Khalid Abdul Muhammed

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Khalid Abdul Muhammad

Khalid Abdul Muhammad born Harold Moore, Jr. in Houston, Texas (January 12, 1948 – February 17, 2001) was a controversial figure in the Black Nationalist, Pan Africanist movement. Muhammed was known prominently as the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) until 1993 and National Chairman of the New Black Panther Party from the late 1990s until his death and for his anti-white, anti-semetic, and homophobic rhetoric.

1 Early life
2 Nation of Islam
3 New Black Panther Party
4 Quotes
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Khallid Abdul Muhammad, was born as the second of six children to Harold Moore, Sr. and Lottie B. Moore. He was raised by his Aunt Carrie Moore Vann in Houston, Texas, where he attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O. Smith Junior High School and all Black Phyllis Wheatley High School. After graduating high school, he went to Dillard University in Louisiana to pursue a degree in theological studies. At this time he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church.

[edit] Nation of Islam

Muhammed joined the Nation of Islam, which was then under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, while attending Dillard in 1970. He changed his name to "Brother Harold X", became Farrakhan's protégé and was active as a recruiter within the organization. In 1978 Muhammad was appointed Western Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27. In 1983 Minister Louis Farrakhan named him Khallid, which has the historical interpretation of "great warrior" after the follower of Prophet Muhammad Khallid ibn Walid. Like this Islamic general Khallid Muhammad was called the "sword of Allah".

By 1985, Muhammad had become one of Louis Farrakhan's most trusted advisors in the Nation of Islam. He accompanied Farrakhan on fund-raising trips to Libya, where he became well acquainted with Muammar el-Qaddafi. Muhammad's dedication to Farrakhan and to the racist message of the NOI eventually secured him the title of national spokesman and was named one of Louis Farrakhan's top lieutenants in 1981. He served at Nation of Islam mosques in New York and Atlanta throughout the decade, and in 1991 he became Farrakhan's personal assistant.

Muhammad's new position involved public speaking engagements, and he quickly became known for his inflammatory anti-white, anti-semitic and anti-homosexual speeches along with notions of black self-empowerment and black separation. Muhammad's contempt for whites and Jews extended to conservative blacks, who he considered traitors to their race and collaborators with the white enemy:

When white folks can't defeat you they'll always find some Negro, some boot-licking, butt-licking, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized Nigger that they can trot out in front of you.^[1]

In 1993, following a speech at Kean College in Union, New Jersey, in which he referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers"; labeled The Pope a "no-good cracker"; and urged mob murder of white South Africans, the United States Senate voted 97-0 to censure Muhammad and the United States House of Representatives (The Full Congress) in a special session, passed a House Resolution. When he was also reprimanded by the NOI he subsequently left the organization. There is some question as to whether he was removed from the organization by Louis Farrakhan or if his departure was, in fact, voluntary. In 1994, Muhammad appeared on The Phil Donahue Showin an appearance that featured Muhammad engaged in heated arguments with Jewish audience members amid an explanation of his controversial remarks.

Muhammad was shot by James Bess, a former NOI member, after he spoke at the University of California at Riverside on May 29, 1994. Muhammad believed the shooting was a part of a conspiracy against him.

[edit] New Black Panther Party

After being stripped of his position as NOI spokesman, Muhammad became the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party. On May 21, 1007, he delivered a hate-filled speech at San Francisco State University in which he viciously attacked Jews, whites, Catholics and gays. He denied the Holocaust, and claimed Jews control the U.S. and are involved in a myriad of conspiracies.^[2]

In 1998 Muhammad organized the Million Youth March in New York City. The march was controversial from its inception as New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani denied organizers a permit, calling it a "hate march." A court ruled that the event could go on, but scaled back its duration and size. During the rally, Muhammad incited a melee between the 6,000 demonstrators and New York City police officers, which concluded the march, by exhorting the crowd to beat the police with rails and to shoot them with their own guns in "self-defense". Dozens were arrested and 16 officers and five civilians were injured ^[3] ^[4]. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the march turned out to be precisely what he predicted, one "filled with hatred, horrible, awful, vicious, anti-Semitic and other anti-white rhetoric, as well as exhortations to kill people, murder people. The speeches given today should not occur anyplace." ^[5]

Muhammed continued to organize protest and marches which the majority of the African American community felt were counterproductive to black advancement and exasperated racial tension until his death. Muhammed convened a second march in 1999 which drew roughly 200 participants and no incidence with the police.

In 2001, Muhammed died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 53.

Muhammad is still venerated by members of the New Black Panther Party and seen as the de facto father of the movement. The organization is currently headed by Malik Zulu Shabazz.

In 2000, Muhammad's beliefs were introduced to a completely new demographic when it was revealed that one of the contestants on the American television show Big Brother, William Collins (Hiram Ashantee), turned out to be a field marshal for the New Black Panther Party. In the press Muhammad criticized the cast member, William Collins for complimenting a white woman. Muhammad has been notably featured by the hip-hop group Public Enemy on the intro to their song “Night of the Living Baseheads.”

[edit] Quotes

"Who are the slumlords in the Black community? The so-called Jews... Who is it sucking our blood in the Black community? A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew." (Speech at Kean College, NJ, November 29, 1993)

"I say you call yourself Goldstein, Silverstein, and Rubinstein because you're stealing all the gold and silver and rubies all over the earth...we call it jewelry but it's really Jew-elry, Jew-elry because of your theiving and stealing and rogueing {sic} and lying all over the face of the planet earth." (Speech in Baltimore, MD, February 19, 1994)

"The white man is not only practicing racism and Zionism, and with the prostitution ring, the so-called Jew man with the Jew woman all over the world to make a few dollars, he is also practicing sexism. He's a racist, he's a Zionist, an imperialist." (Speech at San Francisco State University, May 21, 1997)

"Now it is time to stand up and fight back. . . . There are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes." (Speech at West Chester University, PA, February 17, 1992)

"We don't owe [the whites] nothing in South Africa... we give him 24 hours to get out of town, by sundown. That's all. If he won't get out of town by sundown, we kill everything white that ain't right in South Africa. We kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the babies. We kill the blind, we kill the crippled, we kill 'em all. We kill the faggot, we kill the lesbian, we kill them all." (Speech at Kean College, NJ, November 29, 1993)

"Tell us you lost 6 million. Historians, scholars, scientists, they went to some of the death camps. It wasn't 6 million, it wasn't 5 million, it wasn't 4 million, it wasn't even 3 million. Some of them say we'd be hard-pressed to get 1 1/2 million. Reports on the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were bloated, exaggerated, probably fabricated." (Brooklyn, NY, March 29, 1994)