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March 9, 2007

Nation of Islam: History - Part 4

Reproduced from a series of articles on Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

Nation of Islam - An Empty Legacy

Part 4 (of 4)

By Adrian Morgan

Louis Farrakhan has made no public comments about who will succeed him as head of the Nation of Islam. His tenure as leader of the group has been marked by injudicious comments and actions. He reinstated the Fruit of Islam, the bow-tie wearing "soldiers" of NoI. The Fruit of Islam were initially charged to act as security during Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. Farrakhan warned the Democratic Party that if Jesse Jackson's demands were not listened to, he would "lead an army of black men and women to Washington, D.C. and we will... negotiate for a separate state or territory of our own."

On March 11, 1984 Farrakhan said: "Hitler was a very great man. He wasn't great for me as a Black man but he was a great German and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of all of Europe and America after the first World War." A decade later, Farrakhan would reiterate the claim that Hitler was a "great man".

On June 24, 1984, he said: "Now, that nation of Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name."

On October 4 1994 he said: "Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn't offer anything back to our community." Some of Farrakhan's more recent anti-Semitic statements can be found here.

In 1991 before the rape trial of famous convert Mike Tyson, Farrakhan publicly vilified the victim, Desiree Washington. He blamed her for being out late, saying: "What type of a woman was [Desiree Washington]? What type of a woman would go to a man's room at 2:00 in the morning? She knew that they were not going to look at television. She knew what a hotel room looked like. And, now, she has the arrogance to cry rape." He also said: "How many times, sisters, have you said 'No' and you meant 'Yes'?"

On October 17, 1995, Farrakhan organized the Million Man March, where about 500,000 black men marched at Washington to declare their support for family values. Through this event, Farrakhan raised his profile as a black leader, but it did not bring thousands of new converts to the Nation of Islam.

Farrakhan's inflammatory speeches caused him to be barred from entering Britain for 15 years, a ban that was only overturned by Justice Michael Turner at the High Court in the summer of 2001. The government appealed, arguing that his presence would be a threat to public order, and the ban was reinstated.

In August 1996 Farrakhan attempted to have a $1 billion donation from Muammar al-Qadaffi, the Libyan dictator, pledged the year previously, allowed by the US Treasury, despite sanctions. The request was rejected. Farrakhan visited Libya in January 1995 and was given a human rights award which he accepted.

Before the sanctions, in 1985 the Libyan dictator had offered the NoI an interest-free loan of $5 million to launch a range of household and beauty products. In February 1985, Qadaffi also told the NoI by satellite link that he would offer to send weapons to black militia in the US to destroy "white America".

Among the injudicious acts of Louis Farrakhan was his elevation of Khalid Abdul Muhammad to accompany him on his trips to Libya in the 1980s. Khalid, who was the national spokesman for the NoI, gained notoriety as he publicly expressed his anti-semitism and racism. His views became so extreme, even for the NoI, that he was sacked as national spokesman in 1994, following condemnation from Congress. His speeches had been described as "outrageous hatemongering of the most vicious and vile kind." In 1995, Khalid said: "I was born to give the white man hell. And I will give him hell from the cradle to the grave." Khalid died on February 17, 2001 after a brain aneurism.

Farrakhan's views against whites and Jews are said to have softened. He has made public displays of reconciliation with the family of Malcolm X and with Warith Deen Muhammad, but his revival of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam seems to have no future now. By his own admission Farrakhan is dying. Other schools of Islam, based on more authentic teachings than the delusions and racism of Master Fard and Elijah Muhammad, are thriving in America.

When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, Nation of Islam members in California continued under one of the NoI's alternative names - the Black Muslims. These were led by Yusuf Bey, who typified the sort of person who led the NoI in its heyday, an entrepreneur who wanted to be a politician, with a decidedly sinister side.

While the Nation of Islam was riven into factions, following the 1975 death of Elijah Muhammad, Yusuf Bey, a captain of the group, negotiated a meeting in 1979 between Farrakhan and Silis Muhammad, leader of a breakaway faction. When Farrakhan revived the NoI in 1981, Yusuf Bey was not a part of the movement.

Born Joseph H. Stevens in Greeneville, Texas, in 1935, Bey (pictured left) moved with his parents to Oakland at the age of 5. He joined the US Air Force at age 17, and after four years he was honourably discharged. A qualified cosmetologist, Bey ran beauty salons in Oakland Santa Barbara, before opening a bakery in Santa Barbara in 1968 which later became "Your Black Muslim Bakery". He became involved with the Nation of Islam in 1964, and in 1971 moved his bakery to the East Bay. The bakery sold produce free of artificial colorants, with no refined sugar, fats or preservatives.

Bey had a weekly cable show called True Solutions in which he gave a platform to Elijah Muhammad's views. He even ran for the position of Mayor of Oakland. He died on September 30, 2003 of colon cancer, having established an empire running housing, a school, a security firm and retail businesses, including Your Black Muslim Bakery. At the time of his death, he was engaged in a legal battle with a woman who claimed he had first raped her in 1982 when she was 13. She claimed she had been sexually abused by Yusuf Bey since the age of 10.

As members of Bey's family vied for the position of successor, violence broke out. On February 27, Waajid Aljawwaad Bey, president and CEO of the bakery vanished. His rotting corpse was later found in a shallow grave in the Oakland Hills. In June 2005, Bey's adopted son John was wounded by a gunman in an ambush, and on October 25, Yusuf's 24-year old son Antar Bey was shot dead at a gas station. 19-year old Yusuf Bey IV appeared to have taken over the leadership - he was indicted for smashing up Muslim-owned liquor stores in Oakland, events which happened a month after Antar Bey was killed. One store was torched, and an employee was locked in the trunk of a car. The tactic of wrecking premises had been employed under the leadership of Bey senior - in 1994 a rival laundry had been trashed by Black Muslims.

In January 2006, Yusuf Bey IV said: "If you say you're a Muslim, you should have the action of a Muslim. If you say your going to be a Muslim and an follower the Mohammed you should have the actions of following Mohammed, not selling drugs or selling alcohol, or selling things in your store that's not good for our people. That's killing our people."

As an example of a good Muslim, Bey is seriously wanting - indicted on a grand theft auto charge, he attended strip joints and was indicted in April 2006 for attempted murder.

The flaky mythology and hollow spirituality of the NoI has attracted narcissists who would go on to become dangerous. In October 2002 Nation of Islam member John Allen Muhammad (right) and his sidekick Lee Boyd Malvo went on a shooting spree in the Washington area that saw 10 people shot dead and three people injured.

Hulon Mitchell Jnr was a member of the NoI in California. After being accused of stealing $50,000 from the NoI and molesting children, he set up his own cult. In 1981, his followers decapitated a member, Aston Green, for "blasphemy". Mitchell, aka Yahweh ben Yahweh, was convicted of racketeering. Following his release from prison in August 2001, he took his cult to Canada, where it still exists.

The Nation of Islam seems to have influenced Lennox Phillips, aka Yasin Abu Bakr, to set up the Jamaat al-Muslimeen group in Trinidad. On July 27, 1990 this group attempted a coup on the island, in which 20 people died. In 2005, the group was linked with a bombing campaign.

The Nation of Islam was to influence one racist group in France. In the late 1990s, "Kemi Saba" was attending a sermon given by Tony Muhammad in NoI's Mosque No 27 in South Central Avenue, Los Angeles. Returning to France, he became a member of the Paris-based branch of the NoI, led by Karim D. Muhammad. Taking on board these views, Kemi Saba set up his own heretical sect of Islam called "Tribu Ka", whose main aim was to intimidate and threaten Parisian Jews. In July 2006 Tribu Ka was disbanded on the orders of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister.

The Nation of Islam is a heretical branch of Islam, which appeals mainly to young disaffected males. It is stuck in a time warp. Black pride is not dependent upon Islam, and Islam is not dependent upon racial segregation, nor upon beliefs that a drug-pusher called Master Fard Muhammad was Allah incarnate. The legacy of the Nation of Islam will include some positive contributions to society, such as the Million Man March, but little else. Will people in the 21st century want to believe in its stories of Martians and spaceships? I think not.

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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 9, 2007 5:14 PM

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