Louis Farrakhan: an exclusive interview
"I must be held accountable for what I say,
sir, and for what I do. All of us in public life
must be accountable."
— Louis Farrakhan, ABC-TV "Nightline," April 5, 1984
truths about my own people and our own
wickedness against ourselves. But rm not
anti-black."
"Look," he said softly, "my people are
dying in the streets of America. They're
not dying from skinheads. They're not dy-
ing from the Ku Klux Klan. They're dy-
ing from their ignorance and self-hatred
that has us destroying one another. We
can't blame Jews. We can't blame Kore-
ans or Vietnamese who take money out
of our community...We have to blame our-
selves. We've been offered the chance to
go to the best schools to get an education,
but we have not used that education to
provide the goods and education that our
own communities need."
The minister is crystal clear about what
he wants. The first goal of a dialogue with
Jews would "clear away the rubbish
heaped" on him by Jews — and Jews
"would want some idea from me as to
what we could do to clear away what-
ever they could determine as rubbish that
I'd heaped" on them.
"If we got past that," he said, he would
pursue a two-pronged agenda: Discussion
of the alleged role of Jews in slavery and
Mr. Farrakhan's messianic claims for Eli-
jah Muhammad, who headed the Nation
of Islam from the mid-1930s until his
death in 1975.
The mood at the "negotiating table," he
suggested, would be almost as important
as the substance discussed there.
"I'm a man. You're a man. Some Jews
are not going to make me no little boy be-
cause I ain't coming to them for nothing.
I'm coming to offer something. What I'm
offering...is life. Because that's what God
threatens to take — all our lives if we
mess up today."
"... We either go to the table and deal
with truth, or we don't go at all because
I'm going to be a winner. I don't give a
damn who goes against me. I'm going to
be the winner as long as I stand with God
and I stand with truth."
And what if the bickering and the
name-calling continue? What if, as he
fears, Jewish Defense League chants for
"Death to Farrakhan" outside venues
where he speaks come to pass — and the
fatal shot is fired by a Jew?
That, said the minister, will mean the
fire — not next time, but this time:
"My God would destroy America. Fm
not here...as some little Negro who
jumped up with a vision. I'm here as a
student of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad
who, I believe, is the messenger of God...If
you lay your hands on me, you won't have
any future...
"It would be wise to sit down and dia-
logue with me. It would be wise to make
sure nothing happens to me. Because that
would be an act of self-preservation on
the part of America."
"You [Jews] had
your day with God,
and you didn't do
what you were
supposed to."
— Louis Farrakhan, Chicago,
August 4, 1993
o spend three hours with
Louis Farrakhan is to spend
180 minutes with an im-
mensely charming, im-
mensely passionate man. It
is apparent that it was not coincidental
that his pre-Muslim stage name in the
early 1950s when he performed calypso
music was "The Charmer."
His voice is finely calibrated, with all
the nuances and controls of a born ora-
tor. He is mostly soft-spoken, but this gen-
tleness can yield — in an instant — to
rage and indignation.
He can be poetic. He can quote Scrip-
tures, all three of them — the Jewish and
Christian bibles and the Koran. He can
play to the galleries, even in a small, al-
IT
most all-white room just inside his head-
quarters in Chicago's Hyde Park neigh-
borhood. He can talk with the tireless
cadence of the black preacher, the hip lin-
go of the street, and the propulsive con-
viction of the newly converted (even
though he converted to the Nation of Is-
lam back in 1955).
And he is fashionable:
"L. Farrakhan" is engraved on the
French cuffs of his white shirt, which are
weighed down with large gold cufflinks.
He has an immense sense of self and
his own presence.
And he refers to himself in the third
person.
("I don't like to speak in the first per-
son. I realize that...I represent so many
persons who...have helped make me who
I am. It's an outgrowth of humility.")
To begin to understand the head of the
Nation of Islam — first known as Louis
Eugene Walcott (an Episcopalian from
Boston), then as Louis X, and finally as
Louis Farrakhan, an Islamic name Eli-
jah Muhammad gave him in 1965 — one
must understand his world-view. Reli-
gion, he says, overshadows all his words
and deeds; the great divide between him
and Jews, he insisted, "ain't racial. It's
theological."
Plus, to understand his perception of
the origins of his reputation as an anti-
Semite, one must also recall the atmos-
phere that enveloped Jesse Jackson's
presidential candidacy in 1984, the year
that Mr. Farrakhan was first labeled an
enemy of the Jews.
The Nation of Islam's theology erupt-
ed from the tortured crucible of black his-
tory and from a black society desperately
searching for self-respect and self-deter-
mination. It teaches that blacks were the
first humans created by God, who is black.
About 6,645 years ago, a "scientist" re-
belled against Allah, experimented with
different hues of skin and created whites,
whom Elijah Muhammad called "blue-
eyed devils," "liars and murderers,...the
enemies of truth and righteousness, and
the enemies of those who seek the truth..."
Through "tricknology," whites man-
aged to rule the world. Their reign was
slated to last for the 6,000 years ending
in 1914. After that would be "years of
grace," length of which would depend on
the time it took for the chosen of Allah to
be resurrected from the mental death im-
posed on them by whites.
The Nation of Islam openly challenges
other Jewish, Christian and more tradi-
tional Islamic teachings. By championing
Elijah Muhammad as the messiah, it re-
futes Judaism's claims that the messi-
ah has yet to come, Christianity's that
Jesus was the messiah, and Islam's that
the prophet Muhammad was the last of
the prophets — and always will be.
(One of Elijah Muhammad's sons,
Warmth Deen Muhammad, leader of the
American Muslim Mission, says his fa-
ther was "a social reformer"— not the
messiah, not even a prophet — who de-
liberately misinterpreted the Koran to
stir blacks to do things for themselves.")
And by claiming blacks have sup-
planted Jews as the Chosen People —
"not because we're righteous," said Mr.
Farrakhan, but because "we're afflicted"
and "in need of purification" — the Na-
tion of Islam picks up one of Judaism's
essential cornerstones.
In this conflict between good and evil
— between, literally, black and white —
end-of-the-world visions prevail. Of this
summer's massive floods in the Midwest,
for example, Mr. Farrakhan advised:
"Check the blood, the frogs, the lice. This
is the Time ofJudgement...Arnerica is be-
ing judged. The world of evil is being
judged."
And if whites continue to "deceive"
blacks, he cautioned, "God's affliction will
be upon America and those who afflict
us.
This apocalyptic battleground also fills
Mr. Farrakhan's rhetoric with omens of
death and retribution. Recalling the mur-
ders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm 40
X, he said, "Of course, they would like to