Yakub (Nation of Islam)

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Yakub (sometimes spelled Yacub or Yakob) is according to the Nation of Islam, a black scientist who lived "6,600 years ago" and was responsible for creating the white race to be a "race of devils".^{[citation needed]} The Nation of Islam theology claims that Yakub is the biblical Jacob.

The story

Yakub is said^{[citation needed]} to have been born in what would become Mecca (founded in 2000 B.C.) at a time when 30% of original black people were "dissatisfied". He was a member of the Meccan branch of the Tribe of Shabazz. At the age of six, he discovered the law of attraction and repulsion by playing with magnets made of steel.^[1] This insight led to a dastardly plan to create new people. He "saw an unlike human being, made to attract others, who could, with the knowledge of tricks and lies, rule the original black man."^[1] By the age of 18 he had exhausted all knowledge in the universities of Mecca. He then discovered that the "original black man" contained both a "black germ" and a "brown germ". With 59,999 followers he went to the island of Patmos, where he established a despotic regime and set about breeding out the black traits, killed all darker babies and created a brown race after 200 years. After 600 years of this deliberate eugenics the white race was created.^[2]

According to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, all the races other than the black race were byproducts of Yakub's work, however, the "black race" included all Asian peoples, considered to be shared ancestors of the Moors. "Whites" were defined as Europeans. The latter category includes such black Jews as Beta Israel.

According to NOI doctrine, Yakub's progeny were destined to rule for 6,000 years before the original black peoples of the world regained dominance, a process that had begun in 1914.^[3][4][5]

The Autobiography further notes that, in Malcolm X's travels in the Middle East, many Muslims reacted with shock upon hearing about the doctrine of Yakub, which, while present in NOI theology, does not appear in mainstream Islam.^{[page needed]}

The African-American author and playwright Amiri Baraka's play A Black Mass takes inspiration from the story of Yakub.^[6]

Yakub and Jacob

The name Yakub is the Arabic variant of the name of the Biblical Patriarch known as Jacob in English language versions of the Bible, and as Ya`aqob in Biblical Hebrew. Fard Muhammad's Yakub has some parallels to the Biblical Jacob's role as the father of the tribes of Israel. The idea that Jews were an "artificial race" created by interbreeding and dependent on "tricks and lies" already existed in anti-Semitic theories of the time.^[7] The story of Yakob includes Jews as part of a wider artificially created "white" race.^[8]

In speeches by Malcolm X, Yakub is identified completely with Jacob. Referring to the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, Malcolm X states that Elijah Muhammad told him that "Jacob was Yacub, and the angel that Jacob wrestled with wasn't God, it was the government of the day". This was because Yakub was seeking funds for his expedition to Patmos, "so when it says Jacob wrestled with an angel, 'angel' is only used as a symbol to hide the one he was really wrestling with". However, Malcolm X also states that John of Patmos was also Yakub, and that the Book of Revelation refers to his deeds: "John was Yacub. John was out there getting ready to make a new race, he said, for the word of the Lord".^[9]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Michael Angelo Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p.311
2. ^ Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (summarized here) and Yakub: The Father of Mankind. See also, Dorothy Blake Fardan, Yakub and the Origins of White Supremacy, Lushena Books, 2001
3. ^ Abraham/Mr. Yakub, NOI.com
4. ^ Messanger Mohammed Mr. Yacub MAKING OF DEVIL
5. ^ Raelist Admissiom from ALLAH Messager
6. ^ Biography of Baraka
7. ^ Linda L. Clark, Social Darwinism in France, University of Alabama Press, 1984, p.150
8. ^ Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 268.
9. ^ Malcolm X, Benjamin Karim, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X, Arcade Publishing, 1989, PP. 53-4

• Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Competing visions of Islam in the United States: a study of Los Angeles, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997, ISBN 9780313299513, pp. 146ff.