41845358-Antisemitism

224 ANTISEMITISM
church, the Temple of Islam. One of Fard’s followers, stirred by his mentor’s
teachings, killed a man in what was described as a human sacrifice. Fard was
arrested and invited to leave Detroit after reportedly confessing to the police
that his church was a moneymaking racket. He was never seen again. After
Fard’s departure, the movement came under the leadership of Elijah
Muhammad, formerly Elijah Poole, who had been so swayed by Fard that he
considered him God in human form—at times Fard had referred to himself
as the “Supreme Ruler of the Universe”—and did not doubt the truth of
Fard’s message.
Fard told his audience of poor, alienated, and angry blacks, who had good
reason to hate white America, that he came to them from the holy city of
Mecca with a message of worldly redemption: Black people were inherently
moral, noble, strong, and intelligent, whereas white people were by nature immoral,
wicked, and puny in body and mind. He spun a mythological tale designed
to create true believers among his followers. As related by Malcolm X,
in the beginning, “after the moon separated from the earth,” black people, the
first human beings, “founded the Holy City of Mecca. Among the black race
were twenty-four wise scientists. One of the scientists ... created the especially
strong black tribe of Shabazz from which American Negroes, so-called,
descend.” Among some dissatisfied blacks there was born a Mr. Yacub, who
“was born to cause trouble, to break the peace, and to kill. ... At the age of
eighteen, Yacub had finished all of his nation’s colleges and universities. ...
Among many other things, he had learned how to breed races scientifically.”
Because of his wickedness, Yacub was exiled to the island of Patmos with
59,999 of his followers. Seeking revenge, Yacub, known as “big head scientist,”
decided “to create ... a devil race—a bleached-out white race of people.” The
process, carried on by generations of his successors, took several hundred
years. But eventually the island of Patmos was inhabited only by
these blond, pale-skinned, cold-blue-eyed devils—savages, nude and shameless;
hairy, like animals, they walked on all fours and they lived in trees. ...
Six hundred more years passed before this race of people returned to the
mainland among the natural black people [and within six months] this devil
race had turned what had been a peaceful heaven on earth into a hell torn by
quarreling and fighting.
But finally the original black people recognized that their sudden troubles
stemmed from this devil white race, that Mr. Yacub had made. They
rounded them up, put them in chains. With little aprons to cover their nakedness,
this devil race was marched off across the Arabian desert to the caves of
Europe. 9