Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan will commemorate the occasion by giving a keynote address. The effort will focus on hunger, street violence and political accountability, BET.com reports.

“This commemoration couldn’t come at a better time,” says Minister Rodney Mohammad, a member of The Greater Philadelphia Local Organizing Committee (LOC) and the media liaison to Minister Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, who created the Million Man March in 1995.

Read more at BET.com

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

RELATED STORIES

Sharpton, Hannity Face-Off In Spirited Debate Over Obama

Hannity: ‘America Should Go In Kuwait And Take All Their Oil’

According to the New Post, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with Nation Of Islam minister, Louis Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party, according to the New York Post.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s six nights in New York featured a secret sit-down with militant minister Louis Farrakhan, heckling in a hotel bar, and a fear of being rubbed out that bordered on paranoia.

The president shared a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street.

Read The Whole Story

RELATED STORIES

U.S. Walks Out On Ahmadinejad’s U.N. 9/11 Conspiracy Speech

Farrakhan Supports Islamic Community Center Near Ground Zero

Start Gallery

“We could charge you with being the most deceitful so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy,” he wrote.

Farrakhan has long accused Jews of wrongdoing in speeches, but he has rarely addressed Jewish groups so directly in writing.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group which distributed copies of the letter, said in a statement Tuesday that Farrakhan’s “anti-Semitism is obsessive, diabolical and unrestrained. He has opened a new chapter in his ministry where scapegoating Jews is not just part of a message, but the message.”

In the letter, dated last Thursday, the Chicago-based Nation of Islam leader said he sought a dialogue with Jews. He sent the letter to groups including the Orthodox and Reform movements, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the American Jewish Committee, a New York-based advocacy and humanitarian nonprofit that spearheads inter-religious dialogue.
Text continues after gallery …
Famous Black Muslims

Start Gallery

“This is an offer asking you and the gentiles whom you influence to help me in the repair of my people from the damage that has been done by your ancestors to mine,” he writes. “Your present reality is sitting on top of the world in power, with riches and influences, while the masses of my people … are in the worst condition of any member of the human family.”

In the past, Farrakhan’s most inflammatory comments have included referring to Judaism as a “gutter religion” and calling Adolf Hitler “wickedly great.” Recently, he has railed against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he claims is conspiring to trap the U.S. in a war with Iran.

Farrakhan echoed similar comments last Saturday in an Atlanta speech titled, “Who Are the Real Children of Israel?”

He did not respond to several messages seeking comment Tuesday. Farrakhan has over the years denied claims of anti-Semitism, arguing his remarks are often taken out of context and that criticism of Jews in any light automatically earns the “anti-Semite” label.

Related
PREVIEW: Cathy Hughes Interviews Farrakhan
Farrakhan Predicts “White Right” Trouble For Obama

If you were to walk into a room filled with the 2010 Los Angeles Lakers or the 2009 New York Yankees and started calling them “losers” and “bums” and “chumps”, they’d probably look at you curiously, smirk a little bit and maybe even laugh out loud.

You could probably continue to insult them too—so long as you didn’t launch into any personal or family-based attacks—so amused would they be by you and so certain would they also be that you were some isolated nut that was also totally harmless.

Meanwhile, if you tried the same stunt with the 2010 New Jersey Nets, you’d likely end up beaten to a bloody pulp and rushed out of the room barely breathing.

Why is this, you think?

Click here to view photos:

Athletes Behaving Badly

Start Gallery

Well, for the same reason there are no really good slurs against White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Most of the world is so convinced that a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is the thing to be that if you were to try to insult one, your attempt would be viewed as more of an indication of your own psychological distance from reality and not that anything was wrong with the people you were attacking.

Why do you think that those nutty Nubian Islamic Hebrews are allowed to stand on street corners and read excerpts from the bible that they always seem to interpret as slurs against Europeans?

Why do you think that for so many years, the Nation of Islam was allowed to say so many shocking things against white people while simultaneously being (on the surface at least) protected by the police?

Why do Black comics poke such silly fun at white audience members?

Because the white people that they’re supposed to be attacking see anybody that verbally attacks white people as sufferers of sour grapes.

They almost feel sorry for their verbal attackers and as a magnanimous exercise, allow the attacks to continue if only to show the world that despite their own obvious greatness, they’re good sports as well.

RELATED: Glenn Beck Compares Tiger Woods To O.J. Simpson

Now think about how Blacks react whenever other races insult us, most specifically, whenever other races use the “N-Word”.

Do we react like the Lakers, the Yankees or the Nets?

From The New York Times

Walking along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, they make out the lettering on kosher food shops and yeshiva buses, showing off all they learn at the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Midwood, where they both attend kindergarten.

Aalim and Aalima are not Jewish. They worship at a mosque affiliated with the Nation of Islam. But at the Hebrew Language Academy, they fit right in.

But as the school’s first year draws to a close, its classrooms are filled with a broad range of students, all seeming confident enough to jabber away as if they were elbowing their way down Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. Perhaps surprisingly, the school has become one of the most racially mixed charter schools in the city. About a third of the 150 students are black, and several are Hispanic.

Click Here For More

RELATED STORIES

L.A. Teacher Teaches Math Through Hip-Hop

NYC Charter School Students Outperform Public School Kids

Start Gallery

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

An interesting “stand-off’’ of sorts developed outside a barbecue President Obama was attending at a friend’s house Saturday night between followers of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on one side and members of the press and the U.S. Secret Service guarding the president on the other.

Just a few blocks from Obama’s home in the Kenwood/Hyde Park neighborhood, Obama’s friend Marty Nesbitt lives across the street from the ornate yellow-gold home where Farrakhan lives.

Text continues after gallery …

Start Gallery

For the past two years, when Obama has brought his family over to Nesbitt’s home, the press pool bus parks near Farrakhan’s house. This usually does not cause a problem, but Saturday night — as most of the city was indoors watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup finals — a bit of tension emerged on Woodlawn Avenue.

A pool report noted that as a dozen reporters and photographers following Obama stood on the sidewalk in front of Farrakhan’s home, someone’s foot touched the city-owned curbside grass.

Immediately, a polite man in jeans and T-Shirt emerged to ask the press to stay off the grass, the report stated. Soon he was pacing and talking on a cell phone. He went inside the mansion’s black wrought iron fence, crossed the well-landscaped yard, lifted a water bucket behind rose bushes and retrieved a walkie-talkie. He was heard to refer to “the CIA.”

Click here to read more.

RELATED STORIES

Government Illegally Spied On Nation Of Islam

EXCLUSIVE: The Nation Of Islam’s New Shoes

CHICAGO — Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, boasting his divine stature, on Sunday predicted trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and urged him to do more to improve the lives of blacks and the downtrodden.

The 76-year-old leader said the “white right” was conspiring to make Obama a one-term president, and pointed to his stalled efforts to introduce health care legislation as proof. He said those opponents and lobbyists were trapping him into a future war with Iran that could lead to mass destruction.

“The word ‘prophet’ is too cheap a word. I am a light in the midst of darkness,” Farrakhan said at the annual convention of the movement that embraces black nationalism. “It ain’t ego, it’s my love for you.”

An estimated 20,000 people attended the heavily guarded Saviours’ Day event at the United Center in Chicago. Followers — men dressed in navy uniforms and women in white skirt suits with matching hijabs — cheered on Farrakhan with shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”

RELATED: Farrakhan Says, “Don’t Be Pacified By Obama Election”

Farrakhan spent most of the fiery nearly four-hour speech recounting a 1985 vision he had in Mexico. Farrakhan has often described how he believes he was invited aboard an unidentified flying object he calls “the wheel” where he said he heard the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad speak to him.

Text continues after gallery…
Freedom Fighters

Start Gallery

He said that experience led him to inklings about future events, including the United States’ 1986 bombing of Libya.

Farrakhan recounted how his divine knowledge has allowed him to recognize countless warning signs over the decades — such as natural disasters such as the earthquake in Chile — and said they indicate impending trouble, including for Obama.

Dressed in ornate creme robes, he addressed the president directly:

“Your people are suffering. You can’t ease their plight, but you can use your bully pulpit. Speak for the poor. Speak for the weak.”

He said helping the Nation of Islam, which has worked to reform black inmates for decades, would also be an answer.

“Put some money on back of us,” he said. “We can reform our people.”

RELATED: THROWBACK: Farrakhan Goes In On Journalist About Nigeria

Farrakhan has vigorously supported Obama for years and used his presidency as a call to action for blacks. That was even as Obama distanced himself from the group for Farrakhan’s past comments that many considered anti-Semitic.

Supporters say Farrakhan’s words are often taken out of context.

Farrakhan continued his praise of Obama Sunday, and said the nation’s first black president was manipulated into disavowing Farrakhan.

He would not say if he and Obama had ever met on the issue.

“They all want to know did I ever meet with him and what did I say or what he say,” Farrakhan said in the speech. “I ain’t going there.”

WASHINGTON — Homeland security officials improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam, a black Muslim group, but government rules were “unintentionally and inadvertently violated” and only publicly available information was collected, according to documents made public Wednesday.
Internal correspondence shows the 2007 report – titled “Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks” – was created by an intelligence group working within the Homeland Security Department.
Hours after the report was issued, officials recalled it, deciding the report violated intelligence rules against collecting or disseminating information on U.S. citizens for an extended period of time. It had been disseminated widely over the Internet to numerous federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, several congressional committees, intelligence agencies and parts of the private sector, a reviewing officer found.

Nation Of Islam

Start Gallery

One official wrote, “the organization despite its highly volatile and extreme rhetoric has neither advocated violence nor engaged in violence” and should not have been the subject of intelligence gathering. The documents were released Wednesday as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit, but the DHS report itself was not released nor were any examples of what the analysts considered extreme rhetoric.
L.A. Broughton, an oversight official at Homeland Security, wrote in a 2008 follow-up memo that the document “discussed the possible succession of leadership of (the Nation of Islam) and the direction the group may take depending on who becomes the new leader, their personal philosophy and their ability to keep the organization from further splintering.”
DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said that since the report was created, the agency “has implemented a strong and rigorous system of safeguards and oversight to ensure similar products are neither created nor distributed.”
Messages left Wednesday for top officials in the Chicago-based movement were not immediately returned.
The Obama administration has pledged to be more open than its predecessor, and in the past year has released numerous previously classified details of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism programs, including how CIA interrogators used harsh techniques on detainees.
The latest release of government documents were the result of separate Freedom of Information lawsuits from two civil liberties groups – the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
David Sobel, the EFF’s senior counsel, said, “There remains a lot of material that continues to be withheld. To the extent that today’s disclosures indicate a new approach to the Freedom of Information Act, we welcome it.”
Even among the pages released, there were many sections blacked out or otherwise redacted, including a section about a congressional spending bill marked “talking points” that is entirely redacted.
Other documents show that an intelligence worker at the Defense Department claimed senior military officials provided false information to Congress in 2002, when lawmakers were conducting a joint inquiry into al-Qaida and the 2001 terror attacks.
The papers do not say what the intelligence worker claimed was said to Congress that was false, or say what became of a planned inquiry into the claim.
In another incident, workers at a counterterrorism center near Washington, D.C. were verbally chastised in 2007 for circulating a picture of three Guantanamo Bay detainees described by the government as “high-value” terror suspects, in an e-mail with a mocking description of the men. The mocking description was not included in the released document.
Included among the newly released documents was a Dec. 21, 2001 memo by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo saying that several criminal charges could be brought against John Walker Lindh, the U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan who is now serving a 20-year sentence for aiding the Taliban.
“He could be charged in federal court with treason, killing a federal employee, assisting a terrorist organization or unlawfully participating in foreign affairs,” Yoo wrote. “In addition, Mr. Walker could face prosecution in a court martial for either aiding the enemy or for war crimes.”
Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to lesser offenses, including carrying weapons against U.S. forces.
The data released Wednesday also includes 2002 correspondence with then-CIA director George Tenet over news organizations’ concerns in the wake of the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
The American Society of News Editors asked Tenet to issue a firm public statement that the agency did not allow its operatives to post as journalists. Tenet replied in a letter that it has been longstanding CIA policy not to use American journalists as agents or American news organizations for cover.
In a separate letter, a senior Washington Post editor told Tenet he’d heard U.S. military or intelligence officers may have pretended to work for the paper while operating in Afghanistan.
CIA spokesman George Little said Wednesday: “This did not happen, as the Washington Post was told at the time.”

RELATED STORIES

Farrakhan Says “Don’t Be Pacified By Obama Election”

Jackson And Farrakhan Call For End To Chicago Youth Violence

State police in riot gear rushed a downtown street to break up a standoff Tuesday between hundreds of black and white extremists who exchanged screams of “Black power!” and “White power!” during a protest over the state’s handling of the case of a black man who was run over and dragged by a vehicle.

A skinhead carrying a Nazi flag and a shirtless white man were arrested on a misdemeanor charge of suspicion of disorderly conduct before the protesters separated peacefully, police spokesman Lt. Danny Huff said.

The conflict began with a march by about 100 mostly black activists who avoided a designated “protest zone” near Paris’ courthouse and walked to the town square to chants of “Black Power!” and “No Justice, no peace!”

“We’re going to be boxed in?” said protest leader Jimmy Blackwell of the Tarrant County Local Organizing Committee. “No, we’re not your slaves!”

Once at the town square, the crowd ballooned to about 200 mostly black people on one side of a street. Across the street were about a dozen white supremacists, including four skinheads holding Nazi swastika flags. About 30 other white people were behind them.

The two sides shouted at each other while a dozen or so law enforcement officers kept them apart. After the groups screamed for several minutes and inched closer together, about 35 state troopers wearing helmets and carrying shields marched into the crowd. No blows were exchanged.

The rally in Paris, about 90 miles northeast of Dallas, is the third courthouse protest over the death of 24-year-old Brandon McClelland, whose mangled body was found Sept. 16 on a country road.

Prosecutors initially charged two of McClelland’s white friends with murdering him. But a special prosecutor dismissed the charges last month, citing a lack of evidence, after a truck driver came forward and said he might have accidentally run over McClelland.

Some of the signs at the protest read, “Friends don’t drag friends under pickup trucks” and “Who killed Brandon McClelland?” Another sign referred to the district attorney as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

The protest was led by members of the Houston chapters of the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party, which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers black separatist and hate groups.

Things grew tense early on when a member of the Panthers walked into the protest zone set up for white supremacists and stood inches away from a skinhead. The skinhead screamed at the black man to go home as the two stood inches apart.

“We’re not here for confrontation. We are peaceful people, but if necessary we are prepared,” Blackwell said.

Rock Banks, who says he’s the grand titan of the East Texas Ku Klux Klan, said his group met last week to discuss the event but decided not to hold a major rally because it would lead to more protests.

“If we showed up in force, with all of our robes on, they’d be back here in a month,” he said.

Banks’ wife, Donna Hupburn, said protesters were “trying to stir up racial unrest” and should instead focus on “trying to close crack houses.”

“You’re allowed to have gay pride, black pride, Korean pride,” she said. “Everybody is allowed to have pride but Caucasians.”

Few of Paris’ 26,000 residents watched the rally, which drew several dozens spectators.

Some said they were tired of the attention the protests were bringing to Paris. Roger Hutchings, an employee at a pipe fabrication facility where employees have claimed racial bias, said the protest was making the town appear to have a racial problem he does not believe exists.

“People here get along pretty good,” said Hutchings, who is white.

Prosecutors initially accused Charles Crostley and Shannon Finley of murdering McClelland by running him over in Finley’s pickup after a late-night beer run. They estimated that McClelland’s body was dragged more than 70 feet.

Finley and Crostley, who were released after eight months in jail, have maintained their innocence.

McClelland’s mother, Jacquline, who attended the rally, said she wanted answers about her son’s death “so I can get some rest and my son can get some peace.”

This was the week Finley’s trial was scheduled to start.

“They dismissed the charges, but we did not dismiss the charges,” said Deric Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. “Today, we declare Shannon Finley and Charles Crostley guilty.”

Crostley’s sister, Tracy White, said her brother was devastated by McClelland’ death.

“They make me mad because my brother is not involved in anything like that,” she said of the white supremacists.

Previous protests over the case by the Panthers and the Nation of Islam were mostly peaceful and resulted in no arrests. A handful of white supremacists have showed up each time.

To commemorate Malcolm X’s birthday, an icon who many consider to be the greatest Black leader who has ever lived, NewsOne presents this exclusive investigative story, photo gallery and video that, for the first time, speaks to Malcolm X’s first male heir, MALCOLM SHABAZZ.
TO WATCH THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO WITH MALCOLM SHABAZZ PHOTO CLICK HERE

Also Read:

Happy Birthday, El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

Malcolm X and Barack Obama: Far From Opposites

Malcolm X to Barack Obama: 44 Year Of Change

Top 5 Malcolm X Speeches

INTRODUCTION

His grandmother, Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, was killed in a fire he started 11 years ago. He was 12 years old. He had been shuttled in and out of correctional institutions until his release from Attica Prison in February 2007. Now MALCOLM SHABAZZ, 24, is on a mission: to clear his name, stay out of jail and rise from the ashes of his past.

During the course of a long-standing exclusive correspondence with Aliya S. King for NewsOne and GIANT magazine, Malcolm spoke candidly and introspectively about a checkered childhood, an unstable family life, and the burden of being the sole male heir to an icon whose life and legacy have transformed millions of lives.

The following are woven excerpts from hours of conversation with Shabazz:

People often describe me as troubled. I’m not going to say that I’m not. But I’m not crazy. I have troubles. A lot of us do. But you need to understand where I’m coming from and why I am the way I am. Considering what I’ve been through, it’s a miracle that I’ve been able to hold it together. I’m just trying to find my way. [I’ve read newspaper stories about me that] say, “Experts testify [that boy] is psychotic.” The way they describe me is wrong — bi-polar, depression, pyro, whatever. I know I’m not at all. Some of the things I’ve been through, the average person would have cracked.

All my life, I’ve had [moments where] I’ve lived in the lap of luxury in the Trump Towers and not wanted for a single thing. And the very next day I’m [living in] a slum in a gang-infested Philly neighborhood, eating fried dough three times a day. One minute, I’m in a situation with structure and discipline. The next minute I’m running the streets with no supervision at all. One of my aunts has a friend who is very devoted to his children. I was hanging out with them one day and all he talked about was [their] schedule and sports and taking his kids here and there. I wish I had that. I wish I had someone whose purpose in life was to take care of me. That’s how white people do it. They plan for [their] kids. We don’t. That’s cause we don’t plan our kids. I wasn’t planned.

Malcolm Lateef Shabazz was born in Paris, France in 1984. His mother is Qubilah Shabazz, the second of Malcolm X’s six daughters. She was only four years old when her father was killed right in front of her at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. According to her son, Qubilah grew up loving nature and being by herself. When she was still a young girl, she chose to become a Quaker. She later attended Princeton University, but left before graduating. As she told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a 1995 interview: “I was under a lot of social pressure, largely due to who I was. I did not fit the view of who I was supposed to be. I didn’t arrive on campus with combat boots and a beret, and I didn’t speak Swahili.” After leaving Princeton, Qubilah traveled to Paris, where she began studying at the Sorbonne. It was here that she met Malcolm’s father, an Algerian. To this day, her son says he has never met his biological father.

I am [my grandfather’s] first male heir, his first grandson. [I’ve read and been told that] he always wanted a son. No boys in the Shabazz family until me. I used to think [Malcolm X] was my father. My mother told me that. I would ask and she would show me pictures of her father and tell me it was my father. I can’t talk to her about him. Nothing in-depth. She acts like she doesn’t know about him. She was there. She was four years old and sitting right there [when he was killed]. I don’t think she’s ever recovered from that.

Also Read

Malcolm X and Barack Obama: Far From Opposites

Malcolm X to Barack Obama: 44 Year Of Change

Top 5 Malcolm X Speeches

CHILDHOOD

Qubilah left Paris when Malcolm was still very young and moved back to the U.S. He remembers them moving around a lot, living in such places as Los Angeles and Brooklyn. His mother reportedly took odd jobs at places like Denny’s to earn enough to get by.

How do you [fill out an application at] Denny’s and put down Princeton and the Sorbonne as your education? I felt like she was better than that. And I didn’t like seeing [her work those kinds of jobs.] When I was 3 or 4, we lived in California. I used to run away from home. My mother drank and she would be asleep and I would be unsupervised. [According to various news reports, Qubilah Shabazz has had issues with alcohol and mental illness in the past.] I was very adventurous [so] I would walk up [and down] the street. It would end with the police bringing me home. One day I walked to my day care center [which was] miles away. One day I got on the bus and just hung out away from home and no one said a word. Whole day goes by before anyone stopped me. [My mom] loves me. I’m sure of that. Everyone is not meant to be a parent. She didn’t hug me. She’s just not that kind of person. It used to make me upset and angry [when I was younger].

After California, Malcolm moved to Philadelphia where he lived with his great-grandmother, Madeline Sandlin, the stepmother of his grandmother Betty Shabazz.

She’s a very strong woman. Native American—very strong and stern and strict. She [lived] in North Philly. [Her neighborhood] was so rough. It was so bad, I couldn’t go outside [and] play. It was like being behind bars. I started school at [a private school outside of Philadelphia]. I went to kindergarten and first grade. These kids were rich. [The bus] wouldn’t go to my house. [It] would go to the corner. [The kids] would say, “You live here?” This [white] girl called me a nigger [one time on the school bus]. I didn’t even know what it meant. I [just] knew it was something bad. I wanted to be white. They seemed happy, like they had everything they needed. White was equal to happy and rich. And black [was] just the opposite.

My aunt Attallah was visiting [in Philly] one day. I was looking at a magazine and [there was a picture] of a white boy in a suit. [I took the magazine to my aunt] and I said “I wish I was white like this white boy right here.” She said, “Why would you say that?”

My great-grandmother couldn’t take care of me forever. I ended up in [upstate] New York living with my teacher for second grade [at the school I was enrolled in]. I liked her–I was calling her “Mom.” She had a 16-year-old daughter. I had a pet hamster [and] a bike. I [was] on the Little League team, I [went to] church every Sunday. I had a crush on a white girl named Heidi. I had stability, something I never had before and I liked it a lot. I was the only black kid in the entire school but [I had] a lot of kids to play with. [My aunt] came to pick me up for the summer and I think she didn’t like [the situation]. I was happy and taken care of, but I don’t think she liked it. She [took me] for the summer [and] as it got closer to September I [kept] asking [if I was going back to Kingston]. She kept saying yeah, but I never went back.

ADOLESCENCE

As Malcolm tells it, he led a nomadic childhood, living at different times with his mother, his grandmother and his aunts.

I was always happiest around my aunt Ilyasah. She always smelled good. I loved staying at her house because she’d always have a tidy home. I loved being with her. She was always funny. One day we were on [an] elevator and I was about to throw up. She cupped her hands up to my mouth like she was going to catch it. When we got off the elevator, I threw up everywhere, all over the floor, all over her hands, but she kept her hands there. That gesture showed how much she felt about me. [It] made an impression on me. I said back then [that] if I ever had a daughter, I would name her after Ilyasah.

[As for] my grandmother, I never saw her relax. She was speaking at colleges [and] going overseas. On vacation, she would take me to a hotel to swim and she would sit there with books and paper. I never saw anyone work that hard. That’s why I couldn’t live there full time. All [of] my aunts [also] worked a lot [so] I had to shuttle around. That was taught with school. My grades ended up being really poor even though the work was not hard. I wasn’t challenged and the teachers couldn’t make the connection because I was all over the place.

I started driving when I was 9. I would watch my aunt [Check with writer to determine which aunt] and memorize [each step]. One day, early in the morning I took [her] keys. I had difficulty starting [the car] at first, [but] I drove to school [and] parked [and] went to school like it was nothing. My aunt found out and came to school. They didn’t even believe her, but it was true. My mother put me in a mental institution after that. She was really angry. I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t crazy. I had done something wrong and needed discipline. But not [being sent] to a hospital.

[At the hospital] they start asking me all these questions. [Stuff like] Do you hear voices? I was into Marvel comic books at the time. There were two characters I liked, Mister Sinister [from the X-Men] and the Human Torch. [So] I was like, “Yeah, here’s my friend that told me to do it.” I just picked them out randomly and drew pictures of them. But I had no idea it would follow me that way it did. I was just making it all up. One time, my aunt came to visit me. She said “You know you don’t hear voices. You need to stop.” And I did. In my experiences, [the doctors] want to find something wrong with you. That’s how they get paid. When I [was in] jail, they said I was depressed and anti-social. I was in jail. I’m in solitary confinement. They gotta say something [is wrong with you].

TO WATCH THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO OF THE MALCOLM SHABAZZ PHOTO SHOOT CLICK HERE

As Malcolm remembers it, after he was discharged from the hospital, he and his mother moved to Minneapolis, where Qubilah had reconnected with an old schoolmate named Michael Fitzpatrick.

She said she was going for a fresh start and I was excited too. First we [stayed] in a hotel. They would meet there and talk. I heard them talking about Farrakhan. It stayed in my mind, but I didn’t really know what they were talking about. I found out later that there were cameras everywhere because there were federal agents watching my mom.

According to published news reports, Fitzpatrick was an FBI informant who helped the agency gather information about an assassination plot against Louis Farrakhan. Qubilah was arrested and charged with plotting to hire a hit man to kill the Nation of Islam leader, who she reportedly believed to have played a part in her father’s death. After his mother was arrested, Malcolm was sent to live in a group home and remembers being transferred to foster parents who he claims wanted to adopt him until they learned who his mother was. Qubilah was later cleared of the charges against her, but Malcolm says he didn’t see her again for almost two years, at which point she had resettled in San Antonio, Texas.

I went to a boarding school in Connecticut for a while. I lasted there about a month. They went in my property and found a laptop computer that belonged to one of the students on another campus. And they had this kid with a slash in his coat and he said I stabbed him. None of that happened, but my grandmother came and got me out of there. I know she was upset, but we never talked about it. That’s how I ended up back in Philadelphia. [When] I was 11, [I] had a fight with a 16-year-old kid. I’m going in so hard, my body goes numb and I couldn’t even pick up my arms anymore. I won that fight and [afterwards] I would come out [of my house] and people were different. [They said] “Don’t mess with him, he’s crazy.” [But] I wasn’t crazy. I was just scared. I had to adapt to survive.

[My grandmother] didn’t know the extent of what I was going through. I told her, but I don’t think she believed it. Malcolm was eventually reunited with his mother in San Antonio, where she reportedly worked for a radio station owned by Percy Sutton, who was Malcolm X’s attorney before he was killed. She also had a new boyfriend, who Malcolm liked right away.

He would give me hundred dollar bills [for no reason]. And he let me drive his car. We lived in a [nice apartment] with a balcony and a Jacuzzi. My mom was working at the radio station [and I was going to a] private school. We lived in a Mexican neighborhood and everyone made a big deal that I was from New York. [When you're from New York] all the girls like you [and] all the dudes hate on you. I got kicked out because my mom started drinking again. [And] her boyfriend ended up going to jail for an attempted murder [charge]. [Suddenly,] there was no food in the house. She’s not taking me to school [so] I’m falling behind. She wouldn’t get up to take me to school and I started falling behind. [One morning,] I woke her up to tell her to take me to school. She got belligerent. She tried to bite me. And I pushed her. She said I hit her, but I didn’t. She put me in a mental hospital for two weeks.

After that incident, Malcolm says he was sent back to New York, even though he wanted to stay with his mother.

All my life, I had been shuttled back and forth, living with this [person] or that [person], never knowing where I was going to lay my head or wake up. I was so sick of it. I wanted to be back with my mom. [The day I came back to New York] it was cold and rainy. My grandmother came to pick me up [at the airport]. I had the big skater pants [on] and the earring. My grandmother said, “Can we please get you to stop wearing those pants?” [After that] I started acting out. I was doing a lot of things–I was stealing money from my aunts to save up to buy a ticket [back to Texas].

THE DEATH OF BETTY SHABAZZ

In the middle of the night on July 1, 1997, authorities responded to a fire at Betty Shabazz’s residence in Yonkers, New York. According to reports, Malcolm X’s widow sustained burns over 80% of her body. Her grandson was held under suspicion of starting the blaze. On June 23, after several operations in the hospital, Betty Shabazz died. She was 63 years old. On July 10, Malcolm, then 12, pleaded guilty to the juvenile equivalent of manslaughter and arson. He was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile facility for troubled adolescents. He remained in state custody for almost four years. In April 2001, he was sent home with an electronic monitoring device, but soon ended up back in detention due to curfew violations. In January 2002, he was arrested in Middletown, New York on robbery and burglary charges. That September, he was sentenced to 3½ years in prison. He received parole in May 2006.

I didn’t mean for my grandmother to get hurt. I wasn’t thinking anything like that would happen. [I thought] she would go to the fire escape [but] she walked through the fire to get to me. I didn’t think she would walk through a fire for me. People say [to me] “Oh you are the one who burned down your grandmother’s house?” [But]…it didn’t really happen like that. I’ve always told the same story. [I was] coerced to say something else, because [I was told] it would be better for me. [I was told] I would go to jail forever…

TO WATCH THE EXCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO OF THE MALCOLM SHABAZZ PHOTO SHOOT CLICK HERE

Also Read

Malcolm X and Barack Obama: Far From Opposites

Malcolm X to Barack Obama: 44 Year Of Change

Top 5 Malcolm X Speeches

GALLERY: Michael Jackson’s Neverland Auction

When troubled pop king Michael Jackson is involved, even a yard sale can become an epic struggle.

A Hollywood auction house hired by Jackson to sell off the contents of his shuttered Neverland Ranch said it is pressing ahead with plans to put some 2,000 items on the block in April, despite the pop legend’s surprise bid this month to halt the sale.

Some of the glitziest items will be on display to the public at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square this week, including one of Jackson’s signature black fedoras, two of his MTV Video Music Awards, costumes he wore on tour in the 1980s and several crystal-encrusted gloves.

Jackson filed a lawsuit in early March, claiming that he had never given permission for the sale of many “priceless and irreplaceable” items.

The auction house, Julien’s Auctions, fired back in court papers, saying that Jackson’s representatives had been deeply and enthusiastically involved in the sale for many months, until a sudden reversal last month.

The company’s president, Darren Julien, said in a sworn statement filed with a Los Angeles court that the singer’s representatives even tried to intimidate him into postponing the sale.

During a Feb. 9 meeting at a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles, he said, one of Jackson’s employees warned that the auctioneers would be in danger “from Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam,” if they didn’t call it off.
Michael Jackson Convert to Islam
“He told us that Dr. Tohme and Michael Jackson wanted to give the message to us ‘that our lives are at stake and there will be bloodshed,’” Julien said, referring to Jackson business manager, Tohme Tohme.

Alan Gutman, a lawyer Jackson’s company MJJ Productions, said Julien was “desperate to divert attention from his own misconduct” and accused him of making “scurrilous attacks.”

“Unfortunately, in the course of this case, Mr. Julien has not felt constrained by the truth while trying to capture the spotlight for the auction or himself with sensationalistic and fictionalized references to supposed threats that never occurred or baseless speculation about potential sales of Neverland,” Gutman told The Associated Press.”

He said the consignment agreement in which Jackson purportedly gave up his right to take items back before the auction was also illegal and unenforceable under California law.

Tohme did not immediately respond to a phone message.

Julien said he didn’t believe the threat, and the two sides have since agreed to let some of Jackson’s property continue to travel on a publicity tour in advance of an April 3 court hearing. The auction is scheduled for April 21.

A similar preview of the items in Ireland earlier this month drew thousands of fans, and the auctioneers expect thousands more at a larger exhibition and preview in Los Angeles in a few weeks.

Julien estimated that the sale could bring in $10 million to $20 million — money that Jackson could desperately use. He reportedly has been experiencing financial problems for several years, and has not performed a major concert since 2001 — four years before his acquittal on child molestation charges. He recently announced a series of concerts in London that sold out in hours.

Jackson will get any profits from the sale, minus the auction house commissions.

In court filings, Julien’s Auctions said it was first contacted by Jackson’s representatives about auctioning off Neverland’s trove of memorabilia last July.

Darren Julien said he found the 2,500-acre property and its zoo and amusement park rides “in shambles,” but jumped at the chance to salvage decades worth of art, clothing and furniture, as well as stage props and several of Jackson’s awards.

He said the items were removed over several months under the supervision of Jackson’s agentsand that the singer’s employees were also involved in drafting press releases, approving auction catalog covers and negotiating a deal to give 5 percent of the proceeds to charity.

“Its upsetting to me,” Julien said of the lawsuit.

But he said he was still intent on giving Jackson, his client, a “first-class auction.”

“There will never be another artist or celebrity like Michael Jackson,” Julien said. “He has the most dedicated fans of anyone we have ever worked with.”

In this video, rapper, Snoop Dogg, addresses the NAtion of Islam and calls himself the “leader of the Hip Hop community.”

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Rapper Snoop Dogg made an appearance Sunday at the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours Day convention, praising Minister Louis Farrakhan and suggesting that he is a member of the movement.

Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, gave a $1,000 donation to the Nation and said he will always seek the minister out.

The rapper called himself the “leader of the hip-hop community” and said it was his first Saviours Day event. He told followers that he would share the information he gathered with other musicians.

“When you get a speech from Minister Farrakhan it’s about a mirror, it’s about looking at yourself,” the rapper later told The Associated Press. “It’s about seeing yourself and what you can do to better the situation … We’re doing a lot of wrongs among ourselves that need correcting.”

When asked by the AP if he planned to convert and become a member of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam, Snoop said he has already joined in the movement.

“I’m already in the Nation, that’s why I’m here,” he said. “I’m an advocate for peace. I’ve been in the peace movement ever since I’ve been making music. My whole thing is not about really trying to push my thing on you. It’s just about the way I live, and I live how I’m supposed to live as far as doing what’s right and representing what’s right. That’s why I was here today.”

The rapper did not elaborate on when he’d joined the Nation. Messages left for Nation of Islam officials were not immediately returned Sunday. Attempts to reach the rapper’s publicist were unsuccessful.

During the speech Sunday, Snoop sat on stage behind Farrakhan clapping and nodding.

Snoop declined to say how long he would be in the Chicago area or whether he was working on any projects. His last album, “Ego Trippin,’” was released in March 2008.

Farrakhan has long held relationships with famous rappers and hip-hop artists. He has hosted and spoken at hip-hop conventions, encouraging peace between rappers.

Rapper Doug E. Fresh also attended the convention but didn’t speak publicly. Rapper T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris, appeared via recorded video. He told followers that education is the key to success.

After months of silence about his support for Barack Obama, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said in an address Sunday that the new president-elect has a God-given capacity to handle any burdens he’ll face as the nation’s leader.

Farrakhan added that Obama will be able to make positive changes only with help from “God and people of goodwill,” and he urged followers of the Chicago-based black nationalist movement to do their part.

“President-elect Obama has energized all segments of the depressed, downtrodden, rejected and despised,” he said in a 90-minute speech at Mosque Maryam on the city’s South Side. “Now it is up to us to take the new energy that he has given us … and channel that energy into making ourselves better.”

Dressed in intricately decorated red and gold robes and a matching fez, the once-ailing 75-year-old leader spoke to more than 1,000 followers in an address called “America’s New Beginning: President-elect Barack Obama.”

Farrakhan, who said Obama draws a “oneness of spirit” from all people, admitted he stayed quiet about his support for Obama during the past few months out of fear his words would harm the Illinois senator’s bid for the White House.

In February, Farrakhan praised Obama, calling him “the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better” at a Saviours’ Day event in Chicago.

But Obama quickly distanced himself from Farrakhan, denouncing the minister’s support during a presidential debate with then-Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama said he objected to Farrakhan’s past statements about Judaism, which many have considered anti-Semitic. Nation of Islam officials have said Farrakhan’s comments are often taken out of context.

On Sunday, Farrakhan said Obama faced unfair scrutiny for his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, who was shown making fiery statements about the U.S. government in widely circulated video clips. Obama was also criticized because of the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Chicago priest who mocked Clinton at Wright and Obama’s former church, Trinity United Church of Christ.

“For nine months, I kept quiet because I saw that the good words that I spoke about this beautiful young man at our Saviours’ Day convention and the way they were misused,” Farrakhan said of Obama. “I decided it would be better for me to just be quiet rather than be drawn into the controversy that was swirling around his pastor, Father Pfleger, and others.”

Farrakhan then added with a smile, “I feel freer today to say the things that are in my heart.”

He thanked black leaders including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, for laying the foundation for Obama’s victory, which he called Divine.

The Nation of Islam has espoused black nationalism and self-reliance since it was founded in the 1930s, but has reached out more lately to other groups, including immigrants.

Farrakhan has haltingly tried to move the Nation toward traditional Islam, which considers the American movement heretical.

He has also downplayed some of the group’s more controversial beliefs. The Nation of Islam has taught that whites are descended from the devil and that blacks are the chosen people of Allah.

“We are taking the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to a new level and that new level will represent a new beginning and another stage of our evolutionary development,” said the 75-year old minister, noting the NOI is steadily expanding its outreach toward Caribbean, Asian and Latino populations while continuing to champion the cause of African Americans.

The Sunday event at the renovated mosque -attended by an overflow crowd of over 8000 people and streamed live on the Internet-reinforced Farrakhan’s emerging global tone, a step closer to the more traditional Islamic approach of Imam Warith Dean Mohammad, the recently deceased son of Elijah Muhammad who broke with the NOI upon his father’s death in 1975.

What is also emerging-given Farrakhan’s age, his recent battles with prostate cancer and his current internationalist bent-is the likelihood he’s paving the way for his assistant minister, Ishmael Muhammad, to secede him in his leadership of the 78-year old organization.

“The Nation of Islam has always had their own internal politics,” says Scot Brown, a history professor at UCLA with a focus on Black Nationalist organizations. “But if Farrakhan publicly sanctions it [Ishmael's ascendancy], it will be a very important move in that he is putting legitimacy behind his chosen successor.”

But who is Ishmael Muhammad?

Speculators on NOI’s future leadership have often defined the 44-year old Ishmael by who he isn’t-Farrakhan. Critics and supporters both acknowledge the charismatic and controversial minister-who reestablished the fledgling organization three decades ago, convened the historic Million Man March thirteen years ago this month, and whose support was denounced multiple times by the association-wary Obama campaign earlier this year-is a hard act to follow.

Farrakhan’s impact on the African American psyche has been indelible, as the Muslim leader will long be regarded as a fearless and uncensored advocate for black empowerment regardless of the diverse religious affiliations within our community. Like Malcolm before him, Farrakhan has acted as black America’s ideological bookend, one expected to speak truth to power while reminding us of our unique and often precarious relationship with a country that, at worst, has enslaved and decimated us, and, at most, strives to tolerate and assimilate us.

Indeed, these are large shoes to fill.

However, instead of measuring Ishmael by who he isn’t, let’s examine who he is. The son of Elijah Muhammad and prominent NOI writer, lecturer and spiritual advisor, Tynetta Muhammad, Ishmael has acted as the chief Assistant Minister to Farrakhan for well over a decade and as an executive board member of the organization. He is commonly credited with managing the daily operations of the NOI, especially given his superior’s ongoing health problems.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964, Ishmael had little contact with his late and legendary father, a fact, he acknowledges, has impacted him well into adulthood. “I appreciate the few moments and words he shared with me personally,” offered the then 36-year old minister in a March 2001 interview with The Final Call. “But then the teenage years, the adolescent period of human development, were very difficult because I needed guidance… to this day, I still yearn to talk to my father like a son, to have him help me in a few areas that I’m struggling with in my development.”

Prior to being requested by Farrakhan to assist at the organization’s Chicago headquarters, the eloquent and professorial Ishmael resided and studied in Cuernavaca, Mexico for 17 years where he focused on Quranic and Biblical scriptures. The husband and father of seven children speaks fluent Spanish and has traveled extensively throughout five continents.

Given his bilingual fluency, his internationalist perspective, and the NOI’s more inclusive approach-instead of being groomed to eventually fill Farrakhan’s shoes-it appears the Assistant Minister is being prepped to don a different style of footwear altogether.

During Farrakhan’s two-hour address on Sunday, which covered an array of topics including education, race relations and unity among religions, he addressed the plight of immigrants south of U.S. borders by stressing to his largely African American audience that they “are not trying to take your jobs. They are trying to survive.”

While the NOI has had a Latino presence within its ranks at least as far back as the 1970s, its recent outreach via its Latino liaison and its involvement in immigrant rights rallies represents a renewed effort at recruitment. Ishmael, who has consistently talked about unity among all people, has been known to deliver pro-immigrant rallies in Spanish. Farrakhan also renewed a call for many to return to the basic tenets of Islam, a move fully supported by Ishmael and one partially aimed at attracting the large number of supporters of the late W.D. Mohammed.

At an August 2007 event at the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Health, Mohammed -whose public relationship with Farrakhan ranged from contentious to friendly-suggested that Ishmael was prepared to represent an ideological shift and “clear up the destruction of the religion in the Nation of Islam.”

“I think there’s a merger coming, a quiet merging of leaders of the Nation of Islam and leaders in my community,” offered Mohammed, the former head of the American Society of Muslims, an inclusive organization stressing a more traditional interpretation of Islam.

The late Mohammed had also used the occasion to note that student ministers from the NOI had increasingly engaged in joint studies of the Koran with orthodox Muslims. And despite their differences, Mohammed had repeatedly vowed -most notably at his organization’s annual convention in 2002-to work with the NOI to bring about “a united Muslim community in America that would show the true brotherhood of Islam.”

Talk of new beginnings and potential mergers are not surprising to Brown. “The Nation is one of the oldest existing black organizations in the country. To survive, it has gone through a number of changes and will continue to do so,” says Brown, adding “this is a continuation of that historical pattern.”

Given his apparent positioning of Ishmael, and his promotion of the NOI’s more global and traditional “new beginning,” Farrakhan certainly recognizes the value of a united Muslim community in America as well as the necessity of expanding his organization’s mission in these rapidly changing times.

Still, during his recent address, he provided justification for the Nation of Islam’s focus in the previous century on its separatist ideological and its primary concentration on African Americans.

This may have  “turned a lot of people off,” Farrakhan said. “But they don’t know what happened to us.”

Watch Ishmael Muhammad speak here: