For good or ill, the history of the Nation of Islam in the United States has become closely linked with the history of the civil rights movement in our country. It is that fact, and that fact alone, that explains the presence of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in Nashville last week. If matters were otherwise, he would either have been run out of town—or, better yet, he would never have left his Chicago house at all.
Farrakhan, perhaps best known for leading the recent “Million Man March,” was invited here by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), whose week-long convention also featured appearances by more mainstream political figures such as Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, Vice President Al Gore, and Rainbow Coalition founder and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.
What Farrakhan—whose unorthodox form of Islam teaches racism—had to say was not surprisingly offensive. It was simply more of his unabashedly segregationist preaching, the likes of which would never have been tolerated had it been uttered by a lighter-skinned leader. Had Louisiana’s David Duke, a white supremacist, come to Nashville to espouse his racist beliefs, the city would have cloaked itself in righteous anger and risen to denounce him. We would have protested, written editorials, called talk shows, and made it clear he wasn’t welcome.
Despite the distastefulness of Farrakhan and his words, however, only a few dissenting comments were heard during his visit. Rev. Henry Lyons of St. Petersburg, Fla., president of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc. rose to the occasion by canceling a Farrakhan appearance at the denomination’s Baptist World Center headquarters here. The National Baptist Convention USA Inc. is the umbrella association for 8.5 million black Baptists in the nation, and Lyons’ statement carried weight. Farrakhan was then forced to move his appearance to Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church. There, in response to Farrakhan’s past statements that Jews are “dirty” and “bloodsuckers,” a handful of Nashville Jews gathered in protest.
Other than Lyons and those protesters, that was about it. In an era of polite society and stifling political correctness, no one else—not NABJ members, not elected officials, not other ministers, not detached bystanders, and neither of the city’s daily newspapers—had the moral fortitude to call the guy what he really is.
Royal pain
Farrakhan’s journey here was swathed in regal grandiosity and layer upon layer of security. Perhaps Farrakhan is right to be afraid of being attacked. Or perhaps he simply enjoys the trappings of power. Either way, it wasn’t easy for a reporter to follow the man; nor was it easy for people to get a chance to hear him speak.
What was supposed to be a simple trek downtown to hear Farrakhan at the Nashville Convention Center was an ordeal—but very much a part of Farrakhan’s self-important sideshow. On the bottom level of the Convention Center, where he was to address the NABJ convention, the atmosphere no longer suggested the normal course of daily convention business. Instead, something bizarre was clearly afoot.
Women and men were herded into separate lines, where they waited until they reached, in the women’s case, a sort of searching chamber. While men got the treatment from Farrakhan skinny clones—bow ties and all—women were frisked by white-garbed “sisters.” They checked me out completely, touching even my breasts and my crotch in search of weapons. They went through everything in my handbag, paying particularly close attention to my small Estée Lauder rouge case, presumably on some off chance I was carrying a very, very small weapon. Strangely enough, they also gave a second look to my travel-size bottle of Lubriderm hand lotion.
Those of us who had never attended a Farrakhan speech before—and that was probably a majority of the crowd—weren’t quite prepared to be felt up by strangers. But the body searches turned out to be just the first of several assaults during our afternoon with Farrakhan.
The separate lines and searches—which, incidentally, were much more stringent security measures than those staged for more important guests such as Gore, Dole, and Jackson—resulted in my temporarily being separated from my male companion, a fellow reporter and friend. The two of us were among only a handful of white people on hand for Farrakhan’s speech. When we finally found one another, we sat about halfway back among the crowd.
The atmosphere seemed to have a lot more to do with the Nation of Islam than with the NABJ, to the chagrin, I’m sure, of many of the journalism organization’s members. Extending the speaking invitation to Farrakhan was objectionable enough, but to have been subjected to his culture—and searches—at their own meeting was an extra indignity.
NABJ President Arthur Fennell, in fact, opened the session by apologizing for the inconvenience of getting into the hall and suggesting it was a mistake. And without introducing Farrakhan by name, he asked the crowd to show its enthusiasm for the first big speaker of the week.
Farrakhan walked out onto the stage to lukewarm applause, perhaps even less enthusiastic than the greeting Dole would receive from the decidedly Democratic crowd two days later. What followed was a speech that was so patently, and intentionally, offensive that I was embarrassed to be there.
Farrakhan charged that black journalists are “slaves” to the white media establishment and that they make no effort to cover the culture of their “own.” “White folks didn’t hire you to tell them what African-American folks are really thinking,” he said.
Ever the victim, he alleged that there is a white conspiracy to control blacks in the media, and he said that coverage of his own speeches and behavior had been badly distorted. He blamed his own fractious reputation on the collective failure of black journalists to speak up and defend him. That failure, he said, shows either that black journalists have become happy to be mainstream, or that they are fearful of speaking up. “A scared-to-death Negro is a slave,” he said.
“When you hear them beat the hell out of me, calling me an anti-Semite and a bigot, it’d be nice to hear a brother who’s applauding behind the door come out and say, ‘Farrakhan’s not the man he’s depicted to be.’ ”
He called the writing of black journalists “stale and insipid,” and even went so far as to say that the black community would wither away if he died. “If you lose me, God help you all,” he said.
Later in the day, at the public gathering at Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist, he said, “If white people approved of me, you’d be falling all over yourselves. If white folks are godly, then why is the country in such bad shape? What are they afraid of?”
Farrakhan said he doesn’t hate whites. But after listening to him, it’s hard to conclude otherwise.
“Wait a minute, white folks. If I hated you, let me ask you a question: Would it be justified?” he asked rhetorically.
Unorthodox
Presumably, Farrakhan is allowed to get away with his anti-Semitic rhetoric because whites are afraid of criticizing him for fear of being labeled racist themselves. He also protects himself, however, by presenting his arguments in the context of religious dogma. It’s seldom mentioned that he and the Nation of Islam have strayed far from orthodox Islam.
The message of the Nation of Islam is much more narrowly focused—and self-serving—than what many other Muslims worship. Its essence is that there is one god, Allah, who is black, and that Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s first leader who died in 1975, was his last messenger. Nation of Islam members believe that heaven and hell exist on earth and there is no life after death.
Nation of Islam is an unorthodox branch of the Muslim faith. Also called “Bilalian Muslim,” it has traditionally taught that the white race is an aberration, a race of “virtual Frankensteins,” as one student of the Muslim religion has put it, created by a mad scientist named Yakub over 6,000 years ago. According to Bilalian doctrine, whites are intrinsically evil.
A key element of the Nation of Islam movement in modern times has been black supremacy. Farrakhan preaches that separate black economic development is the only legitimate black response to white-imposed segregation. The Nation’s message of black self-reliance is, by itself, virtuous enough. But the fact that it is shrouded in a belief that whites are evil only chips away at its credibility.
Farrakhan has been a principal figure in the Nation of Islam movement for several decades now. It is a movement that has seen its share of ups and downs.
In 1964, Malcolm X, who was then the lieutenant to Elijah Muhammad, broke away from the group’s Bilalian form of Muslim to become a Sunni Muslim. He formed a more tolerant group called the Organization for Afro-American Unity. The group was still closed to whites, but Malcolm X toned down the vehement anti-white rhetoric for which the Nation of Islam had been, and still is, known.
After Malcolm X’s break, Farrakhan, who had been his student and close friend, denounced him as “worthy of death.” Sure enough, in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York. The odd plot twists of the power struggle of the ’60s still reverberate. Last year, Malcolm X’s daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, was arrested and accused of plotting to kill Farrakhan. Investigators have said she thinks Farrakhan had a part in the murder of her father.
Many have speculated as to why Malcolm X split from Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Some have said it was because of Malcolm X’s disgust at Muhammad’s conduct when it was revealed that Muhammad had fathered a number of children from illicit relationships with Nation women. Such behavior is arguably a violation of the Nation’s rigorous code of personal morality. Despite that, Farrakhan defends Muhammad to this day. He has publicly stated that Malcolm deserved to die.
Racism makes strange bedfellows
When Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam is compared to similar movements in history, things get really ugly.
He himself has compared the philosophy of his organization with that of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. In American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X, by Steven Barboza, Farrakhan is quoted as saying, “[White supremacists] don’t want to see integration and mongrelization of the races. They want to see black folk separate. In that sense, we have some common ground. Among them, I’m probably the most respected black man in America.”
Somewhere in America, and in Nashville I am sure, arguments such as these probably fall on deaf ears. It is my best guess that people still hold out some hope that people of different races can get along, that people of different backgrounds can sometimes still hold the same beliefs. I would venture to say too that some of us derive a lot of joy and excitement not from associating with people exactly like us, but from mingling with people who are very different from ourselves.
When I hear people like Farrakhan, I can only conclude that a world where blacks go one way and whites go another is not a world where I want to live. And a convention where the National Association of Black Journalists loses its moral compass and invites a hateful man to speak is not one I particularly want to attend either.
