Memo to Mark Potok: Your Attack on Min. Farrakhan
To: Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center
From: Jackie Muhammad
On April 27, 2013, on the Rock Newman Show, an international Internet radio program, you launched a fact-less, distorted, lies-filled diatribe against the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. This short response is just a summary of our defense against your wicked distortions of who we are and what we believe.
One of your initial attacks against the Nation of Islam was to invoke the name of Dr. Martin Luther King. You allege that Dr. King made a statement in 1959 in which he disparaged the Nation of Islam. In 1959 Dr. King was 30 years old. I am sure you will agree that Dr. King’s views evolved over the years. The evolution of his thought process made him one of America’s most hated men by the government and the power elite who run the country. An aspect of that evolutionary growth process is depicted in comments Harry Belafonte, King’s close friend, confidant and supporter, made in a speech he gave in Oakland, California, 2005, at the National Gathering for Justice, where he revealed that Dr. King had said to Mr. Belafonte, “I wonder if I have invited my people to integrate into a burning building.”
Moreover, on February 23, 1966, Dr. King met with The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad at his home in Chicago.
In a famous photograph of the two men in deep thought, Dr. King is pictured listening intently to his brother, Mr. Muhammad. Shortly after that meeting, on July 6, 1966, Mr. Muhammad sent a letter to Dr. King and the leadership of the Civil Rights groups calling for a unity meeting to discuss their common goals of freedom, justice and equality for the Black masses.
It appears to me that if the SPLC were so enamored with Dr. King and his legacy, your organization would use your vast investigative resources and expertise and delve into the assassination of Dr. King. Since your organization is said to be dedicated to eliminating extremism and hatred, then why not investigate one of America’s best examples of extremism and hatred—the murder of one of America’s premier leaders.
The next fallacious charge you leveled against the Nation of Islam is that we teach a philosophy of Black supremacy and that at one point in history the world was run by 14-foot-tall Black giants. Personally, I would love to meet such Black supermen. But this, like many of your previous statements, is a figment of your active imagination.
The reality is that in one point in our history Black people did rule the planet. This point is indisputably supported by some of the world’s leading White and Black historians, anthropologists, archeologists and philosophers.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan gave you one example of this when he mentioned the great paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. Mr. Leakey’s research and that of his parents, Dr. Louis and Mary Leakey, document the fact that Black people left their footprints in the sands of time millions of years ago. And by the way, the Leakeys were not card-carrying members of the Nation of Islam. For that matter, neither were the great White anthropologists Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas, or the countless Black historians like Ivan Van Sertima, Legrand Clegg, J.A. Rogers, Cheik Anta Diop, and the legions of ancient Greek and Egyptian historians whose research testifies to the truthfulness of Minister Farrakhan’s assertions.
Ms. Eisler is an Austrian-born American scholar, writer, and social activist whose family fled the Nazis to Cuba when she was a child. She has been identified as one of 20 great peacemakers that include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama. Dr. Eisler is considered a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist. In her book The Chalice and the Blade, she coined the term “dominator culture” to describe the Indo-European societies that emerged in Europe six thousand years ago that were characterized by their brutal, racist, anti-female rule in Europe that later spread to Africa and Asia. Prior to the emergence of this new species of human beings, Dr. Eisler maintains, the Earth was governed by people who maintained a peaceful, egalitarian society. The people of whom she spoke who ruled the world were Black people.
A contemporary of Dr. Eisler was Mirija Gimbutas, a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of “Old Europe,” or Europe during the period when Black humanity dominated Europe. The book African Presence in Early Europe, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, contends that during this period Africans were Europe’s “masters.” These Black people taught the Europeans civilization. And from historian Martin Bernal, the author of Black Athena, we learn of the Egyptian influence on Greece, including the fact that the ancient Egyptians taught the Greeks the names of the gods and how to worship them.
This characterization of early European rule is in tune with The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s depiction of Europe’s impact on civilization over 6,000 years ago, a depiction that you disparage. So to challenge Minister Farrakhan on this issue is both foolish and ignorant; therefore, before you challenge us on this point you may want to study this history—then you may be qualified to challenge us on the facts of this matter.
Another point you make in your false depiction of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is that we hate White people because of the color of their skin. This is false, and either you unknowingly or purposely have lied. You should know that The Minister has a growing White following. And The Minister has a legion of ardent White followers in Russia, Turkey and Iran, among other nations, who have pledged their lives to protect his life.
What the Minister said to you was that Black people are genetically superior to Whites. We are not in the position of superiority today because obviously White people rule here in America and all over the world. However, what he did say was that genetically we are superior. Let’s look at this assertion from a biological point of view.
Science teaches us that one of the main distinguishing characteristics between White and Black people is the chemical known as melanin. According to a book by Dr. Alfred Pasteur and Dr. Ivory Toldson called Roots of Soul, among a sea of other documents, Black people are imbued with a chemical called melanin.
“Melanin,” according to Drs. Pasteur and Toldson, is a term that derives from the Greek word melanos, meaning “black.” It is further described in the July 2, 1977, issue of Science News magazine as an indestructible “chemical glob” of black substance. According to the article, melanin’s chemical composition is impervious to destruction. It cannot be destroyed, either by boiling water or by acid. Also it cannot be altered by time. It has been found in archeological findings to be as old as 150 million years.
Among melanin’s other properties is its ability to turn harmful free radicals (atoms, molecules) into useful energy in the body; it also protects the body from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVA). UVA affects human characteristics by contributing to genetic mutation.
The presence of melanin in the body changes negative energy to positive energy; its presence in the body brings about quick physical response time in the central nervous system and unifies the right and left hemispheres of the brain, resulting in a superior human being.
Melanin is more than just a substance that makes the skin black. Its power far exceeds that which contributes to the color of the skin. It affects a person’s spirituality, artistic skills, mentality, and athletic ability, thereby contributing to a human being who exhibits superior human qualities. That’s why Black historian J.A. Rogers, referring to the ancient Black man, titled one of his books From Superman to Man, and that’s why Minister Farrakhan said that Black people are genetically superior to Whites.
Finally, you appeared quite disturbed by the Nation’s recitation of the history and work of Yacub, which, by the way, you grossly distorted. A close examination of the work of Mr. Yacub will show that by extracting the elements from which melanin is composed one could produce a species of human being that is genetically inferior to the original human being. This is why Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, one of America’s leading Black psychiatrists, stated that Europeans are the by-products of the absence of the amount of melanin found in Blacks. This condition, known as albinism, is a malady that leads to diseases that contribute to an early death.
Therefore, to ridicule The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on these facts is both ignorant and futile. His words are not opinions: they are scientifically based facts.
On behalf of the Nation of Islam’s Research Group I would like to reiterate the Minister’s challenge to you and the members of your group and the leaders and representatives of the 12 Jewish groups who for years have castigated the Nation of Islam to engage in a sound, sober discussion of these and other issues with which we may have differences.
Let’s put our various viewpoints before the public and let the people decide who is the truth-teller and who is not.
(Jackie Muhammad is a former presidential appointee, member of the Oxford round table, educator, youth-trainer and businessman and member of the Nation of Islam Research Group.)