The
arrest of John Allen Muhammad (he legally changed his name from Williams
in 2001) and John Malvo for the terrifying sniper murders in and around
Washington, DC, has given the forces of racial bigotry an opportunity
to air their twisted agendas. Every true Muslim joined the Hon. Minister
Louis Farrakhan in his revulsion at the horrific crimes these men are
alleged to have committed and is keenly affronted by the connection
that exists between the suspect Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (NOI).
As Min. Farrakhan pointed out, John Allen Muhammad is a member "not
in good standing" who has been estranged from the NOI for more
than three years.
His
arrest and the media's playing up this NOI angle immediately raised
suspicions of yet another in the documented government plots to smear
and destroy the NOI. Declassified FBI and CIA documents have shown that
thousands of government agents (a majority of them Black) were employed
to infiltrate and sabotage even the "Black" organizations
run by whites, and the Nation of Islam was specifically targeted. Though
it preaches against the breaking of laws and against the use of weapons
of any kind, the NOI has garnered more FBI "security index files"
than any other organization, including the Communist Party and the Ku
Klux Klan. The FBI, in its history of illegal and racist persecution
of American citizens, opened files on 673 "Black Muslims,"
but only 476 "Communists." The Nation of Islam, as the Hon.
Elijah Muhammad has said, "is honeycombed with [these] agents."
The
arrest of John Allen "Muhammad," therefore, raised the specter
of yet another government stratagem for the destruction of the Black
freedom movement. After all, such abominable acts as the Oklahoma City
bombing and even the John Kennedy assassination were first blamed on
"black muslims." But the foundation of the charges that have
been lately applied to the Nation of Islam through the sniper arrests
is shaky indeed. "Muhammad" killed mostly Black people, engaged
in the very anti-Islamic belief in tarot cards, professed to be God,
and called a Catholic priest - not an NOI minister - while in the midst
of his killing spree, allegedly. And yet some persist in suggesting
that the source of these crimes is the NOI. But this only allows us
to expand the discussion--under the goose/gander theory - to include
the nefarious associations of other horrific killers with American organizations
and institutions. A brief survey of convicted American serial murderers
finds that many notorious killers once interacted with the "best"
of white America, to wit:
Homosexual
cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer attended Ohio State University, and enlisted
in the U.S. Army a year after murdering and dissecting his first victim.
He went on to kill, dismember, and eat 17 of his known victims, and
then converted to Christianity. "Son of Sam" murderer David
Berkowitz, who attended Bronx Community College, had a lifetime appointment
in the U.S. Postal Service. He spent three years in the U.S. Army and
was bar mitzvahed at Temple Adath Israel in New York, killed 13 people,
and was "born again" into Christianity - the same religion
as Pres. George W. Bush. In fact, Dahmer, Berkowitz, and serial murderers
Ted Bundy and Henry Lee Lucas, as well as John Lennon's killer Mark
David Chapman, Manson murderer Charles "Tex" Watson, and the
Rev. Jim Jones, who led 911 mostly Black church members to commit suicide
in 1978, share the same religious affiliation as former Pres. Jimmy
Carter, the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. Oral Roberts, Army Lt. Oliver
North, the Rev. Billy Graham and his son, the Rev. Franklin Graham,
and the Rev. Jim Bakker - they are all "Born Again Christians."
Henry
Lee Lucas was the homosexual murderer of at least 360 Americans, and
was a Catholic. The Texas tower sniper, Charles Joseph Whitman, killed
16 and wounded 31 with the skills he learned as a U.S. Marine. He was
a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout from a devout Roman Catholic family and a member
of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Dr. Michael Swango was both a Marine
and a bible-studying Presbyterian, who liked wearing army fatigues and
murdered upwards of 60 of his patients in several countries. John Wayne
Gacy, a homosexual, attended business college and was a member of Catholic
Interclub Council and the Holy Name Society; he killed more than 33
people and was photographed at a public service media event with first
lady Rosalynn Carter. There's more: Robert Lee Yates served as a helicopter
pilot in the U.S. Army for 19 years, including stints in "Operation
Desert Storm" and in Somalia; he murdered more than 18 people,
and was a Christian.
None
was more interesting in the current political climate than Ted Bundy,
who executed between 36 and 100 innocent people. He held a degree in
psychology from the University of Washington, and he went to law school
in Salt Lake City and also attended Florida State University. He was
a card-carrying Republican and once made a business trip on behalf of
the Washington Republican Party. A party official once described serial
murderer Ted Bundy as "a believer in the system." Homosexual
"freeway killer" Randy Kraft of California is believed to
have committed 67 mutilation murders from 1972 until his arrest in 1983.
Kraft joined the ROTC, demonstrated in favor of the Vietnam war, and
campaigned energetically for right-wing presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater in 1964. He later did a political about-face and joined the
presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, who wrote a personal letter
of commendation to the serial killer. Kraft joined the U.S. Air Force,
obtained a "secret" security clearance, and became a supervisor
in the division where planes are tested at Edwards Air Force Base.
Other
legendary criminals had mainstream religious instruction, including
gangster Al Capone, who was Roman Catholic - as were most of the notorious
Italian La Cosa Nostra. Meyer Lansky, one of the Murder, Inc., mobsters,
supported with his ill-gotten cash the Hollywood Emergency Fund for
Israel and Brandeis University. In fact, Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway
demonstrates that many of the Jewish gangsters who for decades terrorized
the inner-cities of America were major supporters of the State of Israel
even as they piled up dead bodies by the truckload in America.
And
the most notorious of them all, Adolph Hitler, was baptized a Catholic.
In
his press conference on the issue, the Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan
extended his deepest sympathy to the victims of the sniper tragedy -
one of whom was his good friend Ken Bridges. But he further warned the
forces of division that attaching this crime to Islam is a tragic mistake.
He said:
Timothy
McVeigh [killed 168] confessed that he was a Christian but nobody
blames the church for his misconduct. Ninety-five percent of the nearly
two million inmates in the prison system in the United States will
tell you, if you ask them what is your faith, they will say, I'm Christian.
But no one would blame Jesus or their pastor for their behavior that
is contrary to the teachings of Jesus.
So, as
these shortsighted bigots leap to pin the acts of the insane on the
reputation of millions of Muslims they ought to consider that such a
pursuit 'tis a slippery slope indeed.
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