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	<title>Comments on: the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and hate crimes</title>
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	<description>Righteous Politics.</description>
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		<title>By: Cao</title>
		<link>http://caosblog.com/archives/5738#comment-1742306</link>
		<dc:creator>Cao</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:33:08 +0000</pubDate>
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They all sound the same to me....the video is the University of Irvine campus chapter of Muslim Student Union (MSU).  It could be Louis Farrakhan speaking there on behalf of the NOI. 

I think quite a few of the quotes can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/american/adl/nation-of-islam/nation-of-islam&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with the date and event cited where he said them.  He actually agreed with and defend Khalid Muhammad.  And sure, just like with Malcolm X, Farrakhan has had trouble with people.  And didn&#039;t Farrakhan publicly admit that he was responsible for Malcolm X&#039;s murder?  

What&#039;s odd to me is someone coming here in defense of Farrakhan...who to me is a pretty loony person, considering he thinks white people were invented by a black scientist and white folks are the newest race - and that he was warned about Reagan&#039;s plan on Libya by little green men in a space ship.

April 22, 1994: Interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20
                       April 22, 1994

                  Defending Khalid Muhammad
                              
&quot;While  I  rebuked the vile manner of his speech, I  said  I stand   by  those truths that he spoke.... If he calls  Jews bloodsuckers  of the black community, if we&#039;re going  to  be honest, in the 60s,  many Jews were the merchants, they were the  landlords,  they  were the furniture  persons  that  we bought  furniture  from, they were  the  clothiers  that  we bought  clothing from. And they  grew in strength  from  our trade  with  them. Today, it&#039;s the  Arabs  and  Koreans  and others.&quot;

 On Khalid Muhammad

&quot;My desire was to curtail him [Khalid Muhammad] in terms  of expression and language, but never to curtail any truth that he speaks.&quot;

March 23, 1994: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

                 Threats to Whites and Jews
                              
&quot;To the whites and &#039;white Jews&#039; in the audience, I say: It&#039;s gonna   be   a  rough  ride,  buddy....  Buckle  your   seat belts...because I didn&#039;t come to pin the tail on the donkey, I came to pin the tail on the honkey.&quot;

&quot;I&#039;m  going to go buck wild on you...like a pit bull on your Jew backside.&quot;

&quot;Don&#039;t hide tonight, rabbi. Come up front and we&#039;ll run your raggedy behind out of here with the truth.&quot;

&quot;Bring me your rabbis and I&#039;ll strip your butts naked. &quot;

May 13, 1994: Oakland, California

On South Africa

&quot;Mandela sold us out.... Mandela&#039;s the biggest clown in  the big  top.... I say give &#039;em [whites] 24 hours to get out of town. If they don&#039;t, kill everyone white in sight. Kill  the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the blind, kill the crippled. God damn it, kill them all.&quot;
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<p>They all sound the same to me&#8230;.the video is the University of Irvine campus chapter of Muslim Student Union (MSU).  It could be Louis Farrakhan speaking there on behalf of the NOI. </p>
<p>I think quite a few of the quotes can be found <a href="http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/american/adl/nation-of-islam/nation-of-islam">here</a> with the date and event cited where he said them.  He actually agreed with and defend Khalid Muhammad.  And sure, just like with Malcolm X, Farrakhan has had trouble with people.  And didn&#8217;t Farrakhan publicly admit that he was responsible for Malcolm X&#8217;s murder?  </p>
<p>What&#8217;s odd to me is someone coming here in defense of Farrakhan&#8230;who to me is a pretty loony person, considering he thinks white people were invented by a black scientist and white folks are the newest race &#8211; and that he was warned about Reagan&#8217;s plan on Libya by little green men in a space ship.</p>
<p>April 22, 1994: Interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20<br />
                       April 22, 1994</p>
<p>                  Defending Khalid Muhammad</p>
<p>&#8220;While  I  rebuked the vile manner of his speech, I  said  I stand   by  those truths that he spoke&#8230;. If he calls  Jews bloodsuckers  of the black community, if we&#8217;re going  to  be honest, in the 60s,  many Jews were the merchants, they were the  landlords,  they  were the furniture  persons  that  we bought  furniture  from, they were  the  clothiers  that  we bought  clothing from. And they  grew in strength  from  our trade  with  them. Today, it&#8217;s the  Arabs  and  Koreans  and others.&#8221;</p>
<p> On Khalid Muhammad</p>
<p>&#8220;My desire was to curtail him [Khalid Muhammad] in terms  of expression and language, but never to curtail any truth that he speaks.&#8221;</p>
<p>March 23, 1994: University of Wisconsin &#8211; Milwaukee</p>
<p>                 Threats to Whites and Jews</p>
<p>&#8220;To the whites and &#8216;white Jews&#8217; in the audience, I say: It&#8217;s gonna   be   a  rough  ride,  buddy&#8230;.  Buckle  your   seat belts&#8230;because I didn&#8217;t come to pin the tail on the donkey, I came to pin the tail on the honkey.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m  going to go buck wild on you&#8230;like a pit bull on your Jew backside.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t hide tonight, rabbi. Come up front and we&#8217;ll run your raggedy behind out of here with the truth.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Bring me your rabbis and I&#8217;ll strip your butts naked. &#8221;</p>
<p>May 13, 1994: Oakland, California</p>
<p>On South Africa</p>
<p>&#8220;Mandela sold us out&#8230;. Mandela&#8217;s the biggest clown in  the big  top&#8230;. I say give &#8216;em [whites] 24 hours to get out of town. If they don&#8217;t, kill everyone white in sight. Kill  the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the blind, kill the crippled. God damn it, kill them all.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>By: the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and hate&#8230; &#8212; Funeral and ceremony</title>
		<link>http://caosblog.com/archives/5738#comment-1300695</link>
		<dc:creator>the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and hate&#8230; &#8212; Funeral and ceremony</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:18:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://caosblog.com/5738#comment-1300695</guid>
		<description>[...] Hopefully you can follow this, Ive been doing a lot of research and reading on the subject in preparation for a paper Im going to be writing for a class later on. These are all examples of cases where people have been let go because of political correctness whove committed some vicious crimes    source: the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and hate&#8230;, Caos Blog [...]</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[...] Hopefully you can follow this, Ive been doing a lot of research and reading on the subject in preparation for a paper Im going to be writing for a class later on. These are all examples of cases where people have been let go because of political correctness whove committed some vicious crimes    source: the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and hate&#8230;, Caos Blog [...]</p>
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		<title>By: JB</title>
		<link>http://caosblog.com/archives/5738#comment-1049041</link>
		<dc:creator>JB</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://caosblog.com/5738#comment-1049041</guid>
		<description>Sorry Cao but those quotes you attributed to Farrakhan were made by the late Khalid Muhammad NOT Farrakhan.  Either you are grossly misquoting or your sources have screwed up their research.

Khalid Muhammad left Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam before passing away from medical complications 6 years ago.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sorry Cao but those quotes you attributed to Farrakhan were made by the late Khalid Muhammad NOT Farrakhan.  Either you are grossly misquoting or your sources have screwed up their research.</p>
<p>Khalid Muhammad left Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam before passing away from medical complications 6 years ago.</p>
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		<title>By: Cao</title>
		<link>http://caosblog.com/archives/5738#comment-1048022</link>
		<dc:creator>Cao</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:22:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://caosblog.com/5738#comment-1048022</guid>
		<description>Farrakhan telling the Jews: &quot;Tell us you lost six million. Historians, scholars, scientist, they went to some of the death camps...it wasn&#039;t six million, it wasn&#039;t five million, it wasn&#039;t four million, it wasn&#039;t even three million.... Some of them say we&#039;d be hard-pressed to get one and a half million.&quot;

Farrakhan :&quot;Everybody talks about what Hitler did to you. What did you do to Hitler?

&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;An apologist for Hitler!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;

Farrakhan :&quot;You wonder why I call it Jew-nited Nations...Jew York City...Jew-niversity. Because you control it.&quot;

&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;If anyone sounds like a nazi, it&#039;s Farrakhan!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;

&lt;strong&gt;Farrakhan :&quot;I want to be one of the flame-throwers of God, break white folks&#039; backs. I want to give you hell all the way to your graves. I ain&#039;t scared to die and I&#039;m ready to kill.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;

&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sounds real peaceful to me.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;

Farrakhan :&quot;You&#039;re lucky you just got words out of me and I didn&#039;t give you the bum&#039;s rush and black-boot stomp the hell out of you.&quot;

Farrakhan :&quot;I love Colin Ferguson, who killed all those white folks on the Long Island train. God spoke to Colin Ferguson and said, &#039;catch the train, Colin, catch the train.&#039;&quot;

Farrakhan : &quot;The Pope is not the vicar of Christ. The Pope is a representative of the Anti-Christ.&quot;

&lt;strong&gt;Farrakhan : said this in South Africa: &quot;I say give &#039;em [whites] 24 hours to get out of town. If they don&#039;t, kill everyone white in sight. Kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the blind, kill the crippled. God damn it, kill them all.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;

Farrakhan :&quot;We want you to know white people, we know how to strike you in the pocketbook.&quot;

Farrakhan :The Nation of Islam is consistently anti-American. This is why Mahmoud Abdul-Rouf would not stand during the National Anthem at Denver Nuggets&#039; basketball games. According to him, the United States&#039; flag symbolized only &quot;oppression and tyranny.&quot;

Farrakhan and Colonel Qaddafi reached an agreement to launch a campaign to exert black and Muslim influence in the upcoming U.S. elections can only be viewed as a cynical covenant between two haters. With the Nation of Islam leading the effort, Colonel Qaddafi said that blacks, Arabs, Muslims and native Americans will exercise their political muscle!

Farrakhan :Black Muslims consider themselves in a perpetual &quot;jihad&quot; or holy war against the Satanic whiterace.

Farrakhan :As a result of this doctrine, members of the Nation of Islam call whites &quot;white devils,&quot; &quot;blue-eyed devils,&quot; and &quot;sub-humans.&quot;

-------------------

White people shouldn&#039;t be hated and blamed for the lynchings of the past-that happened a long time ago-during the times of our great-grandfathers.  Nobody can justify this hysterical hatred of white people.  And nobody can justify the crimes - or the fact that people like Angela Davis are still walking free.

Justice should be applied evenly and fairly - not because of the color of someone&#039;s skin.

The Nation of Islam is showing themselves to be black nazis-complete with the sexual perversion- a bunch of deviants who commit the most horrible of crimes and come from a criminal element - some having been converted to Islam while in prison.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Farrakhan telling the Jews: &#8220;Tell us you lost six million. Historians, scholars, scientist, they went to some of the death camps&#8230;it wasn&#8217;t six million, it wasn&#8217;t five million, it wasn&#8217;t four million, it wasn&#8217;t even three million&#8230;. Some of them say we&#8217;d be hard-pressed to get one and a half million.&#8221;</p>
<p>Farrakhan :&#8221;Everybody talks about what Hitler did to you. What did you do to Hitler?</p>
<p><strong><em>An apologist for Hitler!</em></strong></p>
<p>Farrakhan :&#8221;You wonder why I call it Jew-nited Nations&#8230;Jew York City&#8230;Jew-niversity. Because you control it.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong><em>If anyone sounds like a nazi, it&#8217;s Farrakhan!</em></strong></p>
<p><strong>Farrakhan :&#8221;I want to be one of the flame-throwers of God, break white folks&#8217; backs. I want to give you hell all the way to your graves. I ain&#8217;t scared to die and I&#8217;m ready to kill.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Sounds real peaceful to me.</em></strong></p>
<p>Farrakhan :&#8221;You&#8217;re lucky you just got words out of me and I didn&#8217;t give you the bum&#8217;s rush and black-boot stomp the hell out of you.&#8221;</p>
<p>Farrakhan :&#8221;I love Colin Ferguson, who killed all those white folks on the Long Island train. God spoke to Colin Ferguson and said, &#8216;catch the train, Colin, catch the train.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Farrakhan : &#8220;The Pope is not the vicar of Christ. The Pope is a representative of the Anti-Christ.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Farrakhan : said this in South Africa: &#8220;I say give &#8216;em [whites] 24 hours to get out of town. If they don&#8217;t, kill everyone white in sight. Kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the blind, kill the crippled. God damn it, kill them all.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>Farrakhan :&#8221;We want you to know white people, we know how to strike you in the pocketbook.&#8221;</p>
<p>Farrakhan :The Nation of Islam is consistently anti-American. This is why Mahmoud Abdul-Rouf would not stand during the National Anthem at Denver Nuggets&#8217; basketball games. According to him, the United States&#8217; flag symbolized only &#8220;oppression and tyranny.&#8221;</p>
<p>Farrakhan and Colonel Qaddafi reached an agreement to launch a campaign to exert black and Muslim influence in the upcoming U.S. elections can only be viewed as a cynical covenant between two haters. With the Nation of Islam leading the effort, Colonel Qaddafi said that blacks, Arabs, Muslims and native Americans will exercise their political muscle!</p>
<p>Farrakhan :Black Muslims consider themselves in a perpetual &#8220;jihad&#8221; or holy war against the Satanic whiterace.</p>
<p>Farrakhan :As a result of this doctrine, members of the Nation of Islam call whites &#8220;white devils,&#8221; &#8220;blue-eyed devils,&#8221; and &#8220;sub-humans.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-</p>
<p>White people shouldn&#8217;t be hated and blamed for the lynchings of the past-that happened a long time ago-during the times of our great-grandfathers.  Nobody can justify this hysterical hatred of white people.  And nobody can justify the crimes &#8211; or the fact that people like Angela Davis are still walking free.</p>
<p>Justice should be applied evenly and fairly &#8211; not because of the color of someone&#8217;s skin.</p>
<p>The Nation of Islam is showing themselves to be black nazis-complete with the sexual perversion- a bunch of deviants who commit the most horrible of crimes and come from a criminal element &#8211; some having been converted to Islam while in prison.</p>
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		<title>By: JB</title>
		<link>http://caosblog.com/archives/5738#comment-1047879</link>
		<dc:creator>JB</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Aug 2007 21:31:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://caosblog.com/5738#comment-1047879</guid>
		<description>&#039;I&#039;ve Seen the Sniper&#039;s Kind Before&#039; 

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/116/story_11602.html

by Askia Muhammad

In the 45 years since I was 12, and old enough to know the importance of such people in our world, I have made the fond acquaintance of many murderers, drug dealers, thieves, cheats, pimps and swindlers, as well as the countless snitches and other bottom-feeders they attract.

A few of the members of this rogue&#039;s gallery I met in college; I met one or two others at church. And I&#039;ve met others in the Nation of Islam.

I&#039;m glad that law enforcement has apprehended two suspects that they are fairly certain are responsible for the Washington area sniping. Last week I made the word &quot;sniper&quot; synonymous with the vilest word in my personal vocabulary. I used the epithets: &quot;You look like a sniper!&quot; and &quot;You smell like a sniper!&quot; in the same way the invective &quot;yo&#039; mama&quot; is hurled in the ghetto vernacular. But I&#039;m neither surprised nor really disappointed that one of the suspects in custody had ties to the Nation of Islam. 

As peaceful as is the true teaching of Islam in its simple instruction to surrender one&#039;s will to Allah (God), when that teaching is filtered through the African-American experience of brutal slavery and Jim Crow--with three lynchings per week at its peak--it is easy to understand how some black converts to Islam might want to hasten that &quot;great and dreadful day&quot; when the Almighty will see to it that white America reaps the havoc it has sown on so many non-whites during its brief but bloody history. 

It&#039;s never difficult assembling a quorum in any black barbershop to forgive the most gruesome acts committed by any black person-even a deranged person-against the larger white society. The Tuskeegee syphilis experiment, the Scottsboro Boys and the riots in Tulsa, Okla., are still fresh memories.

And if the anger is there, so is the connection to violence. Is it possible the Nation of Islam ignores it in its midst? There is no question that Minister Louis Farrakhan&#039;s sermons are often bitterly angry, and that such an atmosphere often permeates the Nation of Islam&#039;s meetings. But in reality, one of the things the Nation stresses most is self-control. So while it&#039;s true that the Nation does not eradicate the violent nature from all the people like John Muhammad who profess belief, I also don&#039;t think it fuels it.

Thirty-four years ago, when I first got involved with the Black Muslim movement, the Nation of Islam was well-known for attracting ex-convicts to its ranks. Like Malcolm X, many of those men converted while they were incarcerated. For the first time in their lives, they heard a message that they had God-given dignity, that they had intrinsic worth in the eyes of the creator, and a hallowed place not only in his creation, but also in his prophecies about today and his later judgment of this world. 

The Nation enforced discipline on these men. The Nation&#039;s influence caused most of them to strive for higher achievements than they ever had before, and to leave the criminal lifestyle behind. But sometimes their previously acquired thug-life habits died hard. And because new converts are accepted almost as &quot;newborns&quot; in the faith, the slate wiped clean of any mention of their previous wicked lives, it&#039;s easy for those whose &quot;transformation&quot; is not complete to conceal the bad things they may still be doing from other Nation members who are striving to do good. 

When I was a student minister at Muhammad Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco in the early 1970s, we referred to our region as &quot;the wild, wild West.&quot; We were unregulated, because we felt we knew better than anyone anywhere how to interpret and how to live out the strict teaching given by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.

Although most of the members I knew were (as they are now) God-fearing men and women, striving, praying to be &quot;...upright to Him Who originated the Heavens and the earth...,&quot; I still remember many kooks and rogues. Brother Harlan X was one. I walked the streets of Salinas, Calif. with Harlan one day, selling Muhammad Speaks newspapers during a rally for United Farm Workers Union organizer Cesar Chavez. In 1970 he was accused of murdering another Muslim, supposedly over a drug deal that went bad.

Lt. Jervis X was another. He taught me karate when I first became a Muslim and first began attending Fruit of Islam (F.O.I.) classes. I thought he was as decent a man as I had ever known. He was a washing machine salesman at Sears. But then he was charged with attempted murder in 1971. Elements of the F.O.I. had been whispering among themselves that prostitutes should be doused with gasoline and then have lighted matches thrown on them. Jervis and a woman were both found in flames in the San Francisco Tenderloin district one Saturday night.

The most frightening case I knew about at that time was the arrest of several members of the San Francisco Mosque who were all former inmates.

They were converted in prison, some of them served together at the same time, and they were all recruited to work for a Nation member who operated a moving and storage business. They were charged with systematically snatching white people off the streets and brutally murdering them in 1972. They were San Francisco&#039;s notorious &quot;Zebra&quot; killers. Fortunately for me that summer, I was taken away to Chicago, where I worked under Mr. Muhammad&#039;s direct supervision--eventually as editor-in-chief of Muhammad Speaks newspaper.

And I&#039;m not particularly disappointed that people who have long ago vilified Louis Farrakhan&#039;s Nation of Islam as the black equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan are now having a field day draping this suspect in the trappings of the Black Muslim movement. Black people in America--all people in America--are better off today because of the presence of the Nation of Islam in our midst, no matter how many &quot;bad apples&quot; turn up in the bushel. The Hon.

Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, always stood his ground, even in the face of withering condemnations from white America. His message was never corrupted, and he never forsook those who sincerely embraced his teaching. In the face of hostile criticism, he often told the story of the donkey that fell into a ditch. He said that every person who came by and saw the donkey in the ditch threw a stone at him. Pretty soon the passersby had thrown so many stones that the ditch filled up and the donkey walked out of the ditch without any further assistance. &quot;Every knock is a boost,&quot; Mr. Muhammad would explain.

Louis Farrakhan lives according to that credo. And while there are few references to him in academic literature or elsewhere that do not include the word &quot;racist&quot; alongside his name, I do not believe he is a race-hater or anti-semite.

There is a superior spiritual dimension to the Islamic message taught by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, which separates his true followers from all miscreants, deviants, and criminals, whether or not they profess to be Muslims. No matter how appealing the sociological and political effects Mr.

Muhammad&#039;s message may have appeared to those not in the Nation, his message was textbook religious reform: Believe and accept the message, repent from your wicked ways taught by the slave master, and you will find salvation in prayer toward Mecca, in giving charity, in fasting, in the pilgrimage. Mr.

Muhammad emphasized obedience and faith in Allah (God) above all else.

Period. That is why his followers have always been unarmed since he first taught the message in Detroit in 1931.

When I attended my first Nation meeting, I was carrying a knife in my pocket. I was afraid to walk the streets without it. I was embarrassed when the speaker warned that those of us who carry such weapons carry them for one reason and one reason only: to do harm to other black people. I may have said that the weapon was to &quot;protect myself,&quot; but I knew all along exactly from whom I felt I needed protection.

Mr. Muhammad said--and I now believe it&#039;s correct--that whenever someone carries such a carnal weapon, that person has made a god out of that weapon, above Allah, because by that action the person has demonstrated that he or she believes the weapon is better able to protect him or her than is the Almighty.

Now it is said that this sniper suspect may have participated in the Million Man March. If he did, that was a good thing. On that day in Washington, when as many as 1.4 million mostly black men assembled at the west front of the U.S. Capitol, there was hardly one single crime reported in the entire city.

There were no muggings, no burglaries that day. There were no sniper murders in Washington in October 1995 the way the air itself was filled with death in October 2002.

If only our sniper suspect had held onto and tried harder to practice the message of forgiveness, atonement, and personal responsibility that was taught by word and lived out by example at the Million Man March, we might not have seen a dozen of our neighbors gunned down in cold blood around here. 


&lt;i&gt;Askia Muhammad is a writer and radio commentator who lives in Washington, D.C. He has been actively involved with the Nation of Islam since 1968 and served from 1973 to 1975 as Editor-in-Chief of Muhammad Speaks newspaper and as a personal assistant to NOI founder Elijah Muhammad.  He is currently the Whitehouse Correspondent for the Final Call Newspaper.&lt;/i&gt;</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&#8216;I&#8217;ve Seen the Sniper&#8217;s Kind Before&#8217; </p>
<p><a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/story/116/story_11602.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.beliefnet.com/story/116/story_11602.html</a></p>
<p>by Askia Muhammad</p>
<p>In the 45 years since I was 12, and old enough to know the importance of such people in our world, I have made the fond acquaintance of many murderers, drug dealers, thieves, cheats, pimps and swindlers, as well as the countless snitches and other bottom-feeders they attract.</p>
<p>A few of the members of this rogue&#8217;s gallery I met in college; I met one or two others at church. And I&#8217;ve met others in the Nation of Islam.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m glad that law enforcement has apprehended two suspects that they are fairly certain are responsible for the Washington area sniping. Last week I made the word &#8220;sniper&#8221; synonymous with the vilest word in my personal vocabulary. I used the epithets: &#8220;You look like a sniper!&#8221; and &#8220;You smell like a sniper!&#8221; in the same way the invective &#8220;yo&#8217; mama&#8221; is hurled in the ghetto vernacular. But I&#8217;m neither surprised nor really disappointed that one of the suspects in custody had ties to the Nation of Islam. </p>
<p>As peaceful as is the true teaching of Islam in its simple instruction to surrender one&#8217;s will to Allah (God), when that teaching is filtered through the African-American experience of brutal slavery and Jim Crow&#8211;with three lynchings per week at its peak&#8211;it is easy to understand how some black converts to Islam might want to hasten that &#8220;great and dreadful day&#8221; when the Almighty will see to it that white America reaps the havoc it has sown on so many non-whites during its brief but bloody history. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s never difficult assembling a quorum in any black barbershop to forgive the most gruesome acts committed by any black person-even a deranged person-against the larger white society. The Tuskeegee syphilis experiment, the Scottsboro Boys and the riots in Tulsa, Okla., are still fresh memories.</p>
<p>And if the anger is there, so is the connection to violence. Is it possible the Nation of Islam ignores it in its midst? There is no question that Minister Louis Farrakhan&#8217;s sermons are often bitterly angry, and that such an atmosphere often permeates the Nation of Islam&#8217;s meetings. But in reality, one of the things the Nation stresses most is self-control. So while it&#8217;s true that the Nation does not eradicate the violent nature from all the people like John Muhammad who profess belief, I also don&#8217;t think it fuels it.</p>
<p>Thirty-four years ago, when I first got involved with the Black Muslim movement, the Nation of Islam was well-known for attracting ex-convicts to its ranks. Like Malcolm X, many of those men converted while they were incarcerated. For the first time in their lives, they heard a message that they had God-given dignity, that they had intrinsic worth in the eyes of the creator, and a hallowed place not only in his creation, but also in his prophecies about today and his later judgment of this world. </p>
<p>The Nation enforced discipline on these men. The Nation&#8217;s influence caused most of them to strive for higher achievements than they ever had before, and to leave the criminal lifestyle behind. But sometimes their previously acquired thug-life habits died hard. And because new converts are accepted almost as &#8220;newborns&#8221; in the faith, the slate wiped clean of any mention of their previous wicked lives, it&#8217;s easy for those whose &#8220;transformation&#8221; is not complete to conceal the bad things they may still be doing from other Nation members who are striving to do good. </p>
<p>When I was a student minister at Muhammad Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco in the early 1970s, we referred to our region as &#8220;the wild, wild West.&#8221; We were unregulated, because we felt we knew better than anyone anywhere how to interpret and how to live out the strict teaching given by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.</p>
<p>Although most of the members I knew were (as they are now) God-fearing men and women, striving, praying to be &#8220;&#8230;upright to Him Who originated the Heavens and the earth&#8230;,&#8221; I still remember many kooks and rogues. Brother Harlan X was one. I walked the streets of Salinas, Calif. with Harlan one day, selling Muhammad Speaks newspapers during a rally for United Farm Workers Union organizer Cesar Chavez. In 1970 he was accused of murdering another Muslim, supposedly over a drug deal that went bad.</p>
<p>Lt. Jervis X was another. He taught me karate when I first became a Muslim and first began attending Fruit of Islam (F.O.I.) classes. I thought he was as decent a man as I had ever known. He was a washing machine salesman at Sears. But then he was charged with attempted murder in 1971. Elements of the F.O.I. had been whispering among themselves that prostitutes should be doused with gasoline and then have lighted matches thrown on them. Jervis and a woman were both found in flames in the San Francisco Tenderloin district one Saturday night.</p>
<p>The most frightening case I knew about at that time was the arrest of several members of the San Francisco Mosque who were all former inmates.</p>
<p>They were converted in prison, some of them served together at the same time, and they were all recruited to work for a Nation member who operated a moving and storage business. They were charged with systematically snatching white people off the streets and brutally murdering them in 1972. They were San Francisco&#8217;s notorious &#8220;Zebra&#8221; killers. Fortunately for me that summer, I was taken away to Chicago, where I worked under Mr. Muhammad&#8217;s direct supervision&#8211;eventually as editor-in-chief of Muhammad Speaks newspaper.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;m not particularly disappointed that people who have long ago vilified Louis Farrakhan&#8217;s Nation of Islam as the black equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan are now having a field day draping this suspect in the trappings of the Black Muslim movement. Black people in America&#8211;all people in America&#8211;are better off today because of the presence of the Nation of Islam in our midst, no matter how many &#8220;bad apples&#8221; turn up in the bushel. The Hon.</p>
<p>Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, always stood his ground, even in the face of withering condemnations from white America. His message was never corrupted, and he never forsook those who sincerely embraced his teaching. In the face of hostile criticism, he often told the story of the donkey that fell into a ditch. He said that every person who came by and saw the donkey in the ditch threw a stone at him. Pretty soon the passersby had thrown so many stones that the ditch filled up and the donkey walked out of the ditch without any further assistance. &#8220;Every knock is a boost,&#8221; Mr. Muhammad would explain.</p>
<p>Louis Farrakhan lives according to that credo. And while there are few references to him in academic literature or elsewhere that do not include the word &#8220;racist&#8221; alongside his name, I do not believe he is a race-hater or anti-semite.</p>
<p>There is a superior spiritual dimension to the Islamic message taught by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, which separates his true followers from all miscreants, deviants, and criminals, whether or not they profess to be Muslims. No matter how appealing the sociological and political effects Mr.</p>
<p>Muhammad&#8217;s message may have appeared to those not in the Nation, his message was textbook religious reform: Believe and accept the message, repent from your wicked ways taught by the slave master, and you will find salvation in prayer toward Mecca, in giving charity, in fasting, in the pilgrimage. Mr.</p>
<p>Muhammad emphasized obedience and faith in Allah (God) above all else.</p>
<p>Period. That is why his followers have always been unarmed since he first taught the message in Detroit in 1931.</p>
<p>When I attended my first Nation meeting, I was carrying a knife in my pocket. I was afraid to walk the streets without it. I was embarrassed when the speaker warned that those of us who carry such weapons carry them for one reason and one reason only: to do harm to other black people. I may have said that the weapon was to &#8220;protect myself,&#8221; but I knew all along exactly from whom I felt I needed protection.</p>
<p>Mr. Muhammad said&#8211;and I now believe it&#8217;s correct&#8211;that whenever someone carries such a carnal weapon, that person has made a god out of that weapon, above Allah, because by that action the person has demonstrated that he or she believes the weapon is better able to protect him or her than is the Almighty.</p>
<p>Now it is said that this sniper suspect may have participated in the Million Man March. If he did, that was a good thing. On that day in Washington, when as many as 1.4 million mostly black men assembled at the west front of the U.S. Capitol, there was hardly one single crime reported in the entire city.</p>
<p>There were no muggings, no burglaries that day. There were no sniper murders in Washington in October 1995 the way the air itself was filled with death in October 2002.</p>
<p>If only our sniper suspect had held onto and tried harder to practice the message of forgiveness, atonement, and personal responsibility that was taught by word and lived out by example at the Million Man March, we might not have seen a dozen of our neighbors gunned down in cold blood around here. </p>
<p><i>Askia Muhammad is a writer and radio commentator who lives in Washington, D.C. He has been actively involved with the Nation of Islam since 1968 and served from 1973 to 1975 as Editor-in-Chief of Muhammad Speaks newspaper and as a personal assistant to NOI founder Elijah Muhammad.  He is currently the Whitehouse Correspondent for the Final Call Newspaper.</i></p>
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