Louis Farrakhan: an exclusive interview

`Jews want everybody to bow down to
them, and I ain't bowing down to nothing
or nobody, but God."

Louis Farrakhan

Jews. But if telling the truth is an act
against Jews, then I'm guilty and I'll stay
guilty telling the truth."

"And hold fast, all
together,...for ye
were
enemies and He
joined your hearts
in love, so that
by his Grace,
ye became
brethren."

— Koran 3:103

IlL

ouis Farrakhan wants what
he says Jews have: "power,"
"clout," "juice." He wants to
talk to white America, to the
black middle-class, to the
black upper-class. He may even want to
move from being the second most popu-
lar black in America, as determined by a
1990 poll by Black Enterprise magazine,
and displace Jesse Jackson as the most
popular.
(A recent book, The Black 100, rated
Mr. Farrakhan as the 80th most influ-
ential black, past and present. Martin
Luther King Jr. was first, Malcolm X was
23rd, Jesse Jackson was 47th and Elijah
Muhammad was 51st.)
But until the stalemate between him
and Jews is settled, one way or another,
until such black columnists as Carl
Rowan, William Raspberry and Clarence
Page cease calling him anti-Semitic, un-
til black leaders stop distancing them-

selves from him, until Mr. Farrakhan
apologizes, until Jews begin seeing him
in a less malevolent light, Louis Far-
rakhan may remain on the outside look-
ing in: the devil personified, the
demagogue embodied.
He insists he is neither of these. In-
stead, he says he is a man of God, a man
of his people and to his messiah, Elijah
Muhammad, "as Aaron was to Moses."
And his present vile, odious image, one
he says that distorts him and what he is
all about, has been largely manufactured
by Jews and the mass media.
It remains to be seen whether this is
the Time of Judgement, as Mr. Far-
rakhan says. But it is certainly the time
in which he is being judged and gauged,
just as he is judging and gauging Jews.
Up for appraisal are his past actions and
words — and his present explanations of
them.
But it is also the time in which, as he

said at the very end of the recent Chica-
go interview, he is delicately — if some-
what clumsily — trying to alter his
standing with Jews.
"Even in my rebuke [ofJews]," he said,
"there's an appeal...You got to change. Be-
cause God is not making men today
to...grovel at the foot of no man. We don't
fear the censure of any censurer. We fear
God. We all ought to be respectful of God.
And we all ought to try to do justice by
each other."

JEWISH LEADERS TO FARRAIMAN: NO APOLOGY, NO DICE

L

ouis Farrakhan's call for dialogue with Jews is cut-
ting no ice with Jewish leaders. Unless he apolo-
gizes to their liking, he will remain, in their eyes,
indelibly an anti-Semite.
Playing Mendelssohn on his violin in a concert last
April, which Mr. Farrakhan says was widely misinter-
preted as an overture to Jews, doesn't even come close to
healing the hurt that Jewish leaders say he has done to
Jews.
"Lewis Farrakhan must completely reverse course in
his whole attitude toward whites in general and Jews in
particular," said David Gad-Harf, executive director of
the DetroitJewish Council. "No amount of violin playing
or dialoguing will fool us into thinking that he's had a
change of heart."
Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation
League, agreed.
"Playing the music of a dead convert out ofJudaism is
far from enough. He has to say he was wrong. He must

say it to his own audience. That's where he has his im-
pact and that's where the damage has been done."
"A man who is a guru to his people has to stop talking
like this," said Mr. Foxman. "We can join hands because
we share certain values — the quest for education, self-
respect, family. He's trying to bring stability to his peo-
ple."
Michael Kotzin, head of Chicago's Jewish Community
Relations Council, said " 'Apology' is not the right word.
He has to make a complete reversal. But people can
change. Malcolm X changed. Look at Israel and Egypt."
But, Mr. Kotzin added: "He has absolutely poi-
soned... [black-Jewish relations] in Chicago. Jewish readi-
ness to help solve problems that are racial has become
problematic. For now, the essence of Farrakhan's ap-
proach is scapegoating, and whatever good he might do
on a micro-level explodes on a macro-level." 0

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