Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Hate group? No, just hated

THE "HATE that hate produced" was how Mike Wallace, a host of the news magazine "60 Minutes," chose to characterize the Nation of Islam in a segment years ago.

THE "HATE that hate produced" was how Mike Wallace, a host of the news magazine "60 Minutes," chose to characterize the Nation of Islam in a segment years ago.

The focus then was largely on Malcolm X, then chief spokesman for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.

Then, as now, the political and social contradictions in America were raised. And then, as now, something else remains consistent.

Recently, the Philadelphia Inquirer carried a story classifying the Nation of Islam as a "hate group" based on a new study released by the watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization formed in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Ala. (I wasn't able to get a response from anyone at the Inquirer about the article.)

When the Nation of Islam was mentioned, I naturally raised an eyebrow. But when the focus narrowed to eastern Pennsylvania, that got my full attention. The only Nation of Islam chapter in this location is Mosque No. 12, at 2508 N. Broad. On the back page of our weekly publication, the Final Call, our aims and beliefs are summarized. Though questions and concerns have been expressed concerning them, it has never been called hate.

Mosque No. 12 has for more than 16 years given itself to community service. We have fed and gathered clothes for the homeless. We have visited those in shelters, prisons and hospitals.

We sent the largest contingent to the historic Million Man March, as well as the Millions More Movement gathering in 2005. Now we are central in the 10,000-men call to action initiative that is under way in Philadelphia.

In addition, brothers from our mosque work with the young in Philadelphia schools as mentors. None of these deeds remotely resembles hate.

I spoke with the law center to strive to understand the formula and rationale for their ranking of the Nation of Islam as a hate group. Their response was that any group that has an ideology of hate against another group or people is considered a hate group. They said that according to the Nation of Islam's teachings, the scientist Yacub made white people, and that we believe that whites are devils.

When the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was asked by the press if he believed whites were devils, his reply was, "Allah revealed it to me." He subsequently went on to offer scriptural interpretation to support what we believe.

SO HERE IS MY question:

If the Nation of Islam

is a hate group, why aren't others included?

Pastor Rod Parsley, a well-known televangelist and head of the World Harvest Church founded in Columbus, Ohio, contends that Scripture more than suggests that Islam is "satanic."

Pastor John Hagee, who heads the Cornerstone mega-church in San Antonio, called the Catholic Church "the whore of Babylon and anti-Christ." Both have clearly extreme views and vocally target people of other faiths, yet they have not qualified for the hate-group list.

I'm still waiting for an answer.

Here is the truth about the Nation: We are from a people who have suffered systemic, historical and well-documented abuses in our American sojourn.

Hate is demonstrated in disparity between powder and crack-cocaine sentences, blatant miscarriages of justice in Jena, La., and gross government neglect of the people of New Orleans.

The truth is we are not a hate group, but rather a people grouped for hatred. *

Minister Rodney Muhammad is the Delaware Valley regional minister for the Nation of Islam and head of Muhammad's Mosque No. 12.