The Nation of Islam in 1996

Any thorough analysis of anti-Semitism in America requires a consideration of Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Minister Farrakhan has a three-decade, well-documented record of hate-filled rhetoric and anti-Semitism. Nation of Islam ministers and representatives regularly spew anti-Semitic, anti-white, homophobic and anti-Catholic sentiments in their appearances and speeches. The Final Call, the official organ of the Nation of Islam, reflects the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan and the N.O.I.. While 1995's Million Man March may have been the height of his mainstream appeal, 1996 witnessed a steep decline in that appeal. The year was highlighted by a World Friendship Tour, a subsequent U.S. Tour, conflict over loans from Libyan leader Moammar Qadaffi and finally a World Day of Atonement on the one-year anniversary of the Million Man March.

World Friendship Tour

In January, Farrakhan announced that he would be embarking on a "World Friendship Tour." Although clearly meant to play on any credibility gained from the previous October's march, the trip elicited a far more negative reaction. The 27-day tour included stops in five countries described by the United States Government as sponsors of terrorism: Libya, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. During the tour, Farrakhan repeatedly denounced the American Government, even calling it (while in Iran) "the Great Satan."

Highlights from the trip included Farrakhan's expressing support for Nigeria's military ruler, Sani Abacha, during a six-day state-sponsored visit. This gesture undermined the efforts of many Black community leaders who have harshly criticized the military junta. While in Nigeria, Farrakhan also defended Abacha's recent execution of Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Challenging American critics of Saro-Wiwa's execution he said, "So what. How many did you hang?"

While in Libya, Qadaffi reportedly offered Farrakhan $1 billion to bankroll a Muslim lobby in America. Until now, Qadaffi said, "Our confrontation with America was like a fight against a fortress from the outside. [The pact with Louis Farrakhan offers] a breach to enter the fortress and confront." The State Department has thus far prohibited Farrakhan from accepting the gift.

Stops in Iran and Iraq provided the stage for more America bashing. An Iranian newspaper quoted Farrakhan as saying, "You can quote me: God will destroy America by the hands of Muslims....God will not give Japan or Europe the honor of bringing down the United States; this is an honor God will bestow upon Muslims." On February 13, during a Tehran radio interview, Farrakhan predicted that his preaching might lead to imprisonment, perhaps alongside Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted of conspiring to bomb New York landmarks.

Maybe there's a cell next to Abdel-Rahman for me, and maybe he and I will be together reading the Koran and encouraging each other....America feels that a person like that . . . who is listened to and loved, as Imam Abdel-Rahman was, needs to be confined" when he preaches "the message of true Islam, which inspires the militants among us as Muslims....

At a news conference following a meeting with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Farrakhan was critical of United Nations sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War. "We visited the children's hospital . . . and I must say if I were made of stone, seeing what I saw today would bring tears from my eyes. Sanctions is [sic] a crime against humanity. Visiting the hospital that we visited today would be, or could be, compared to visiting one of the [Nazi] death camps."

In perhaps Farrakhan's biggest public relations blunder of the tour, he and his entourage made a five-hour visit to Khartoum in the Sudan. While there, Farrakhan met with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan's ruling party. Under Turabi's influence, Sudan has become a launching pad for Islamic extremism-and, according to the reports prepared for the United Nations, the State Department and private human rights organizations, Muslims from Sudan's northern region regularly enslave Sudanese Blacks. According to the government-owned news service, Farrakhan assured them that "More than 40 million American Muslims stand with Sudan against the unjust plots that it is subjected to."

Farrakhan's defense of the Sudanese regime has led to bitter condemnations even among former Farrakhan supporters in the United States and abroad. Many columnists, African-American and white, have pointed out Farrakhan's hypocrisy. Clarence Page wrote, ". . . if Black pride means anything, it means caring about Black people, even when their oppressors don't happen to be white."

The Final Call

Defense of the Sudanese leaders could also be found in the pages of the Final Call after two Baltimore Sun reporters traveled to Sudan and documented their success in buying slaves, in response to a Farrakhan challenge for proof of the existence of slavery there. The Call quoted Farrakhan in duly as saying that "The Baltimore Sun is not a news source I should accept as gospel." Another article from The Final Call, written by Kaukab Siddique, ranted that "The Sun is a Zionist Jewish daily which has a track record of opposition to and condemnation of all Islamic, African and Arab nations...." Siddique also found room in his piece on slavery to lash out at Kweisi Mfume, National Director of the NAACP:

Most people do not realize that Kwesi (sic) Mfume was brought in to prop up the NAACP after the Million Man March put the Black Nation outside the control of the Jewish power structure. Mfume has consistently voted in favor of Jewish interests.

The contrast in quotes from Farrakhan and Siddique provides an instructive point. Farrakhan often uses The Final Call to provide himself with the best of both worlds. By using a shill he is able to viciously condemn Jews one week, while protecting himself from being directly quoted. Farrakhan will then allow himself to be quoted only when taking a seemingly more moderate and defensible stand. It is clear that Louis Farrakhan stands behind what appears in the pages of The Call.

A most egregious example of anti-Semitic hatred from The Call appeared in the June 16, 1996, issue. The piece, entitled "Manifesto on Black/Jewish 'Dialogues,'" and written by Marcus Lewis, President of the National African American Consensus based in Los Angeles, stipulated a set of issues and demands that it argues should be confronted at any Black-Jewish dialogue. One such "demand" insists, "Prominent newspaper ads must be published condemning Jewish scholars and scientists who espouse neo-Nazi theories regarding Black genetic inferiority." The piece also asked, "Why are Jewish leaders ignoring the fact that many prominent Jews in the media and in academia are consciously scapegoating Blacks, before the American public, in the same degrading way that the Nazis treated Jews, before the German public-an assault which resulted in the holocaust [sic]."

Lewis pointed to the magazine, Common Quest, jointly published by Howard University and the American Jewish Committee, as another example of the inequity in Black-Jewish Relations. Lewis wrote:

If the first issue is a harbinger of things to come, then, we can look forward to articles by Louis Farrakhan-bashers, civil rights leaders who rely on Jewish financial aid, Black scholars whose careers and publications largely depend on Jewish favor and other Black apologists.

U.S. Tour

In April, after emerging from a self-described depression brought on, according to Farrakhan himself, by criticism of his World Friendship Tour, he launched an eight-city U.S. speaking tour, ostensibly to address his critics. Farrakhan offered no new information to refute charges of having, in the words of the U.S. government, "cavorted" with some of the world's worst tyrannical leaders.

Few were spared Farrakhan's venom during the U.S. tour. He accused Colin Powell of obeying "massah," suggested that Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were puppets on "someone else's string," defended the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah as "freedom fighters" and suggested that the Washington Monument was in fact a monument celebrating slavery in America He also alleged that the presidents of major Jewish organizations were trying to influence U.N. reaction to the fighting in Lebanon and argued that ". . . the Zionists have control in England, in Europe, in the United States, and around the world." In once again suggesting a meeting between the N.O.I. and Jewish groups, Farrakhan said, "It won't make any difference whether they wish to sit down or not. In some point in time, they will be forced to sit down.... It's better to come willingly...."

Interviews

Farrakhan's longtime anti-Jewish hatred resurfaced during various appearances and interviews. In his Saviour's Day speech in Chicago in February, for example, he ranted:

And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. Government and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.

In a July interview with Utah Business Magazine, Farrakhan defended the militia group, the Freemen.

The Freemen . . . are not nuts. They're every white man who sees this nation on a horrible course, taken over by persons who have robbed the American people of the democracy the founding fathers envisioned for theirs. The militia. The Aryan Nation. The angry whites of America who see America going in a direction that is not in the best interest of this nation.

And in a final example, in an interview in Swing magazine in October, Farrakhan again defended his rhetoric, and lashed out at Jews:

[U]ntil Jews apologize for their hand in that ugly slave trade; and until the Jewish rabbis and the Talmudic scholars that made up the Hamitic myth-that we were the children of Ham, doomed and cursed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water-apologize, then I have nothing to apologize for.

Farrakhan's Lieutenants

Hatred from the Nation of Islam did not come only from Farrakhan and through others in The Final Call; some of the most virulent examples came from Nation ministers. Khalid Abdul Muhammad, infamous for his Kean College appearance in 1993, added to his long record of anti-Semitism during the year. In one example, he appeared in Chicago in March and said:

You see everybody always talk about Hitler exterminating six million Jews. That's right. But don't nobody ever ask what did they do to Hitler . . . They went in there, in Germany, the way they do everywhere they go, and they supplanted, they usurped . . . they had undermined the very fabric of the society.

Quannell X, National Youth Minister for N.O.I. said in an October 1995 interview:

I say to Jewish America: Get ready . . . knuckle up, put your boots on, because we're ready and the war is going down . . . The real deal is this: Black youth do not want a relationship with the Jewish community.... All you Jews can go straight to hell.

World Day of Atonement

Perhaps the highlight of the year for Louis Farrakhan was the "World Day of Atonement," held on the one-year anniversary of the Million Man March, on the doorstep of the United Nations, and coincidently outside the windows of the National Office of the Anti-Defamation League. The event, with its themes of atonement, personal responsibility and reconciliation, drew an estimated crowd of 38,000. Farrakhan himself gave a relatively tame speech, characteristically choosing when on a national stage to limit his outrageousness. He still defended his ties to Libya, stating that "Terrorism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder," and urged world and political leaders to defy sanctions on Sudan, Nigeria and Iraq.

Although overt hostility toward Jews was not present in speeches made during the rally, the nature of the books being sold at nearby Nation of Islam book stands was more revealing. These books included The Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther, The Jewish Onslaught by Tony Martin, The Ugly Truth About the ADL by the Editors of EIR, the Lyndon LaRouche publication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The International Jew by Henry Ford. Also for sale was The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews a thoroughly discredited book by the Nation of Islam "historical research department" which purports to show that the Jews were responsible for the African slave trade. Other books available that day included Jack McLamb's Operation Vampire Killer 2000, a conspiracy tract popular in militia circles, and Reclaiming Your Sovereign Citizenship by Johnny Liberty, a document outlining "common law court"-type tactics.

In 1996, as in previous years, the falsity of any notion that Louis Farrakhan was serious about moderating his hateful views could be found in his words, those of his ministers, on the bookstands at his appearances, and on the pages of The Final Call. Time and again, Farrakhan reaches out to the disenfranchised with a scapegoat, the media with controversy and the mainstream with hints of atonement and reconciliation. Slowly but surely, the game makes itself more and more apparent.