This is a cross post by Edmund Standing
The Nation of Islam (NoI) is a ‘black nationalist’ organisation that preaches a bizarre Afrocentric form of Islam based around the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, an American black separatist who teamed up with George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party to preach a message of racial disharmony. After one meeting, Rockwell gushed:
Muhammad knows that mixing is a Jewish fraud and leads only to aggravation of the problems that it is supposed to solve. . . . I have talked to the Muslim leaders and am certain that a workable plan for separation of the races could be effected to the satisfaction of all concerned—except the communist-Jew agitators.
Today, the NoI is led by Louis Farrakhan, a professional race baiter and anti-Semite who is currently barred from entering Britain, much to the consternation of his British followers. Farrakhan is a fanatical Jew hater who has made statements such as:
And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.
And:
They call them [Hezbollah] terrorists, I call them freedom fighters…No one asks why they would do such a thing. Why would they do such a thing? What has driven them to this point? That’s what the UN, the U.S. and Europe doesn’t want to deal with because the Zionists have control in England, in Europe, in the United States and around the world.
And:
The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road.
In the 1980s, Nick Griffin’s ‘Political Soldier NF’ praised black nationalists and featured a picture of Farrakhanon the cover of National Front News. While Griffin claims to have ‘mellowed’ in the intervening years, Farrakhan has not, and is still ranting about Jewish control of America.
It’s safe to say, then, that the Nation of Islam is a thoroughly unpleasant organisation who no-one in their right mind would want to be associated with.
Earlier this month, a Nation of Islam ‘mosque’ in London was raided by police undertaking a search for drugs. In the event, no drugs were found and the police have issued an apology (PDF).
If BNP premises were involved in a drugs raid and no drugs were found, you wouldn’t expect many people to immediately jump to their defence. However, when it comes to the black equivalent of the BNP, a prominent and supposedly mainstream black activist group saw the need to promote a protest ‘rally’ in defence of the group. The organisation in question was Operation Black Vote (OBV).
Shortly before the General Election, Simon Woolley, OBV’s National Co-ordinator, was boasting that ‘we [black Britons] could hold the keys to Downing Street’. Naturally, all three major parties sent representatives to address an OBV election meeting, giving Harriet Harman the opportunity to open her speech with the cringeworthy words, ‘Good evening brothers and sisters’.
According to his OBV profile, Woolley is a member of the Black-Jewish Forum. The Forum’s activities have included undertaking a history project in conjunction with the Parkes Institute and the University of Southampton looking at ‘the hidden history of Black-Jewish relations’. The Nation of Islam are also interested in ‘the hidden history of Black-Jewish relations’, although they have a somewhat different take on the matter. Nation of Islam publications include a two volume book on ‘The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews‘, which blames Jews for the slave trade, amongst other things.
Perhaps when it comes to the outlook of OBV, black ‘solidarity’ trumps all other concerns, hence the Nation of Islam must be offered support in their hour of need, despite their racist and anti-Semitic views. There’s certainly quite a bit of ‘solidarity’ washing around at OBV. Ashok Viswanathan, OBV’s Deputy Co-ordinator(who is also ‘on Advisory Panels for The Citizenship Foundation, The Electoral Commission, on the council of Charter88 and an Executive Member of the National Assembly Against Racism’) was happy to co-sign a 2006letter on ‘the disproportionate use of force by Israeli forces’ along with voices of moderation such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), the Islamic Human Rights Commission, George Galloway, Tony Greenstein, and Revd Stephen Sizer. Maybe this shouldn’t come as any great surprise. A year earlier Viswanathan appeared at the Scottish Parliament’s ‘Festival of Politics‘, where he ‘exchanged views’ withOsama Saeed of the Muslim Brotherhood aligned MAB on ‘minority democratic participation’.
Next time mainstream politicians are invited to an OBV event, perhaps they might like to suggest the organisation chooses who it associates with a little more carefully.
Louis Farrakhan sings about transsexualism
Edmund Standing adds:
From the police letter:
As I explained during our meeting, the officers concerned were executing a search warrant that related to an adjoining premises and mistakenly believed that the door to your premises was part of the building that they were searching. On entering, it became clear to the officers that they had made a mistake and they left, ensuring that you were notified. I know that you attended the mosque shortly afterwards and spoke with officers at the scene. I am informed and I think you confirmed the fact that there were no persons present in the mosque at the time.
It was a mistake, the target wasn’t the NoI, the police didn’t even know the premises was a ‘mosque’. Hardly a great anti-black conspiracy, and hardly something for Operation Black Vote to get worked up about. Since when did an accident such as this have anything to do with a campaign to encourage black participation in elections anyway?
