A Tale of Two Preachers

By Kenneth R. Timmerman in Chicago ktimmerman@InsightMag.com

Though Louis Farrakhan expressed sorrow at America’s tragedy, Jesse Jackson tried to transform a moment of national mourning into the tattered politics of race war.

Jesse Jackson blasted America’s leaders and blamed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on American arrogance in a weekly meeting at Operation PUSH headquarters in Chicago on Sept. 15. In separate appearances in the city during the week, Jackson and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called on President George W. Bush to change U.S. policies they claim created anti-American hatred in the Middle East.

Outside Operation PUSH headquarters on South Drexel Avenue was a van from the Red Cross, and the cavernous hall was packed. Up on stage, Jackson was calling upon people to give blood. But rather than send them outside to the Red Cross van, he asked them to fill out an Operation PUSH recruitment card, promising that if blood were needed his group would give them a call.

Jackson had been seated next to a longtime PUSH activist, the Rev. Willie Barrow, and to Muslim clerics. The choir was singing, the organ was playing and a gospel band was warming up. Behind him, when he began to preach, was a bigger-than-life photo of Martin Luther King Jr. There were many white faces in the crowd, but they were not those of Jackson’s left-wing political friends. These were working-class faces — tough, grizzled faces — men and women with rough hands and thick necks. On their laps they carried banners for Local 15 of the IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, each with an American flag. These workers, and a few isolated patriots here and there in the large audience, were the only ones carrying the flag — and they apparently didn’t know they were offending since they never before had been invited into Jackson’s inner sanctum. Up on Jackson’s stage there were no flags, no red-white-and-blue ribbons, no sign of mourning or of rallying to America.

“It is not fair to stereotype Arabs and Muslim Americans,” Jackson declaimed, blasting the administration for having allegedly singled out Muslims in the wake of the attacks. “Hitler stereotyped the Jewish people. Hitler did racial profiling of the Jewish people and it was wrong. In Oklahoma City, they thought it must be Arabs. They thought it was the Middle East, but it was the Middle West. They said black kids had all these guns and drugs, that they did crack cocaine. They said we’d be a lot safer if we just locked up all them black kids. Then Columbine came. … So we know that stereotyping people for their race and religion is wrong.”

Jackson introduced Ahmed Umar Abdallah of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago with an indictment aimed squarely at Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had asked for tougher laws to fight terrorists. “We say to our Muslim brothers: We share your pain. It was you today, but before sundown it’s the rest of us. … Now a police state is closing in [with] the suspension of civil liberties.”

The soft-spoken Abdallah, with his white hair and well-pressed suit, appeared to agree. In just four days, he noted, there had been 217 “documented cases of anti-Muslim violence and hate crimes.” But instead of blaming Republicans, he denounced those who had carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. “Terrorism has no denomination,” he said. “Terrorists have no religion. Terrorists have agendas — and we categorically reject their agenda. Islam regards terrorism as a cowardly and predatory act against God and man.”

Fellow cleric Azhar Usman offered Koranic prayers and joined in condemning the terrorists. “What makes this tragedy so despicable is that people commit these atrocities in the name of God. As a Muslim, I say to you: Any human being who can support these attacks has lost their humanity.” There are an estimated 350,000 Muslims in the greater Chicago area.

But Jackson had no such words of condemnation. Instead, he focused on a political target: “Colin Powell, we are told, was talking about multilateralism and reaching out to others. The next thing we know, Time magazine reports that he has been pushed to the side. … Man could build some bridges, cure some sick, feed some children. Man could make some friends.”

Instead of deploying U.S. troops to root out the organizations that carried out the attacks and strike the countries that support them, Jackson said, the United States should “launch the fight for the redistribution of resources. One hundred million people will have AIDS in five years. We should use our strength for that.”

Jackson repeated a fabrication about the Arab-Afghans surrounding Osama bin Laden, as if it were a well-known truth. “We say we’re going to bomb the places where they got their training. But they got their training from us.” In fact, as the director of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence told this reporter three years ago in Afghanistan on bin Laden’s footsteps, bin Laden and his followers never received training with the Afghan mujahideen during the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union, but grafted themselves onto the radical Abu Sayyaf group like a band of wandering war groupies.

Neither Jackson’s house in Chicago, nor that of his son Jesse Jr., a Democratic congressman from Chicago, displayed a flag in front or from the windows. The house of another son, Jonathan, who runs a beer distributorship in Chicago, similarly was unadorned.

The Rev. Charles Jenkins, pastor at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church where Jackson is a member, was surprised when he learned of Jackson’s message about American arrogance. “We had a conference call on Wednesday with 50 pastors, and Reverend Jackson was on the line,” he tells Insight. “Our message was one of mourning, one of unity and no scapegoating. President Bush called on us for support, saying we cannot defend ourselves if we are fighting each other. So let this unite us as a people and help us turn to God and the church.” This was not, however, Jackson’s message.

After the public meeting at Operation PUSH headquarters, Jackson invited reporters into a security-tight back room for closer questioning. He claimed that several members of his organization had perished in the blast but soon corrected himself when asked by Insight to name them. “They weren’t actually our staff members,” he said. “Our staff is here and in Washington, in other buildings. But our International Trade group members — for two years of the Wall Street project we were on the top floor of the Trade Center so we frequented that building. We knew a lot of people who worked there.”

Two well-dressed young men approached, introducing themselves as members of the Nation of Islam. “Minister Farrakhan will be addressing the nation tomorrow. We would be pleased if you could come.” It was unclear what ties, if any, they had to Jackson’s organization, but access to the PUSH media center was closely controlled.

The scene at the badlands of South Stony Island Avenue, where Farrakhan has his headquarters, was chaotic. Police had blocked off the side streets and Farrakhan’s neatly suited security guards barred access to his vaultlike Mosque Maryam. The guards painstakingly were checking identity cards and patting down people who had come to watch their leader on a giant-screen video linkup, and they let them in one by one through 12-foot iron gates.

Farrakhan had a very similar message but a dramatically different tone. Whereas Jackson stridently was political, Farrakhan took a moral approach. And, unlike Jackson, he was lavish in his expressions of mourning for the dead and his calls for national unity, noting that “no amount of political skill or political money could unite America behind its president, but tragedy did.”

Quoting from the Koran, Farrakhan preached humility: “When a nation becomes the only remaining superpower, having the power to destroy other nations and people by the tens of thousands and millions, as Allah [God] has permitted America the power to do, and that nation then has a spiritual lapse and begins to sink into moral decline, the Koran teaches that Allah raises a messenger … to guide and to warn the great and the powerful.”

Today’s suffering, Farrakhan said, was a wake-up call for America to seek humility. “Tragedy was turned into triumph. Tragedy began the spiritual awakening of a great nation and steeled its resolve to overcome the wickedness of those who perpetrated this assault on the United States of America.”

Also unlike Jackson, Farrakhan realized that the United States was going to war, a just war, against terrorists. He called the attacks “an act of war … a crime against humanity.” But he counseled the president to seek the advice of religious leaders “so that, as we put on the armor of battle, we will put on the whole armor of God, lest we lose. Mr. President, I plead with you that this war that you intend could trigger that war … that would end all wars, the War of Armageddon.”

Not far beneath the words of both black leaders was a scarcely veiled effort to blame U.S. support of Israel for the recent carnage. But if they had a similar message, they showed starkly different values. Said the Rev. Caesar Leflur, a longtime Jackson critic: “Jackson’s issue is not souls, but politics.” Farrakhan’s message was souls and, to the astonishment of many, the moment had come in which the leader of the Nation of Islam showed himself to be a more patriotic American than Jesse Jackson.

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2001

Answers

Funny, I just mentioned yesterday to the Mrs that I hadn't heard anything that Jackson or Farrakhan has commented about this.

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2001

Jesse Jackass... another good candidate for Beckie's find...

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2001

I don't suppose we could convince Jesse Jackass to go to Afghanistan and talk to the Taliban? Maybe he could convert them...

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2001

Speaking of JJ, has anyone else noticed the remarkable resemblance he has to Mr. Potatohead?

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2001

Oh the poor guy! How does Mr PotatoHead deal with it all?

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2001