The Independent View

There has been a vir­tual wall of silence around Barack Obama’s long-​time ties with Min­is­ter Louis Far­rakhan of the Nation of Islam. One is tempted to dis­mis­sively say that the Min­is­ter is ‘just a guy in the neigh­bor­hood’, much like William Ayers.

Turns out that Ayers was not just a guy in the neigh­bor­hood. Nor is Min­is­ter Louis Far­rakhan. Obama has direct and indi­rect ties to Min­is­ter Far­rakhan that date back over the past 20 years.

It is no sur­prise that Min­is­ter Far­rakhan has spo­ken so highly of his friend Barack Obama:

First, the cir­cle of friends and asso­ciates that Obama joined in Chicago since the early 1980s includes Min­is­ter Far­rakhan. The staff on their orga­ni­za­tions often over­lap, their goals are often the same, and their tech­niques are as well. And, yes, they are neighbors.

Obama spent three weeks in Pak­istan in the early 1980s around the same time that Min­is­ter Far­rakhan and Rev­erend Wright were mak­ing their own trek to visit Moam­mar Gad­hafi in Libya.

Obama likely first met Min­is­ter Far­rakhan in the mid-​1980s upon mov­ing to Chicago. It’d be hard to imag­ine that he didn’t con­sid­er­ing their shared com­mu­nity inter­ests, Obama’s past with com­mu­nist and black nation­al­ist Frank Mar­shall Davis, and his new friend Rev­erend Wright. Obama doesn’t say much except that he worked with all of the local reli­gious lead­ers because that was the focus of his com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing. Rev­erend Jesse Jack­son, PUSH, and Rain­bow Coali­tion also fit into the pic­ture. Rev­erend Jack­son and Min­is­ter Far­rakhan, them­selves, made a trip to Syria together in 1986.

Barack Obama would go on to call Rev­erend Wright his spir­i­tual advi­sor, men­tor, and friend,. He mar­ried Barack and Michelle Obama in late 1992, then bap­tized their chil­dren. Obama sat in the pews of Rev­erend Wright’s church, Trin­ity United Church of Christ, for nearly 20 years.

In scat­tered com­ments through­out the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and in past years, it is clear that Barack Obama also sought out Father Michael Pfleger and Rev­erend James Meeks as spir­i­tual advi­sors, men­tors, and col­leagues on numer­ous projects. While lit­tle is men­tioned of Min­is­ter Far­rakhan, for­mer Far­rakhan deputy, Dr. Vib­ert White, Jr., once known as Brother Vib­ert L.X., and later as Min­is­ter V.L. Muham­mad, says they ‘run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to dis­cuss pol­icy and strat­egy, either directly or through inter­me­di­aries.” (Obama-​Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-​Farrakhan Aide Says).

“Remem­ber that for years, if you were a politi­cian in Chicago, you had to have some type of rela­tion­ship with Louis Far­rakhan. You had to. If you didn’t, you would be ostra­cized out of black Chicago,” said Dr. Vib­ert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a mem­ber and ulti­mately top offi­cer of the Nation of Islam.

In 1995, Rev­erend Wright and Barack Obama helped their mutual friend, Min­is­ter Far­rakhan orga­nize the Nation of Islam’s Mil­lion Man March that they all then attended together. In later talk­ing about his black nation­al­ism, Barack explained in a Chicago Reader interview:

“These are mean, cruel times, exem­pli­fied by a ‘lock ’em up, take no pris­on­ers’ men­tal­ity that dom­i­nates the Republican-​led Con­gress. His­tor­i­cally, African-​Americans have turned inward and towards black nation­al­ism when­ever they have a sense, as we do now, that the main­stream has rebuffed us, and that white Amer­i­cans couldn’t care less about the pro­found prob­lems African-​Americans are facing.”

Ken­neth Tim­mer­man writes, as have oth­ers, that Obama’s involve­ment with black nation­al­ism of Min­is­ter Far­rakhan and Rev­erend Wright, among oth­ers, is a con­nec­tion to Khalid al-​Mansour, who helped pay for Barack’s tuition at Har­vard Law School:

“Black nation­al­ism” is a cur­rent of thought and polit­i­cal action in the African-​American com­mu­nity that has been cham­pi­oned by the likes of Far­rakhan, Wright, Mal­colm X, the Black Pan­thers and Khalid al-​Mansour. Obama dis­cussed his attrac­tion to black nation­al­ism at length in his 1995 mem­oir “Dreams of My Father.”

In inter­views Khalid al-​Mansour, lawyer and friend of the Saudi rul­ing fam­ily, has refused to dis­cuss his rela­tion­ship with Obama and Obama’s law school fund­ing. As he explains to Ken­neth Tim­mer­man:

“In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many peo­ple are run­ning after him, and when sto­ries get printed they usu­ally get dis­torted and then he has to spend a lot of time try­ing to unravel them – and then after the expe­ri­ence of Rev. (Jere­miah) Wright whom I’ve never met, but I’ve fol­lowed the media cov­er­age – I was deter­mined that I was never going to be in that sit­u­a­tion. I never dis­cuss Barack Obama,” al-​Mansour said.

The media frenzy sur­round­ing Barack Obama is quite jus­ti­fied in many respects and in oth­ers is a bit intrusive.

Dr. Vib­ert White, Jr., observes and explains in a recent inter­view that Barack has learned well from Min­is­ter Farrakhan:

“If you lis­ten to the rhetoric and you take away Obama’s polit­i­cal jar­gon, you hear a reli­gious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-​like. I don’t know if any­one has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speak­ing style is very Malcolm-​like, very Farrakhan-​like.”

.…

“I don’t know who was train­ing Obama. But that style is not a min­is­te­r­ial style like in the Chris­t­ian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.”

.…

“If the Nation of Islam can’t do any­thing else, it can train peo­ple how to speak. And nobody can out­speak a Mus­lim min­is­ter,” he said.

Even Michelle Obama plays a role in this, and very like an even big­ger one than is cur­rently pub­li­cally know. Back in June, Larry John­son at NoQuar­terUSA, noted the “role that Louis Far­rakhan and his wife, Mother Khadi­jah Far­rakhan, have played in the POLITICAL RISE of Barack and Michelle Obama.” 

One happy fam­ily: Min­is­ter Louis Far­rakhan, Rev­erend Jere­miah Wright, Rev­erend Jesse Jack­son, Father Michael Pleger, Rev­erend James Meeks, and, yes, Barack Obama.

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