On Feb. 25, Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a four-hour address to mark the group’s Saviour’s Day. The event honors Fard Muhammad, whom the NOI considers the Mahdi, Allah in human form. They identify former leader Elijah Muhammad as “the Messiah.”
Farrakhan announced he was dressed in gold because he was giving “the speech of my life.” He stated, “We all talk to God” but the “big difference” is “He talks back to me.” His speech was a message from Allah, conveyed by the Messiah from the Great Wheel, 40 miles above the Earth, where he has dwelt since 1975. Farrakhan proclaimed, “I’m going to shake the world today with what I tell you that they told me.”
Farrakhan devoted most of his address to disclosing what “the Mahdi and Messiah have to say about the War in the Middle East” against “my Palestinian family”—“our family.” He suggested that Hamas, recognizing their kinship, chose “Oct. 7, Elijah’s birthday,” for their massacre.
“In the middle of the night,” he divulged, the Messiah sent him a photograph and instructions. Taken a few days before Oct. 7, the photo allegedly showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and two others “toasting the innocence of Jews” whom they knew “were being martyred.” Netanyahu “already knew what Hamas was going to do because he sanctioned it.” The prime minister “used their plan because he had in his mind a second nakba.”
Netanyahu did this, Farrakhan claimed, “so that he then could take absolute control of all of Gaza, all of the West Bank, all of East Jerusalem and there would not be one Palestinian left.” The plan was to “destroy the whole Palestinian community. … It was a genocidal attack that he knew would preserve his place as a great … Jewish leader.”
Explaining that he must “say all that [the Messiah] showed me,” Farrakhan “revealed” that Netanyahu endorsed the plan because Israel wanted the “billions of dollars of oil and gas under the foot of the Palestinians.”
“Netanyahu has a vision of Eretz Yisrael,” of “Greater Israel,” Farrakhan “disclosed,” so Netanyahu and his “War Council” “intend to annex” Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He added that because “that man has already over 400 nuclear bombs … they now feel they are the power in the Middle East.”
The night after Farrakhan received the photo, the Mahdi transmitted “one name: Nebuchadnezzar,” projected “in bold letters” on a screen. Farrakhan explained that Nebuchadnezzar “was so wicked” that “Allah turned him from a human to a beast” and Allah had shown Farrakhan that “Netanyahu was becoming a beast in human form.”
As evidence, Farrakhan falsely claimed that the Jews “dropped leaflets and told the Palestinians, ‘Get out … there’s a safe route to the south,’ and then they started bombing those routes. It killed so many of our people.” Moreover, claims of Hamas’s atrocities “all … were found to be false.”
Farrakhan was not done with his libels. He misrepresented a statement by former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who he claims said, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people … considering itself as a Palestinian people and we … took their country away from them. They did not exist.” Although Meir accurately stated that the Palestinians had not considered themselves a separate people, Farrakhan claimed, “She is boldly saying, yeah, we took your country … because in their minds, you didn’t exist. … For this Jewish woman … they haven’t any existence at all. See, this is the way they talk now.”
Farrakhan asserted that this confirmed NOI teaching that the Jews “diminish the value of the lives of others” and “minimize Palestinian life.”
Farrakhan then mocked President Joe Biden for “bowing to Netanyahu, and I mean bowing.” When in Israel, Biden “looked like a schoolboy being chastised by a principal-teacher.” As the audience howled its approval, Farrakhan ranted that Biden “has to lower his testicles.” Using the third person, he bragged, “They don’t want to walk with Farrakhan—his testicles so large, he has to walk with a wheelbarrow.”
Farrakhan explained that “Netanyahu now … talks to America like he’s God.” Ostensibly imitating Netanyahu, the NOI leader said: “I don’t need the money you send me. … Now I’m making a lot of our money.” Grinning, Farrakhan elaborated, “Everything they’ve tried out to keep the Palestinians under control … they made it into a business. … Every country now is buying Israel’s methodology. … So if you’ve got an angry community in your nation, we’ll show you how to keep them under control.”
Farrakhan also impugned the manhood of Arabs, who, he asserted, offer Palestinians only “platitudes” and “cheap talk.” He charged that Netanyahu planned to destroy Gaza in order “to put fear in the mind of the Muslims.” Observing that Arabs are constructing “beautiful buildings,” including “a mosque in Mecca that will hold 30 million, … to keep Israel from bombing you, you’re afraid to stand up for the Palestinians.” He raged, “You belittle yourself and you become a little cheap whore … prostrating yourselves” before “the Enemies of God.” Arabs should fear “Allah’s power,” not Netanyahu’s.
Insisting Allah commanded him to convey the writing on the wall in the Book of Daniel “with strength,” Farrakhan openly threatened genocide, shouting to Israelis, “You’ve been weighed in the balance. Your kingdom is numbered—and finished.” Addressing Netanyahu, he thundered, “In the name of Allah, I warn you … it’s getting to the end of Israel.”
He railed, “You stole the land, now God intends to give it back to its rightful owner.” Then he led the chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” He advised Jews, whom the NOI denies have roots in the Middle East, “to think about returning to Europe.”
Farrakhan ended the speech with an antisemitic rant about the “secrets” behind his $4.8 billion defamation lawsuit against the ADL for labeling him an “antisemite.” Seeing conspiracies everywhere, he claimed that, in 1913, when the Federal Reserve System and the ADL were founded, the ADL pledged to serve as the Federal Reserve’s “watchdog.”
“The Jewish banker Paul Warburg,” he stressed, “was the unquestioned architect” of the Federal Reserve. He claimed that, although established by Congress, the Federal Reserve is “as much a federal agency as Federal Express!” The Fed is mainly engaged, he contended, in the business of lending money to the government and pocketing the interest. “America is enslaved to whom she owes the debt,” he emphasized.
Reaching a crescendo, Farrakhan divulged, “Now, the ADL, their task is to keep you from knowing about the Jewish people that own all the debt.” But since he knows this and is “not afraid” to reveal it, the ADL sprang into action, declaring him “the No. 1 Antisemite in America.”
“Today I may have signed my death warrant,” Farrakhan declared. But if the ADL kills him, he sang, “I’ll be the last black man you kill.”
Farrakhan then compared himself to Jesus, who “threw the merchants out of the Temple and beat ‘em. … And then he became hated by the Jews of that day like I am hated by the Jews of this day.” Just as Jews allegedly sought to kill Jesus for revealing “the Truth” about them, Farrakhan claims the ADL seeks to crucify him, the representative of the Messiah, for exposing “the Truth” about what he labels the Jews’ modern Temple, the Federal Reserve.
Throughout the address, the audience was riveted. They cheered every antisemitic claim. But Farrakhan’s support extends far beyond NOI members. Students who jam the halls each time he speaks at universities and distributes NOI tracts may not see him as divine, but they are awed by him. They too cheer the centuries-old libels he proclaims. Doubtless, many of those denouncing the Jewish state and calling for Jewish blood on campuses today have been influenced—even shaped—by Farrakhan’s blather.
