Open Letter to Congressman Todd Rokita, R-IN

From: Demetric Muhammad, Student Minister, Nation of Islam Research Group

Re: Your U.S. House Resolution condemning Minister Farrakhan, the Office of the Pope and the Jewish ideas that have created animosity and anger toward Black Americans

Congressman Rokita, I have read the draft of your resolution to condemn the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in the U.S. House of Representatives. And based upon Minister Farrakhan’s profound history as a beneficial presence in the Black community, I am highly offended and greatly disturbed by your resolution.

I am also amazed by your inability to see the connection between Minister Farrakhan’s passionate words delivered in his 2018 Saviours’ Day address and the sacrosanct words of your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

As a Roman Catholic, you, sir, are a Bible-believing Christian. Roman Catholicism exists as the parent denomination of all of Christendom. The Roman Catholic Pope is the Bishop of Rome and is considered to be the Vicar of Jesus, the Christ. The Holy Book of Catholics is the Catholic Bible. One of the books found in both the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles is the Book of Revelation. In Jesus’ letter to both the Church at Philadelphia and the Church at Smyrna he uses the phrase “synagogue of Satan.” This phrase is found in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. Revelation 2:9 reads, in the Online Catholic Bible version:

“I know your hardships and your poverty, and—though you are rich—the slander of the people who falsely claim to be Jews but are really members of the synagogue of Satan.”

In your resolution, you identified Minister Farrakhan’s use of the phrase “Satanic Jews” as problematic and cited it as the reason for your resolution, stating that our beloved Minister was guilty of “promoting ideas that create animosity and anger toward Jewish Americans and the Jewish religion.” Yet based upon the Catholic Bible’s English translation of New Testament Greek, the Minister’s phrasing clearly arises out of the prophetic words of Jesus.

Is it safe to say, then, that a resolution condemning the New Testament as “promoting ideas that create animosity and anger toward Jewish Americans and the Jewish religion” is something that we can expect you to author sometime in the near future?

Congressman Rokita, did you know that the same thing that you condemn Minister Farrakhan for is the same thing that the Pope has been condemned for? As a Roman Catholic, I would expect you to defend the Pope, but maybe you have decided to prioritize your politics over your faith. I don’t think that is wise for any believer to do. I think commitment to spiritual principles and our commitment to the truth should be the priority for all believers whether they are Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Brown University professor David I. Kertzer wrote a book titled The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism. In it Kertzer presents “shocking revelations about the role played by the Vatican in the development of modern anti-Semitism.” His book promo states that while “working in long-sealed Vatican archives, Kertzer unearths startling evidence to undermine the Church’s argument that it played no direct role in the spread of modern anti-Semitism.”

How would you respond to Mr. Kertzer’s book? He is blaming the office of the Pope for the rise and spread of modern “anti-Semitism.” Congressman Rokita, the same folks who have sent you out to condemn Minister Farrakhan are the same people who have routinely condemned the Pope.

The sad fact is that the words of Jesus and the story of his life are widely condemned by the Jewish community as being anti-Semitic. So to condemn Minister Farrakhan for using the phrase “satanic Jews” is to condemn Jesus for using the phrase “synagogue of Satan,” because “satanic Jews” is only a reference to those who are the members of the group your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ dubbed as the “synagogue of Satan.”

Congressman Rokita, did you know that according to the Jewish Virtual Library,

“The gospel story, which has generated more anti-Semitism than the sum of all the other anti-Semitic writings ever written, created the climate in Christian Europe that led to the Holocaust. Long before the rise of Adolf Hitler, the gospel story about the life and death of Jesus had poisoned the bloodstream of European civilization.”

What do you think about that? Do you know that it was reported that one of your Israeli counterparts who is a member of the Knesset, Michael Ben Ari, was gifted with a copy of the New Testament by the Bible Society of Israel? Afterwards he was photographed ripping it apart and throwing it in the trash, calling the New Testament Bible a “despicable book”! Do you know that it was reported that on March 23, 1980, hundreds of copies of the New Testament were publicly and ceremonially burnt in Jerusalem under the auspices of an Orthodox Jewish organization subsidized by the Israeli Ministry of Religions?

I am sure your friends at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are behind your sponsorship of H.R. 772. But did you know that the former head of the ADL Mr. Abraham Foxman said the following:

“For almost twenty centuries . . . the church was the archenemy of the Jews—our most powerful and relentless oppressor and the worlds’ greatest force for the dissemination of Anti-Semitic beliefs and the instigation of the acts of hatred. Many of the same people who operated the gas chambers worshiped in Christian churches on Sunday. . . . The question of the complicity of the church in the murder of the Jews is a living one. We must understand the truths of our history.”

So just to summarize this issue for you: you have placed the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in the company of the Pope of Rome, the New Testament Scriptures and Jesus the Christ. How then, sir, are you able to condemn the Minister, when he has done nothing more than lift words from a book you hold to be sacred and given it a necessary modern context and application?

I have enclosed a copy of my latest article for you to read, which also addresses your concern over the promotion of ideas that create anger and animosity for Jewish people.