MAUREEN BUNYAN: Bob, W. D. Mohammed is less known to the general public, but he has a bigger following than Farrakhan and is accepted by more world spiritual leaders. He is known as Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed. He says he is spiritual leader to two million followers. Some doubt the numbers are that high, but agree he is powerful, not only in the eyes of Muslims, but to religious leaders all over the world.Rabbi MICHAEL SHEVACK (Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding): Imam Mohammed seems to be a man of love, of peace, of caring for all peoples in the world.
BUNYAN: He preaches in about 400 mosques around the country. He meets with world religious and political leaders and, unlike his better-known counterpart, Louis Farrakhan, he preaches unity and reconciliation.
Imam WALLACE DEEN MOHAMMED (Muslim American Society): God says to us in our holy book, the Qur'an, he did not make us tribes and nations for us to think ourselves superior to others. He wants us to know each other because there is an experience and knowledge that all humanity can benefit from.
JOHN ESPOSITO (Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding): He is the person who has taken the majority of African-American Muslims and brought them, as it were, to mainstream Islam.BUNYAN: His followers weren't always in the mainstream. He inherited his ministry in 1975 from his late father, Elijah Mohammed, a one-time Baptist preacher who founded the Nation of Islam and mentored Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Elijah Mohammed preached black self-sufficiency and said whites were to be regarded as devils who persecuted blacks. When his father died in 1975, his son replaced him, advocating a ministry more faithful to Islam.
Imam MOHAMMED: We identified with Islam but we didn't have the language of Islam; we had the language of a kind of -- as one writer put it, black nationalist theology.
BUNYAN: And W. D. Mohammed found the courage to break with his father's racist philosophy.
BUNYAN: W. D. Mohammed urged his members to get a better understanding of Islam, to pray five times a day, to honor their families and community, and to study the Qur'an. Through his private schools, he made sure his followers got a good religious and moral education. And with the help of high tech, the children are taught Arabic and the holy book, the Qur'an. Most of these children come from a poor community, but their parents pay at least $3,000 a year for tuition. Islam is that important to them. Mr. Mohammed, why do you think African-Americans are so attracted to Islam?
Imam MOHAMMED: I see Farrakhan saying ridiculous things that separate people, that make enemies, and we should be making brothers and friends. The first thing I say, well, that's cheapening us as human beings, you know. And in the name of Islam, now it also discredits the religion.
