On Assessing Religious Extremism and Apocalyptic Eschatology

 The Reverend Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam in America, took umbrage at Rudy Giuliani's assessment of Barack Obama's formative years.  In response,  Farrakhan launched into a pejorative racial ad hominem attack on America's Mayor as well as all Americans of European descent.

    

 This invective is rather ironic as President Obama's lineage does not include ancestry of slavery.  Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a Kenyan and  Stanley Ann Dunham was a white woman hailing from Wichita, Kansas. So the Reverend Farrakhan is conflating the struggle against someone who neither suffered from the disadvantages of slavery nor really lived in society which did not seek to redress those iniquities.

 Rudy Giuliani could point to Barack Obama's two autobiographies, which chronicle how the future President was raised in Indonesia during formative years in which the love of country tended to be instilled.

Where was Louis Farrakhan drawing for his assessments?  Well, it seems that the Rev. Farrakhan has again shifted from knowing Issa (Jesus) better than Christians back to a ministry of rage with a racially apocalyptic eschatology. 

Last week, the White House conducted a three day summit on Countering Violent Extremism, which contorted itself so as not to associate religious motivations to terrorism, especially towards Islam. However, at the same time voices from the Obama Administration  have been quick to point out the Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa as an example of Christian militant terrorism.    And a 2014 PC DOD presentation listed Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians and Islamaphobes along with Al Qaeda as examples of "extremists groups".

 No wonder why we currently have such a whacked weltanschauung in the District of Calamity (sic).

h/t: Michael Ramirez 

The Final Call from Louis Farrakhan

During a recent video sermon, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan  preached a message of racial division.  In what Farrakhan called "The Final Call", he widely quoted from Elijah Mohammad (1897-1975) in stating a case for the abolition of white people.

Farrakhan's Final Call preached:

According to the history of the white race, they are guilty of making trouble, causing war among the people and themselves ever since they have been on our planet Earth. So, the God of the righteous has found them disagreeable to live with in peace and has decided to remove them from the face of the Earth.

Calligraphic of Isa in Arabic 

This showdown intimates that Farrakhan's knowledge of the real Jesus will prevail.  Islam holds that Isa (Jesus) was born of Mary through a virginal conception.  Isa was sent to guide the Children of Israel with a new scripture (the Gospel) and perform Miracles aided by Allah to pursuit this work.  Islam deviates from Christian notions of Trinitarianism.  Isa was just a human being, not being Jesus, the Son of God.   Moreover, Islam rejects that Jesus was ever crucified, resurrected or atoned mankind for its sins.  But Farrakhan's taunts to traditional Christians not to engage in a showdown and be slaughtered like the worshipers of Baal in I Kings 18.  

This Final Call message differs from statements last year in which Farrakhan advocated that "the final solution" was a separation of black and whites. One wonders if Farrakhan's enthusiastic integration of Dionetics into the Nation of Islam has shaped their overall message or if further use of spiritual technology would help.

This is far from the first time that Farrakhan has preached invective apologetics or fanned the flames of racial division.  In 2012, Farrakhan proclaimed that Jesus was a black man and further  speculated: 'If Elijah was at the door and he was black, you would call 911 and say there’s a n****r at the door, claiming he’s Elijah! Send the police!”  With this history, it is easy to perceive that Farrakhan is taking his talk to the next level

It will be interesting to learn where Farrakhan takes this track when he speaks at the Savior Days Convention at Joe Louis Arena Detroit, Michigan February 20-23. Detroit has special significance to the Nation of Islam as its Founder  (who Elijah Mohammad preached was the Mahdi) Wallace Fard Mohammad hailed from Detroit.

Reflections on Farrakhan's Alabama Eschatology

While recently speaking at Alabama A&M University (a traditionally black institute of higher education), Minister Louis Farrakhan offered some novel theological insight. Farrakhan contends that the people of Israel would listen to neither Elijah the Prophet nor Jesus of Nazareth because of the way they look. Farrakhan contends that "[Y]ou are not trained to accept wisdom from a black person no matter how wise that black man is... Jesus was a black man." In fact, the Minister Farrakhan goes further and postulates: If Elijah was at the door and he was black, you would call 911 and say there’s a n****r at the door, claiming he’s Elijah! Send the police!”

Farrakhan, as a spiritual leader of the Nation of Islam, believes that Jesus' submission to the Lord's will means that He was a Muslim. “Because Jesus said ‘Not My will, but Thy will.’ You know what we call that in Arabic? Islam. He was a Muslim.” Of course, a Muslim would not think that Issa was the Son of God or that his Crucifixion was a Sacramental Death for the remission of the world's sins.

While it is not surprising that a minister professing Islam would claim Jesus as a Muslim prophet, Farrakhan's obsession with race colors his world view and sounds confrontational instead of ecumenically oriented to serving others. Farrakhan's fervent voice in the wilderness echoes the klaxon calls from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's black liberation theology, which the pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ (where President Obama attended for twenty years on Chicago's South Side) inveighed against injustice which was charged against Caucasians.

Louis Farrakhan has often been at the edge of civil society with his race conscious jeremiads. But as we enter an era of racial tension and unrest, it is sad that no prominent black religious self-appointed leaders have spoken up against the inflammatory incitements. In fact, the Reverend Al Sharpton has used the Trayvon Martin tragedy to stoke the fires of race.

Martin Luther King observed. “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends” But ask Malcolm X what happens when you stray from the right way of the Nation of Islam.

Is that how we should live our lives in America? Chaffing from coercion from the state in how we practice our spiritual lives and cowering from bigoted bullies? The Easter Message is to “Be Not Afraid.”

After Cardinal Timothy Dolan (Catholic Archbishop of New York) was elevated to the College of Cardinals in February, he noted that they wear red because it is the color of martyrs, hence they should not be afraid to stand up for their faith to the point of suffering a martyr's death  . May it not come to that, but I hope that spiritual leaders will take their mission seriously and proclaim the gospel of the New Testament between God and man.   In this day and age, the good news  would be most welcomed.

h/t: The Blaze