By Charlene Muhammad CHARLENEM
San Francisco Bay area leaders recently came out with a strong defense of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, fighting back attempts to assassinate his character through outright lies, slander and high pressure tactics. The leaders expressed their support for the Minister and condemned Jewish groups and leaders trying to paint him as a hater and anti-Semite. They also blasted Blacks who have succumbed to pressure and repudiated a man whose love and defense of the Black community is unquestionable.
Leaders from San Francisco and Oakland gathered at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, a historic gathering spot in Oakland, where a community meeting in defense of Farrakhan drew a full house.
The meeting, “Fighting the Attack on Black Leadership,” exposed the truth behind the Farrakhan litmus test, in which “respectable” Blacks are pushed to denounce the outspoken leader, and other tactics used to threaten, bully, and crush anyone who has a connection to Min. Farrakhan.
›The Jan. 26 meeting was born out of the Bay Area community leaders’ love for Minister Farrakhan, said Student Minister Keith Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 26B in Oakland.
It followed a rally earlier this year with the theme “A Faithful Friend to the Black Community: Defending Farrakhan” where Bay Area activists and leaders laid out the enemy’s motivation for attacking a man who has defended Black people and spoken truth to power for over 60 years.
The Executive Council of the Nation of Islam expressed deep disappointment with the congressional representatives in an open letter dated March 9, 2018. “It is abhorrent for you, as elected officials, to defend these people against the Truth that uncovers the horror that has been done to Black people and to serve as their mouthpiece, rather than allow them to defend themselves against their record and history which proves that they are anti-Black,” read the council’s letter.
The early gathering, which happened in April, came after some Congressional Black Caucus members–Representatives Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who represents the Bay Area, bowed to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Anti-Defamation League and others. These groups represent Jewish attempts to control Blacks and a paternalistic attitude toward Blacks, said the defenders of Min. Farrakhan. These people are also infected with the idea of White supremacy as part of their continued effort to destroy the Nation of Islam and force public denunciations of Min. Farrakhan, said activists.The Executive Council of the Nation of Islam expressed deep disappointment with the congressional representatives in an open letter dated March 9, 2018.
These attacks against the Minister have been relentless since his 2018 Saviours’ Day message in Chicago.
In addition to Minister Keith Muhammad, panelists during the Bay Area meeting were Student Minister Christopher Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco; Alim Moore of The Rock of Truth Baptist Church; Elaine Brown, former Black Panther chair, and Archbishop Franzo King, founder of the African Orthodox Church Jurisdiction of the West.
The audience was composed of different backgrounds and faith traditions, including Christians, Hebrews, Pan Africanists, Nationalists, as well as Asians and some Caucasians.
“It really was born out of the incident of their attempt to call Tamika Mallory and Marc Lamont Hill to denounce and renounce the Minister, in addition to the congresspeople that after sitting and having dinner with Minister Farrakhan, would turn around and speak of him as though he’s a man that they had not known and even claimed to love,” said Minister Keith Muhammad.
Activist Tamika Mallory, co-leader of the Women’s March, has faced ongoing attacks by Jewish groups, media and White women who have demanded that she denounce and condemn the Minister since she attended the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day convention in February 2018. The young activist has refused to denounce Minister Farrakhan.
Educator and former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill came under fire after he publicly expressed his admiration for Minister Farrakhan in 2016, not because of his recent remarks calling for justice for Palestinians in Israel, according to some of Mr. Hill’s supporters.
“Everyone that came showed love, respect and honor to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the Black leadership in general, and respected our call from the Bay Area mosques and study groups,” said Keith Muhammad.
True to form, Ms. Brown pulled no punches when she called Minister Farrakhan the last Black leader standing. Most of her friends who were leaders and comrades during the Black Power struggle are in the grave, said the former Black Panther leader. By resurrecting the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan organized Black people to be self-sufficient and to fight against an enemy that would keep them oppressed, she observed.
People have always called on the Nation of Islam for help and support, including elected officials, Ms. Brown observed. And now, she scoffed, as the Minister continues to consistently fight for Black freedom, the Negro rises again.
“They’re not assaulting (Min. Farrakhan) for not being true to Black people … for not standing up to our people. No! They want to denounce Minister Farrakhan as anti-Semitic,” she said. A travesty is these same leaders say nothing when it comes to problems plaguing Blacks, like mass incarceration, reparations and police brutality, Ms. Brown noted. She remains a committed community activist.
“And more recently and more relevantly and more importantly, they have been silent on the crimes of the Zionist state of Israel,” said Ms. Brown.
“When we look at Minister Farrakhan and on the question of the Jews, I don’t know any Jews that Minister Farrakhan has killed,” said Ms. Brown. “All I know is that Louis Farrakhan has been consistently, I would say more than for half a century, standing up for Black people,” she said.
Negroes who denounce Minister Farrakhan must be checked and the fear they have of their open enemies or fear of loss must be met with a greater fear, she argued. Change courses of action or face the wrath of the people, Ms. Brown warned.
“Any attack on Louis Farrakhan is an attack on our people!” she declared.
“We must ask ourselves, how many of our people would still be walking in darkness, broken homes, killing one another, being locked up in jails and prisons, buried in graves without the Divine teachings and selfless service of Minister Farrakhan,” said Archbishop King, who identified Minister Farrakhan as a humble, fearless servant of God, who represents extended grace and mercy.
Minister Christopher Muhammad, of Mosque No. 26, thanked Geoffrey Peete for opening his establishment and for always supporting the Black community. He then highlighted Minister Farrakhan’s love and commitment since standing up in 1977 to rebuild the Nation of Islam.
Minister Christopher Muhammad said that he and several other leaders had a private meeting with Rep. Lee on “the magnitude of this kind of attack” on Minister Farrakhan.
He pointed out the number of Black youth who love Minister Farrakhan turned out for the meeting. Many young people who have grown up seeing Minister Farrakhan’s work are coming closer without the fear held by the previous generations, Christopher Muhammad added. “That becomes the fear of the open enemy, because they see a whole new generation of fearless youth hearing the call of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and now responding to his call,” he stated.
“Here in the Bay Area our position is that some of the elders have grown comfortable with their jobs and with their careers and the enemy with this campaign of forced apologies, where if you don’t apologize or capitulate we will ruin you … but this strategy is being challenged now. And because of the arrogance of this policy from members of the Jewish community, their arrogance and hubris is now blinding them and causing them to make fatal mistakes and what we call unintended consequences,” said Minister Christopher Muhammad.
“Now the young people and Black people, in general, are growing angry at the fact that these people have nothing to say about police brutality, have nothing to say about the poverty and prison industrial complex that’s facing Black people but can only come out in full force when it comes to getting Black people to denounce and apologize when they’ve never apologized for their role in slavery,” he observed.
“They’ve never apologized for their training police forces all over America, through Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces, training major law enforcement police departments all over the country in tactics that are treating Black people in the cities of America like Palestinians in the concentration camps of Gaza Strip or the open air prison camp of Gaza Strip.”
Jabril Muhammad, a third year business and finance major who is also Minister Keith Muhammad’s son, said, “One of the most exciting parts of the meeting came when Student Minister Keith accidentally called Alim Moore of The Rock of Truth Baptist Church ‘Alim Muhammad’ and then corrected himself. But when Alim Moore got up there, he said I’ll take that, because Muhammad as he understands it means one worthy of praise and Jesus as he understands it is a Muhammad because he is worthy of praise.”
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