Hugs, smiles, self-deprecating jokes– last weekend’s Saviours’ Day ceremony in Chicago was not the sort of event for which Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has become known over the years.
Indeed, if it lasts, Farrakhan’s dramatic embrace of mainstream Islam will find a place in religious history books.
But if Farrakhan’s hugs with Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed and Islamic Society of North America Secretary General Sayyid Syeed were warm and promising, his ideological movement Sunday was more precarious.
In the warmth of the moment, the participants seemed willing to let slide the ideas that are at stake.
Beliefs do ultimately matter, however, and there are risks for all the participants in this search for common ground.
If Farrakhan is, indeed, putting behind him the racial separatism and unique theology of the Nation of Islam, the risks to him are well known.
Malcolm X moved away from traditional Nation teachings, and he was killed within a few years. Mohammed abandoned the Nation’s separatist theology for Sunni Islam a decade later and survived; but his family split up in the process, he lost most of his ministry’s financial assets and he was demonized by the Nation for decades.
Farrakhan navigated those waters carefully Saturday, honoring the emotional attachments of his followers every chance he could. Nonetheless, a few voices have already risen against him for his doctrinal changes.
The mainstream Islamic leaders face risks, too, especially Syeed.
The Islamic Society of North America, the largest umbrella organization for Muslims in the United States, represents primarily immigrant Muslims and their children. Culturally, they have little bond with the black Americans of the Nation of Islam and historically have viewed Farrakhan with suspicion and resentment.
Just two years ago, Farrakhan’s orchestrated announcement that he was an imam for all America infuriated the immigrant Muslim community.
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If Farrakhan now returns to traditional Nation of Islam teachings–and what did it signal that a commemorative Saviours’ Day edition of the Nation newspaper Final Call, handed out at the United Center Sunday, had the same “What We Believe” page as always?–the betrayal of mainstream Muslims will be multiplied by Syeed’s show of support.
Syeed has been working for more than a year to negotiate a rapproachment with Farrakhan, and he has the support of at least some of the ISNA board. But judging from some rumbles in Muslim communities in Chicago, he may be moving out well ahead of his rank-and-file membership.
One of Farrakhan’s smaller gambles last weekend has already backfired.
At the Saviours’ Day ceremony Sunday, a half dozen orthodox Jewish rabbis appeared onstage, getting considerable time at the lectern and ample attention from Farrakhan. The next day, the rabbis got a press conference of their own, organized by the Nation of Islam.
Farrakhan’s rabbis represent a tiny sect called Neturei Karta, Jews who believe that the Holocaust was a punishment from God, and that the creation of the state of Israel is a blasphemy that must be opposed and reversed. Numbering in the hundreds or low thousands, they are a splinter of a splinter movement; some commentators have noted that these rabbis are considered extreme even by other anti-Zionist Jews.
Farrakhan did not have to attack Jews Sunday; his rabbis did it for him.
“The Zionists have stolen the Jewish name!” Rabbi Yisrael Dovid Weiss declared to 20,000 Nation of Islam members. “We apologize for the chutzpah, the nerve, of Zionists like the Anti-Defamation League who offend Honorable Minister Farrakhan. Let those who have called you anti-Semitic–let them be shamed.”
Just what Farrakhan’s strategy was in embracing such a group is unclear: He may have thought that aligning himself with any Jewish group could help restore his credibility with Jews in general. If so, he failed.
Michael Kotzin, executive vice-president of the Jewish Federation in Chicago, said that whatever openness Jews might have had to hearing Farrakhan’s changed message was undercut by his coziness with the hostile rabbis of Neturei Karta.
“He’s still getting the old (anti-Jewish) message out there,” Kotzin said. “One can say the glass is half full, but the Muslims are getting the full half and the Jews are getting the empty half.”
That is a small sampling of the difficulties Farrakhan faces if, indeed, he is setting out on a new voyage down the mainstream.
But if he manages to navigate those risks successfully, the next few years will cement Farrakhan’s place in history more surely than his last 22 years as leader of the Nation of Islam combined.
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