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Yakub and the Origins of the White Race
I have an interesting story to tell you.
About 6,600 years ago, all people in the world were black. They generally lived in peace and harmony, although about 30% were somehow dissatisfied. At that time, a black scientist named Yakub was living in Mecca.
Yakub led a group of 59,999 followers to the Greek island of Patmos, also called Pelan, where he instituted a human breeding program that lasted 600 years, carried on by his followers after Yakub’s death. They systematically killed the darker-skinned babies and bred the lighter-skinned babies. In this way, they selectively bred all of the non-black races: first the brown people, then the red (American Indians), then the yellow (East Asians), and finally the whites.
Yakub was an evil genius whose motives seem a bit unclear. But he wanted to produce white people, who are devils whose purpose is to persecute and kill the righteous, who are the black nation.
It was prophesied that the white devils, the progeny of Yakub, were destined to rule the earth for 6,000 years. Jesus condemned them 2,000 years ago. The white devils were bottled up in Europe for about 1,000 years by Muhammad (may the peace of Allah be upon him) and his successors.
But the white devils have been loose for 400 years. These devils have tried to deceive the people all over the earth with Christianity, which is a religion organized and backed by the white devils for the purpose of making slaves of black mankind. The white race was created to be the enemy of black mankind for 6,000 years, but the separation and War of Armageddon are at hand.
We know this because God in person, sometimes called the Messiah or the Mahdi, appeared in America, coming from the Holy City Mecca in 1930. He was persecuted and jailed in America in the 1930s. God in person was a black American man named Wallace Fard Muhammad, who taught the religion of peace, Islam.
Has anyone heard this story before?
As far as I can tell, this is the actual theology of the Nation of Islam, as professed by Elijah Muhammad, its long-time leader who died in 1975. His son, Warith Deen Muhammad, assumed leadership after his death and sought to move the organization toward a more standard Sunni Islam, but this was unsuccessful, and Louis Farrakhan assumed leadership in 1981. Muhammad Ali (the boxer) was a prominent believer in this theology. He was honored as the American chosen to light the Olympic torch at the 1996 games in Atlanta.
Until yesterday, I had no idea that these were the beliefs of the Nation of Islam. I admit that I hadn’t looked into the issue in much detail. I had the general impression that Farrakhan was a rather odious guy, something of a black supremacist, and often castigated as anti-Semitic (though it’s not clear that NoI theology is more hostile toward Jews than it is toward whites in general). I heard an outline of this story in Prof. Wilfred Reilly’s fine book, Taboo, which I’ve been enjoying in audio format.
Sources:
There’s a Wikipedia page here about Yakub. I know, Wikipedia may be dubious, so I looked a bit further.
I found several official Nation of Islam sources supporting the story. Here is their “Brief history on the origin of the Nation of Islam.” Here is their “A historic look at the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” Here is their “The Muslim Program,” which explains “What The Muslims Want.” Here is a 2015 article, “Echoes of Mr. Yakup after Patmos,” by the Nation of Islam Research Group.
If you can endure it, here is a pdf version of Elijah Muhammad’s book, “Message To The Blackman in America by Elijah Muhammad (Messenger of Allah).” Paper versions of the book are available on Amazon (and presumably elsewhere), but I cannot personally attest to the accuracy of the pdf version.
Here are some quotes from Message to the Blackman in America (page references are to the pdf version linked above):
“You originally came from the God of Righteousness and have the opportunity to return, while the devils are from the man devil (Yakub), who has ruled the world for the past 6,000 years under falsehood, labeled under the name of God and His prophets. The wort thing to ever happen to the devils is: the truth of them made manifest that they are really the devils whom the righteous (all members of the black nation) should shun and never accept as truthful guides of God! This is why the devils have always persecuted and killed the righteous. But the time has at last arrived that Allah (God) will put an end to their persecuting and killing the righteous (the black nation).” Chapter 3, page 18.
“Read and study the above chapter of John 8:42, all of you, who are Christians, believers in the Bible and Jesus, as you say. If you understand it right, you will agree with me that the whole Caucasian race is a race of devils. They have proved to be devils in the garden of Paradise and were condemned 4,000 years later by Jesus. Likewise, they are condemned today, by the Great Mahdi Muhammad, as being nothing but devils in the plainest language.” Chapter 13, p. 29.
“Your misunderstanding and misinterpretation of it is really the joy of devils. For it is the devils’ desire to keep the so-called Negroes ignorant of the truth of God until they see it with their eyes. The truth of God is the salvation and freedom of the so called Negroes from the devils’ power. Can you blame them? No! Blame yourself for being so foolish as to allow the devils to fool you in not accepting the truth after it comes to you. The devils have tried to deceive the people all over the earth with Christianity, that is, God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Ghost; three Gods into one God.” Chapter 6, p. 21.
“The greatest hindrance to the truth of our people is the of [sic] Christianity.” Ch. 8, p. 26.
“Again, know that Jesus was only a prophet and cannot hear you pray any more than Moses or any other dead prophet. Know, too, that this white race was created to be the enemy of black mankind for 6,000 years, which makes their number to be six. That is not your number or mine. We do not have a number, because we have no birth record. Do not let anyone fool you. This is the separation and the War of Armageddon.” Ch. 18, p. 35.
“They were created to rule us for 6,000 years, and then Allah (God) will destroy them from the earth and give the earth back to its original owners — the Black Nation.” Ch. 53, p. 78.
“Allah, your God, will grant you power to overcome your enemies though their power may look as endurable as the mountains. Fear not! Allah is the Best Knower. Armageddon has started, and after it there will be no Christian religion or churches. Jesus was a Muslim, not a Christian.” Ch. 11, p. 28.
“They (white race” are not hostile toward me because I am a Muslim and because I am teaching the true religion, Islam, to my people and the worship of the true and living God who is not a spook, but is flesh and blood (Allah). They are hostile against me and my followers because were are of the Original Black Race whom they were created to hate from the very beginning of their existence, 6,000 years ago. They were not created to love respect any member of the darker nations, for they are by nature, as Almighty Allah has taught them, in capable [sic] of loving even themselves. They cannot produce good, for they are without the nature of good. They cannot love Allah and His religion Islam, for it is against their nature to submit to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. All manner of evil and corruption has come from the white race.” Ch. 54, p. 80.
“According to Allah, the origin of such teachings as a Mystery God is from the devils! It was taught to them by their father, Yakub, 6,000 years ago. They know today that God is not a mystery but will not teach it. He (devil), the god of evil, was made to rule the nations of earth for 6,000 years, and naturally he would not teach obedience to a God other than himself. So, a knowledge of the true God of Righteousness was not represented by the devils. The true God was not to be made manifest to the people until the god of evil (devil) has finished or lived out his time, which was allowed to deceive the nations . . .. The shutting up and loosing of the devil mentioned in Rev. 20:7 could refer to the time between the A.D. 570-1555 when they (John Hawkins) deceived our fathers and brought them to slavery in America, which is nearly 1,000 years that they and Christianity were bottled up in Europe by the spread of Islam and Muhammad (may the peace of Allah be upon him) and his successors. Their being loose to deceive the nations of the earth would refer to the time (A.D. 1555 to 1955) which they were loose (free) to travel over the earth and deceive the people.” Ch. 1, p. 16.
“Allah came to us from the Holy City Mecca, Arabia, in 1930. He used the name Wallace D. Fard, often signing it W.D. Fard, in the third year (1933). He signed his name W.F. Muhammad which stands for Wallace Fard Muhammad. He came alone. He began teaching us the knowledge of ourselves, of God and the devil, of the measurement of the earth, of other planet [sic], and of the civilization of some of the planets other than earth. He measured and weighed the earth and its water; the history of the moon, the history of the two nations, black and white that dominate the earth. He gave the enact birth [sic] of the white race, the name of their God who made them and how; and the end of their time, the judgment and how it will begin.” Ch. 8, p. 25.
“I asked him, ‘Who are you, and what is your real name?’ He said, ‘I am the one that the world has been expecting for 2000 years.’ I said to him again, ‘What is your name?’ He said, “My name is Mahdi; I am God, I came to guide you into the right path that you may be successful and see the hereafter. He described the destruction of the world with bombs, poison gas, and finally with fire that would consume and destroy everything in the present world.” Ch. 8, p. 25.
“He condemned the teachings of God not being a man as a lie from the devils for the past 6,000 years; he said that Christianity was a religion organized and backed by the devils for the purpose of making slaves of black mankind.” Ch. 8, p. 26.
“He (Mr. W.F. Muhammad, God in person) chose to suffer three and a half years to show his love for his people, who have suffered over three hundred years at the hands of a people who by nature are evil and wicked and have no good in them. He was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of Detroit, on May 26, 1933. He came to Chicago in the same year and was arrested almost immediately on his arrival and placed behind prison bars.” Ch. 14, p. 30.
“The time has arrived. The only way to put off for a few more years that total destruction of America is to deal fairly with the Negro. But, nevertheless, one day it will come, unless she would like to return to Europe instead of sending the Negro back to Africa. The whole Western Hemisphere belongs to the darker people, and Europe was given to the white people.” Ch. 26, p. 45.
Elijah Muhammad even mentions Muhammad Ali. “Watch how anxious the white man is to hold you and call you by his name. He still would like to call the champion, Cassius Clay, after himself, and he would like to call me Poole, after himself.” Ch. 26, p. 45.
This is probably too much detail. Believe it or not, Elijah Muhammad keeps going along these lines for well over 200 pages.
It would be interesting, though painful, for me to investigate these issues further. I think that I perceive some connections between NoI theology and several other black liberation-type ideologies — Moses James H. Cone, Jeremiah Wright, and the Black Hebrew Israelites. I must admit, however, that I don’t know enough about any of these ideas to make a firm connection. I note that they seem similar.
The story of Yakub and NoI theology strike me as . . . how to put this . . highly implausible, as well as quite hateful and racist in an anti-white way.
BLM delenda est.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Back in 1989 I was forced to attend a workshop at my school that was being taught by a full tenured professor from the University of Washington. The purpose of the workshop was to show how important black people had been to the evolution of western civilization. Not much of that workshop stayed with me. For the most part it was total nonsense taught by a man who had quite obviously gotten his degrees through some form of Affirmative Action. What did stick was his description of the statuary of Greece as proof that the ancient Greeks had been negroes, as had the Romans. His proof: they were depicted with curly hair. Oh, yeah, he also said that the Egyptians were also black, this was a touch more credible as in some tomb paintings they are depicted as such, although the majority was not so draw and painted.
Now, one of my masters degrees was in Classical Theater with an emphasis on the theater of Athens, so Greek history and culture are quite familiar to me. I was, fortunately, self-contained enough to keep from correcting the professor’s idiotic assertions. At the time I was in a temporary position from which I could have been easily and permanently ejected. However, several years later I heard a good friend of mine who had gotten her Administrative Credentials through the University of Washington School of Education say exactly the same thing. I asked her where she had heard that nonsense, and she told me it was from that same professor in a class she had taken. At that time she was a vice principal in the building in which I taught. Our friendship had gone back more than 10 years. I had been the Special Education department head in another school at the time we met, and she had joined our department after being recruited out of Louisiana. She was a good teacher, sensitive and caring, and worked well with our population. However, without meaning any disrespect to her since she passed away several years ago, she was pretty much marginally illiterate. When she wrote Individual Educational Programs for her students I had to go through them and correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors before she met with parents and presented the program to them. Years later, as a vice principal, she had not improved her language arts skills. However, she did possess a Masters degree and a PhD from the University of Washington School of Education. As much as I loved her, and I did, she was ignorant and completely unfit for the role of administrator, but she possessed that position very simply because she was black.
Thanks. I didn’t know that. I can’t respond further without making an off-color joke, so I won’t.
Humans don’t have to create everything. Many – perhaps even most, if not all – things simply exist, and people eventually realize or discover them. Electricity existed basically since the beginning of time, and Franklin/Tesla/Edison/etc didn’t invent or created it, they just discovered how to make use of it.
That’s in terms of reality, anyway. You mention conceptual categories, which you could say that humans do create, but that doesn’t mean they got it exactly right the first time. Any more than the conception of “earth, air, fire, and water” was the final understanding of matter without need for atoms, or that atoms were the final step and there was no need for sub-atomic particles.
Shorter version: race may exist, whether you want it to or not.
Was he one of those who claimed that ancient Egyptians were not only black, but had wings and could fly? At least until the evil Europeans arrived and killed them all.
I don’t remember that, but given the rest of his theories I wouldn’t discount the possibility that he was the originator of that idea.
Maybe not the originator, I think Calypso Louie first claimed that, but may have stopped considering it was sooooo ridiculous.
Lileks’ eyebrow is a powerful force in the Greater Minneapolis area.
And on Ricochet too, for that matter.
Race is a purely intellectual construct. There may be genetic diversity but classification of it is purely an intellectual endeavor. And it serves an intellectual process, for good or evil.
What’s next, Labradors are the same as Poodles, and think the same, and behave the same? After all, they’re both dogs, and hence indistinguishable?
The ancient Egyptians did depict black people in many of their tomb paintings, but they were distinguished from the Egyptians themselves. These black people (to use our modern parlance) were most often from the ancient kingdom of Kush, also called Nubia, the ruins of whose cities, settlements, and temples are located in modern day Sudan close to the upper parts of the Nile and its sources. Ancient Kush and ancient Egypt have a long history of interaction dating back to before 3000 BC and the 1st dynasty pharaohs. Kushites integrated themselves into Egyptian society, including service as archers in the Egyptian army and oftentimes adopting Egyptian culture and religion. The remains of Kushite temples located in Sudan that were dedicated to Egyptian deities are examples of the blending of these two cultures. During the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, relations between Egypt and Kush included outright warfare, Egyptian conquest of Kushite territory, and slavery. Throughout their multi-millennial interaction, however, there was plenty of intermarriage as well. The Egyptians did depict Kushites differently in tomb paintings, though, just like they depicted ancient Libyan, Hyksos (Levant), Minoan (Aegean), and other ancient peoples differently from themselves in dress, hairstyles, and skin tones.
Kushites conquered, became pharaohs, and ruled over all or part of Egypt in the 25th Dynasty from 747–656 BC. The inaccurate idea that blacks were the pharaohs over Egypt during its entire ancient dynastic history (i.e. Kushites = Egyptians) is based on the idea that kmt (pronounced “kemet”) is the word ancient Egyptians used to describe themselves as black. Mainstream scholarship contends that Egyptians used kmt to refer to the land of Egypt, as the Nile Valley was covered with rich black soil each year during the annual Nile inundation, which only ceased to occur when the Aswan high dam was completed in 1970.
You better ask St. Paul what it thinks of that term.
I really don’t like justifying racial distinctions by referring to dog breeds. It seems deliberately dehumanizing. And it is nonsense. Firstly, different breeds do not occur in nature. They are the result of the exertion of an intelligent external control of an insular and isolated group of dogs.
And even so, that is not but half-way successful in the short term of say only a hundred years or so. Breeding doesn’t work well from scratch, that is to say, from wolves to dogs or from foxes to foxies; there are too many genetic variables to control. Successfully creating a new dog breed does work with hybridizing preexisting domesticated breeds. I think someone brought up the rather swift domestication of foxes. Yes, it was done, but the result was not at all what was intended. In fact it was the reverse of intended. The domesticated foxes turned out to be worthless for their purpose.
I use the terms insular and isolated for a purpose, because they do apply to humans as well, in the micro. There are many islands in the pacific that are insular and isolated, and populated by a few tens of thousands of people, and it’s generally easy to tell which island a person comes from by his or her distinct appearance. So, what is the interpretation of this? Would you have each of these groups be labeled as individual races now? We’d soon have as many artificial races as artificial genders. We might as well go back the the former race classification system in Brazil, which depended upon morphologic traits apart from genetics.
As it is, genealogical distinctions are not even race-based in popular ancestry companies but instead refer to geographic regions or countries of origin as opposed to race. And this is because there exists no clear and specific genetic distinction between one supposed race and another.
@djej Thank you. As I mentioned, Ancient Greece was my area of interest. I have done some reading into Egyptian history, but not nearly enough, so much to learn and so little time, and Egyptian history spans such an incredible amount of time, unlike Greece which was a sort of blip on the radar by comparison.
Which reminds me of when I pointed out to a liberal that some dog breeds are more intelligent than others.
He immediately went into a spiel about how border collies have a stimulating environment …
If, based on the results of extensive, double-blind experiments, the FDA can approve a medicine for one race but not another, it’s difficult to go on claiming race is nothing more than an intellectual construct!
Human biological diversity may be compared to a mountainous area. To some extent you can decide to divide them into one, two, or three mountain ranges. But the mountains are still there regardless of what you call them.
On dividing the human race in different ways, somebody once said there are actually seven races of Man, five in the Old Homestead (sub-Saharan Africa) and two outside.
I’m an archaeologist who specializes in Bronze and Iron Age Syria, Iraq, and Turkey (a.k.a. northern Levant, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia), but I was given the opportunity as a grad student to teach the undergraduate Egyptology course for 10 semesters. I learned a lot by teaching, and you are correct, it is an incredibly long time span that one could study for a lifetime, much less try to teach it all in a single semester. Teaching it over and over again burned a lot of it into my memory, though.
There don’t have to be LARGE differences between races, for races to nevertheless be A Thing.
As far as I understand things there is such a thing as ‘race’ and it shows up in some external features and disease susceptibilities.
Of the big three races, there seem to be differences in IQ (not to be confused with intelligence and especially not to be confused with the value of a human being which almost never depends on so-called genius).
We are fascinated by IQ because it is one of the few things we can measure.
Whoop-de-doo.
It is an excellent tool for predicting which people will make it through a high-complexity university STEM degree. And it is also quite useful for proving to those who wish to feel greater that other people are lesser, but to me it looks a lot like phrenology in a lab coat.
Heh. But something a lot stronger is needed when dealing with Nazi types.
There are genetic predispositions to some diseases, and there are genetic relationships between people and and peoples, but that doesn’t mean there is such a thing as “race” with sharply defined, consistent boundaries. It can be a fuzzy concept.
Very fuzzy indeed. And plenty of interbreeding.
Good stuff, that.
Scholars like Charles Murray do not claim (and never have claimed) that there are sharply defined boundaries.
I have read most of this discussion and if it is acknowledged that there is such a thing as “race” what then is the utility of that?
That is the question.
Charles Murray gets accused of saying a lot of things he doesn’t say.
It is worth studying for the extraction of facts for better health outcomes.
And, until we quit trying to insist that races line up statistically within every profession and tax quintile, for preventing the automatic chalking up of differences to ‘systemic racism’.
The concept of “race” doesn’t contribute anything to that, does it?
Then why insist that there is such a thing as “race”?
Fun fact: DNA studies of 3000-year-old Egyptian mummies tell us that back then the ancient Egyptians had 7% sub-Saharan African ancestry. Three thousand years later, that number has risen to 14%.
So, were the ancient Egyptians black? Answer: mostly no.
I agree with your response on health outcomes. It seems genetics is a better bet for that.
And on the second item “race” is not very meaningful unless there is a definition regarding how one gets assigned or designated and I don’t think that exist since large percentages of the people on earth are mixed by almost any definition that’s adopted. And the mixed category keeps growing.
There’s a good deal of truth in the axiom that Islam is a political philosophy disguised as a religion.