I am the author of the book, The Black Muslims in America, which was first published in 1961, and is currently in its third edition. The Black Muslims have also been referred to as the Nation of Islam. In such communities, the religion is embodied by its leader, not by a sacred text, as in Christianity, Judaism, or Orthodox Islam. The leader is the source of all value and all truth, and is the person in whom all responsibilities inhere. In a cosmocentric community, there is no intrinsic commitment to any book, creed, ritual, or doctrine apart from its identification with the leader, and that identification does not transcend death.
All loyalty is to the living.
A dead leader dispenses no approbation, no security, no salvation. In a cosmocentric community, a dead leader is a prima facie contradiction in terms. The dead cannot lead. That is why credulity is so often stretched to such extraordinary extremes to account for the continuing absence of a leader who is no longer visible. Farad, Father Divine, and Elijah Muhammad, like countless others through the ages, have all been deified or immortalized by their followers in an attempt to stave off the powerlessness of death.