In September 1942 federal agents arrested Elijah Muhammad and dozens of Muslims in raids across Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, charging sedition and draft evasion — the government alleging sympathy with Japan, though the sedition counts collapsed. Elijah Muhammad, past draft age himself, was convicted for counseling his followers' refusal and served from 1943 to 1946 at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan; in all, well over a hundred Nation members were imprisoned as draft resisters during the war.
The prosecutions backfired profoundly: Elijah Muhammad organized and taught inside Milan, the Nation learned to treat imprisonment as ministry, and the wartime prisoners returned as the disciplined core that would grow the movement — establishing the prison mission that became the Nation's signature.