 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
Issue Number 16 - November 14, 2002
Printer Friendly Version
Note: The size of the type may be changed by clicking on view at the top of your browser and selecting "text size". The document will print in the size you select.
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.
www.blackcommentator.com
Your comments are welcome. Visit the Contact Us page for E-mail or Feedback.