The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have characterized it as a black supremacist hate group that promotes anti-white racism, antisemitism, and anti-LGBT rhetoric.

[12] Unlike practitioners of Rastafari, a contemporary of the NOI which shares many of its key concerns, members of the Nation do not exhibit considerable variation in their approach to the religion, displaying a high degree of uniformity and conformity.

[15] Having no specific holy text of its own,[18] the Nation draws influence from both Christianity and Islam while offering profoundly different interpretations of their central scriptures, the Bible and the Quran.

[26] The scholars Jason Eric Fishman and Ana Belén Soage observed that although the Nation uses many standard Islamic terms, it gives them "profoundly different meanings" to those understood by most Muslims.

[66] The Nation labels these people "black",[50] describing them as having dark skin as well as smooth, straight hair, closely resembling dark-complexioned Arabians or South Asians rather than Sub-Saharan Africans.

[72] The Nation teaches that the Original Race were Muslims by their intrinsic nature, but that many created heretical deviations such as Hinduism;[73] some of those who broke Islamic rules were exiled to North America, where they became the continent's native population.

[95] It claims that the ruling Allahs allowed this so that the black race would discover humanity's inner potential for evil and learn how to defeat it, thus enabling them to realize their inner divine capacity and become gods.

[98] The NOI claims that most enslaved blacks forgot their true names, their Arabic language, and their Muslim identity, instead embracing Christianity,[98] which the Nation labels "white man's religion".

[113] It teaches that Allah and many of his scientists live in a magnificent city on the Mother Plane, from which they monitor humanity;[114] Farrakhan has claimed that Elijah Muhammad never died but is resident aboard this ship.

[34] The NOI has taught that the white ruling elite are aware of this forthcoming apocalypse and that the U.S. exploration of space and the Strategic Defense Initiative are futile attempts to protect themselves against the Mother Plane.

[136] The NOI called for the creation of a separate, sovereign African-American nation-state in the southern part of what is currently the United States,[137] with Elijah Muhammad stipulating that the U.S. should financially support this new country for 20 to 25 years.

[156] The group's leadership is overwhelmingly male,[149] although several women rose to senior positions during the 1990s;[157] in 1998 the Nation appointed its first woman minister, Ava Muhammad, as head of Mosque Number 15 in Georgia.

[167] Birth control methods are criticised as an attempt by the white establishment to lower the black birthrate,[168] although Farrakhan stated support for abortion in cases of rape, incest or where the woman's life is endangered.

[173] Those attending meetings will sometimes be searched by members of the Fruit of Islam or the Muslim Girl's Training group, who look for weapons and for objects like cosmetics and cigarettes which are disapproved of.

[211] The Nation has created many companies,[210] including the Salaam restaurant chain, the Shabazz bakeries, the Fashahnn Islamic clothing range, the Clean 'N Fresh skin and haircare products, and Abundant Life Clinics.

[224] It hopes to establish a system of black-owned farms through which to feed 40 million black people,[224] with the stated aim of providing at least one healthy meal a day for every African American.

[231] In some areas with high African-American populations, the NOI has for instance engaged in door-to-door campaigns to raise awareness about local pollution,[232] or used the Fruit of Islam to patrol neighborhoods as a community watchdog,[232] especially to stop drug-dealing.

[238] Elijah Muhammad refused to support any African Americans campaigning for election, although Farrakhan backed Jesse Jackson's 1984 campaign to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate,[239] and in 1990 three NOI candidates stood for election in the U.S.[240] Many people have presumed the NOI to be a revolutionary movement;[241] however, it has not sought to foment political revolution or violent social change, instead focusing its emphasis on shifting the consciousness of its members, encouraging them to focus on personal moral improvement, family building, and economic activity.

African Muslims were among the Spanish expeditions that explored the continent during the early modern period, and were also among the many enslaved people transported there via the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries.

[251] A major influence on the NOI's ideas was the Jamaican black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who lived in the U.S. from 1916 to 1927 and who formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA).

[262] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) later noted that Fard Muhammad's fingerprints matched those of Wallie D. Ford, a white man who had a record of arrests and had served a three-year sentence in San Quentin Prison for drugs charges.

[361][362] Farrakhan praised L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Dianetics and Scientology, stating that his ideas were "exceedingly valuable to every Caucasian person on this Earth",[361][362][363][364] presenting auditing as a method by which whites could purify themselves of their inherent badness.

[366] As of 2020, the Nation consisted of ten ministries: for Spiritual Development, Agriculture, Education, Information, Health, Trade and Commerce, Defense, Justice, Arts and Culture, and Science and Technology.

[387] In 1957, Malcolm X organized a conference on colonialism attended by delegates from Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, and Morocco,[388] while Elijah Muhammad met with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1959 and the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1972.

[415] Gardell suggested that this was partly due to the Nation's focus on hard work and rigid morality, which helped improve the economic situation of its members, coupled with the broader growth of the African-American middle class in this period.

[182] To this end, the Nation holds regular open meetings, mass rallies, street-corner lectures, and prison outreach,[182] seeking new recruits in "jails and penitentiaries, pool halls and barbershops, college campuses and street corners".

[451] The African-American studies scholar Priscilla McCutcheon noted that although the NOI remained comparatively small, it had "a wide discursive reach",[131] while in 1996 Gardell commented that its influence among black youth "far exceeds" its membership.

[453] The sociologist A.A. Akom opined that the NOI had a reputation even among non-Muslim African Americans of "speaking truth to power";[454] a 1994 Time/CNN poll found that two-thirds of African-Americans who knew of Farrakhan had favorable views of him.

[459] Mainstream scientists, and much of the wider public, regard its mythological accounts as being pseudo-scientific,[7] while critics have also presented its founder, Fard Muhammad, as a petty criminal who established the group to swindle his followers.

[28] Farrakhan responded to such rejection with his own critique of the mainstream Islamic world, accusing it of racism, of being obedient to the U.S. government, of engaging in sectarian violence, and of excessively relying on the hadith rather than the Quran.