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.

Malcolm X ( /ˈmælkəm ˈɛks/; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Arabic: الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎), was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Detractors accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, antisemitism, and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

Malcolm X's father died—killed by white supremacists, it was rumored—when he was young, and at least one of his uncles was lynched. When he was thirteen, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and he was placed in a series of foster homes. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for breaking and entering.

In prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam and after his parole in 1952 he quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years Malcolm X was the public face of the controversial group, but disillusionment with Nation of Islam head Elijah Muhammad led him to leave the Nation in March 1964. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, he returned to the United States, where he founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. In February 1965, less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three members of the group.

Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. (born Louis Eugene Wolcott; May 11, 1933, and formerly known as Louis X) is the leader of the syncretic and mainly African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam (NOI). He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of the Nation of Islam. After Warith Deen Muhammad disbanded the NOI and started the orthodox Islamic group American Society of Muslims, Farrakhan started rebuilding the NOI. In 1981 he revived the name Nation of Islam for his organization, previously known as Final Call, regaining many of the Nation of Islam's National properties including the NOI National Headquarters Mosque Maryam, reopening over 130 NOI mosques in America and the world. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Farrakhan as an antisemite.

Farrakhan is a black religious and social leader and a critic of the United States government on many issues. Farrakhan has been both praised and widely criticized for his often controversial political views and outspoken rhetorical style. In October 1995, he organized and led the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., calling on black men to renew their commitments to their families and communities. Due to health issues, in 2007, Farrakhan reduced his responsibilities with the NOI.