The Nation of Islam is a syncretic new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930. Its stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity. Its critics accuse it of being black supremacist and antisemitic.

After Fard's departure in June 1934, the Nation of Islam was led by Elijah Muhammad, who established mosques called Temples, Schools named Muhammad University of Islam, businesses, farms and real estate holdings in the United States and abroad.

The Nation of Islam's notable leaders are Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and Warith Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam's headquarter mosque, Mosque Maryam (Mosque #2) is located in Chicago, IL and its leader is Minister Louis Farrakhan. Its official news publication is The Final Call Newspaper. The Nation of Islam does not publish its membership numbers; the core membership of the Nation of Islam is estimated between 20,000 and 50,000, but their following is believed to be larger. Most of the members are in the United States, but there are communities in other countries, including Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Trinidad and Tobago.

A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.

According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people;" "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.

Khalid Yasin (also known as Abu Muhammad and Abu Muhammad Khalid Yasin) (born in 1946) is an American convert from Christianity to Islam who lectures in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.Yasin lives in Manchester, England and has operated a "da'wah" organization which has had various names. It was dissolved in 2010.Yasin frequently travels overseas to spread his faith. He has called himself a "media-bedouin," remarking that the bedouins are willing to settle wherever there is "water and shelter". Yassin is outspoken about a variety of issues in his speeches and media appearences.

Yasin was born in Harlem, New York and raised in Brooklyn as a Christian along with nine siblings. Although not an orphan, he grew up in foster homes from the age of three, along with some of his siblings, until he was fifteen. He describes each foster home as having a different Christian denomination, so he covered a wide spectrum of Christianity. He was put up for adoption due to his family's financial state.

Yasin has described his youth in "the ghetto", where it was "Me and my two brothers Sam and Julius, against the world. We had nothing but converting and accepting Islam now we have everything". When first reading about Islam, he often used Encyclopedia Britannica as a reliable source on Islam and its concepts. Yasin felt the grief of African-American people, and he was especially influenced by the turbulent 1960's and figures like Malcolm X.

Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr., (born May 20, 1972), better known by his stage name Busta Rhymes, is an American rapper, producer and actor. Chuck D of Public Enemy gave him the alias Busta Rhymes after NFL wide receiver George "Buster" Rhymes. Early in his career, he was known for his wild style and fashion, and today is best known for his intricate rapping technique, which involves rapping at a fast rate with lots of internal rhyme and half rhyme, and to date has received eleven Grammy nominations for his musical work. About.com included him on its list of the 50 Greatest MCs of Our Time (1987–2007), while Steve Huey of Allmusic called him one of the best and most prolific rappers of the '90s.

Busta was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, to Jamaican parents Geraldine Green and Trevor Smith, Sr. in 1972. Smith attended George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School, alongside Jay-Z, DMX and The Notorious B.I.G. He went to Uniondale High School on Long Island, graduating in 1990.

Siraj Wahhaj (born Jeffrey Kearse, March 11, 1950) is an African-American convert to Islam. He is imam of Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, New York and the leader of The Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA).

Wahhaj was born as Jeffrey Kearse and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His mother Gloria Sage was a nurse and his father a hospital dietitian. His brother is writer and editor Gregory S. Kearse of Silver Spring, Maryland. He went to church religiously and went on to become a Sunday school teacher as a teenager in a Baptist church. Wahhaj then later went on to the New York University on a partial scholarship. He also played basketball where he met a teammate who interested him in the Nation of Islam, an African-American movement.

In 1969 he ended his schooling and joined the Nation of Islam, changing his name to Jeffrey12x. During this time he was vocal in his belief that “white people are devils." He said of this, “I preached it. I taught it.” Wahhaj says of his interest in the Nation: "It wasn't the theology that attracted me to the Nation of Islam at all... It was the kind of do-for-self black pride."