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Nation of Gods and Earths founded in 1964 by Clarence 13X after he left Nation of Islam.

Born Clarence Smith in 1929, he moved to Harlem from Virginia in 1946 and joined the NOI several years later. He worshipped at Temple No. 7, then under the leadership of Malcolm X, was a gifted speaker and rose quickly to the position of student minister. When Clarence 13X left NOI in 1963, he took the lessons of the honorable Elijah Muhammed to the streets of New York. Five Percent doctrine remains closely linked to NOI teachings.

Clarence 13X added to Elijah's teachings, but rejected the NOI belief that founder Wallace Fard was God, reasoning instead that the collective black man was God. The religion is named after the idea that only five percent of the population is righteous.

Thanks to Clarence 13X's close relationship with Mayor John Lindsey, in 1967 the Five Percenters leased a prime piece of Harlem property from the city. The "Allah School in Mecca" still serves as Five Percent headquarters. Painted above the building's entrance are the words "The Black Man Is God."

Clarence 13X was killed by unknown assailants two years after Allah School in Mecca was opened, but Five Percenters believe city police were behind the plot.

Clarence 13X taught that once a man achieved mastery of self, he became God, to the extent that he controlled his own destiny. Five Percent men refer to themselves as Gods and women as Earths, and the religion is commonly referred to as The Nation of Gods and Earths.

Five Percenters depart from NOI in their teaching of the Supreme Alphabet and Supreme Mathematics, an arcane system devised by Clarence 13X wherein each letter or numeral denotes a concept with an accompanying parable. "A" stands for Allah, "B" is Be or Born, "C" is See and so on. This process of teaching is referred to as "dropping science" or "sciencing out."

For example, the 14th degree (letter) of the Supreme Alphabet "N" stands for Now and Nation, and begins something like this:

"Now is the time for the Black man to wake up and come into the realization of Islam, which is the true and righteous Self, which is his true Nature and his true Nation."

Clarence 13X's esoteric street gnosis was delivered in a staccato "rap" that mesmerized New York City youth. Members were trained to deliver their rap, and the group won converts by the hundreds. Today the group numbers in the tens of thousands in New York City alone.

From its inception, according to social science professor Yusuf Nuruddin of Medgar Evers College in New York, the prison system was an important conduit for the religion fanning across the country.

In an environment where a bowel movement is a public event and every request a power struggle, adherence to a haughty ideology that deifies the collective Black Man is a political act, a manner in which to register protest against the institution.

There are, no doubt, some followers who join Five Percent precisely for that reason. Black supremacist ideology, as Nuruddin has noted, tends to flourish in environments of impoverishment and decay because the message speaks directly to disenchanted.

By the mid-seventies Five Percenters had become part of the African-American inner city experience, and 10 years later the group had organized meetings on the West Coast, especially in Los Angeles.

Contemporary rap artists like Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and Lakim Shabazz have used the Five Percent flag on album covers and have written lyrics influenced by its doctrine.

Five Percent continues to be dominated by young adherents. Part of the religion's allure is that there is no leader and the group's meetings, called parliaments, generally occur in public places.

Some members of NOI were once Five Percenters, according to NOI member and printer H. Khalif Khalifa. The group has always been viewed as the most threatening Islamic group because they are young and win converts preaching racial consciousness with a potent inner-city parlance.

From a website I found....

Five Percenters are extremely adept at the "breaking down" of words, in order to arrive at their true, esoteric meaning, in accordance with Master Farad's and Father Allah's lessons. For instance, from Pete Rock and CL Smooth:
Libraries, broken down as lies buried...
Television tell a lie vision
-- "Anger in the Nation" (Mecca and the Soul Brother)
--Or, the Roots:
U-n-i- verse - you and I verse.
-- "UNIverse at War" (Illadelph Halflife)
--Buckshot (of Black Moon): all we need is Jesus, which means Jes- us, or "Just Us," to save ourselves.

Is this group in any way associated with Khalid Muhammad?