Nation of Islam’s event far more controversial
In the past week, a firestorm erupted over New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow’s plans to speak at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Critics of Tebow and the church made arguments stemming from the pastor, Robert Jeffress, and his teachings on the exclusivity of Christianity and definitions of sin. While media attention focused on this event, it passed over another religious controversy, one that could eventually prove dangerous: the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago.
Tebow was attacked by activists and media for planning to speak at a church whose pastor teaches homosexuality is a sin, a belief held by 61 percent of Americans who attend church weekly. On the other hand, nary a word was said in the press about the Saviours’ Day conference, highlighted by the Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan. This same man who spoke at Rosa Parks’ funeral, highlights conferences for black Baptist churches and was voted BET’s 2005 Person of the Year has said he believes white people were invented by an evil mad scientist, that Jesus was black, that whites are “potential humans,” that Jews invented AIDS and that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the American government.
During the 2013 conference last week, Farrakhan said he knows that “gangbangers love to shoot” and that he wants to make them “defenders” of the land the Nation of Islam (NOI) will communally buy. He went on to say that those gangbangers must teach the NOI the “science of war.” The purchase of some land has already begun, as the organization currently has a 1,500 acre communal farm in Georgia.
According to the NOI website, the group calls for a separate, independent black country in America supported by whites for the first 20 to 25 years of its existence. It calls for all Muslim prisoners in America to be freed and all blacks on death row to be released. The group also calls for segregated, black, Islamic schools to be entirely federally subsidized and believes race-mixing should be prohibited.
These views might not be so alarming if few followed them, but around 10,000 attend the final speech at Saviours’ Day every year. The Million Man March was sponsored and planned by the Nation of Islam, as was the Million Family March. Kanye West addressed a conference in 2005, Snoop Dogg in 2009 and Ice Cube in the past as well, where he called whites “the Devil.”
So, in comparison, why is the media only focused on Tebow? While Jeffress’ beliefs, along with those millions of religious Americans, may seem controversial to nonbelievers, the views of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are not only controversial but dangerous.