Born Anthony Saunders to Laurelle and Lloyd Saunders, Shahidi Islam, learned at the age of three on his birthday a lesson it took the Buddha years to discover: that life is suffering. By age five, his mother, Laurelle Saunders, read to him about the prophet Moses; about the supernatural deliverance of Israel from Egypt; and about the power of God to deliver the suffering. At that time, Islam began to see God as the best escape from the sufferings of life.

Islam desired from that time forward, to be a true prophet of God and devoted his youth to learning more stories about God’s deliverance of the suffering. Finally, at age eighteen, Islam joined the Art Katz Prophetic School and Convocation, living for four months on the Ben Israel compound.

Islam learned much from his mentor, Art Katz, about the difference between true prophets and false prophets, and between the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet. He also discovered that if the office of prophet exists today, it is extremely rare, and that most so-called “prophets of prosperity” would be like the “prophets of peace” during the days of the prophet Jeremiah: fascinating but false.

Then, at age twenty-six, after being deported back to his native London, Islam read the Quran for the first time and saw the Prophet Muhammad as an authentic prophet of God, taking the name Shahidi Islam from that time.

Although Islam has been prophesying since he was nineteen, he does not consider himself to be an actual prophet; believing, instead, that the office of prophet ended with the Prophet Muhammad. While he still does prophesy, even to this day, he does so only as a godbody theologian and a member of the Society for the Study of Theology.

Islam’s main focus, however, is to advocate for a pro-sex, pro-righteousness, and anti-racist movement among his ghetto Black people who are currently lost in the realities of the street life. Through godbodyism, he thus seeks to spread the message that self-knowledge is the path to divinity while still engaging the late modern era with empathy and peace.