Ugly Words Don’t Erase Good Works

The heat was on.

It was late last month and the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, were being blasted as bigoted and anti-Semitic because one of the group’s ministers had called Jews “bloodsuckers” of the black community and labeled the Pope “a sissy.”

Ugly stuff.

Farrakhan apologized and suspended the culprit. But his apology, critics complained, didn’t go far enough.

Into the maelstrom stepped Father Fernando Arizti, a priest at a large Catholic church on Western Avenue named St. Brigid. Arizti invited members of a Nation of Islam mosque, whose building was damaged by the earthquake, to temporarily move their operation to St. Brigid.

“We reached out to our brothers and sisters,” he said. “I absolutely respect what they are doing.”

Still, he and the presiding pastor, Father Rawlin B. Enette, had to inform their congregation. They were anxious about how their mostly black and Latino membership would react to the announcement, made during Mass, that the church had opened its doors to an organization depicted by the media as equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan.

The response “was sustained, spontaneous applause,” Father Enette said. They made the announcement three more times in subsequent weekend Masses. In some cases, it was greeted with standing ovations.

It’s a scenario that’s hard for many white people to understand.

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When most white people see members of the Nation of Islam, they see danger. But that’s not what most black people see.

“When black people see us,” claims Minister Sami A. Muhammad, national spokesperson for Supreme Minister John Muhammad, “they see themselves, the best of themselves.”

What they see is a well-mannered, courteous Lt. Rahsheed Muhammad, former Piru gang member, former crack dealer, former drive-by shooter, helping young students at the mosque school. What they see is a reformed Hakim Malik Shabazz, 14, who was so bad a year ago that his own father took him to jail.

“I was doing all kinds of stuff, drugs, gangs, drinking,” he said. “Now that I’m at the University of Islam, everything has changed. The teachers here, they help me a lot. They love you here. I’m learning.”

“They’ve pulled a lot of brothers off drugs,” said Victor Levi, 34, owner of Media Marketing Group. “They offer distressed youth and young men a way that they can become functional human beings.”

“When I think of them, I think of respect--respect I have for them and the respect they give off to other people,” said Troy Michael, 30, an X-ray technician.

“If I was walking down an unfamiliar street and they were on one side and a bunch of regular black guys were on another side, I’d feel safer on the side with the Muslims,” said Darla Beadle, 37, an advertising account executive. “I know they would protect me.”

“I’ll tell you what,” barber Kijana Mahdi said. “During that riot, I’ll bet you didn’t see any Muslims out there beating anybody up or looting stores. There are a lot of white people who walk up and down Crenshaw. They’re a whole lot safer around Muslims than some of these other people.”

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What the Nation of Islam has come to represent to many blacks, whether in poor crime-infested neighborhoods or middle-class communities, is a conscience. When Farrakhan or other Nation members aren’t engaging in some foolish religious battle with Jews, they do offer some undeniable truths, which even many blacks don’t want to hear.

Most black people in America, Muslims say, are called by slave names handed down to them by the masters of the plantations where their families were split apart, their women were raped, men brutalized and their religion was stripped from them. That’s the truth. Like it or not, it’s undeniable.

African Americans are the only major racial group in America in whose communities most of the business are run by people other than themselves and who consistently support other businesses more than they do their own. That’s a truth.

Any person who does business in a community and then takes that money out of that community, regardless of race or religion, is sucking economic life blood from that community. That’s a truth. It’s undeniable.

Some African Americans disrespect themselves and their women. That’s a truth. Why else do blacks call their women bitches and whores on the nation’s airwaves? Why else do black women allow themselves to be characterized as such. Why else do blacks refer to each other as niggers?

It is these truths, frightening to so many, that lie at the heart of the Nation of Islam’s teachings and good works. And this is why, despite Farrakan’s foibles, that so many people will not turn their backs on the organization.