion, including C. Eric Lincoln in his early study of the movement, have treated the book as a primary documentary source for reconstructing Nation of Islam theology precisely because it is Elijah Muhammad's own systematic statement rather than a later summary by a follower or a hostile outside account. After Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, the book's status split along with the movement itself, Warith Deen Mohammed's Sunni oriented successor organization moved away from treating it as authoritative doctrine as he led members toward mainstream Islamic practice, while Louis Farrakhan's rebuilt Nation of Islam has continued to treat it as a foundational statement of the faith the organization still teaches.