Why is Louis Farrakhan back in the news?

Louis Farrakhan, the 84-year-old head of the Nation of Islam, has been back in the headlines after a previously unreleased photo of him with President Barack Obama was published in January, and Farrakhan gave an anti-Semitic speech at his organization’s annual convention last month.

The Feb. 25 speech, which was given at an event for Saviour’s Day, a religious gathering of the Nation, ran for almost three hours. During it, Farrakhan said that the “powerful Jews” were his enemies, and that Jews were “responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men,” as well as other incendiary remarks.

A religious fundamentalist whose group has also been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Farrakhan is fervently opposed to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and his political positions regarding the country frequently spill over into bigoted remarks about Jews, which is why many public officials have avoided association with him. Farrakhan has denied that he is anti-Semitic and has even said that his father may have been Jewish.

Much of the recent coverage has been focused on Tamika Mallory, one of the heads of the Women’s March organization, who attended the Feb. 25 speech, and on Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., who defended Obama and Farrakhan after the photo came to light. Their reluctance to condemn Farrakhan has led to criticism from across the ideological spectrum this week.

>> What is the Nation of Islam?

The Nation of Islam is a political and religious movement that was started by W.D. Muhammad in 1931 and continued by Elijah Muhammad in 1933. It first became prominent after a man named Malcolm Little joined the organization. Encouraged by Elijah Muhammad, he changed his last name to X and became a minister in the movement.

Edward E. Curtis IV, the author of “Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam,” said that while estimates ranged wildly about how many bona fide members belonged to the Nation, he believes that there were tens of thousands of members in the 1960s and early 1970s. But he said that millions of others sympathized with the movement’s anti-colonial stance and were inspired by its most famous member, Muhammad Ali.

>> Who is Louis Farrakhan?

Born Louis Eugene Walcott in New York in 1933, Farrakhan joined the Nation of Islam in the mid-1950s and rose quickly within the organization, becoming close to Malcolm X. After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, he became one of the most powerful members of the Nation and its chief spokesman, the position that Malcolm X had held.

The Nation of Islam had gained followers around the nation in the 1940s and ’50s by providing something of a religious answer to anti-black racism. It was not widely recognized as an anti-Jewish organization during its early years. But in 1967, it became outspokenly and flagrantly anti-Zionist, in an expression of solidarity with Palestinians. That political position became a vehicle for Farrakhan to express his anti-Semitism. (Among his more infamous comments is his 1984 description of Adolf Hitler as “a very great man.”)

In 1975, when Elijah Muhammad died, the Nation split into two factions. The faction reconstituted under Farrakhan in the late 1970s retained the original name, though not the influence or support that it had when its leaders were Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Elijah Muhammad. Curtis said that today the membership could be in the thousands, and there could even be as many as 10,000 followers.

Farrakhan, whose name, the Anti-Defamation League wrote after the February event, is “virtually synonymous with anti-Semitism,” then drew national attention in 1984, when he exhorted his followers to support Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a radio address, he urged listeners to “make an example” of a Washington Post reporter who had reported that Jackson had used anti-Semitic terms in private. Jackson repudiated Farrakhan, but the minister’s support proved troublesome to his 1988 campaign as well.

He was back in the news in 1995 when he organized what became known as the “Million Man March,” a political and religious revival event in Washington.

>> Why were Tamika Mallory and Danny Davis reluctant to denounce him?

Mallory, who declined to comment for this article, did not respond to calls to condemn Farrakhan, for whom she had expressed admiration in the past.

On March 3, she said on Twitter that someone had brought to her attention that she had yet to tweet “my absolute position on how wrong anti-Semitism is.” A day later, she said she was “committed to ending anti-black racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia & transphobia,” but did not mention Farrakhan.

In an essay posted Wednesday, she said she had been attending Saviour’s Day celebrations for more than 30 years.

“In that most difficult period of my life, it was the women of the Nation of Islam who supported me and I have always held them close to my heart for that reason,” she said. The essay did not mention Farrakhan.

Coincidentally, the photo of Farrakhan and Obama had been published by the Trice Edney News Wire in January. The News Wire reported that the picture had been taken by the photojournalist Askia Muhammad during a 2005 meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and that Muhammad kept the photo under wraps so as not to hurt Obama’s candidacy. (Muhammad, in a 2012 blog post, said that he was an admirer of Farrakhan and that the minister was not an anti-Semite. He did not immediately return a phone call Friday requesting comment.)

Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for Obama, said Friday: “President Obama has denounced racism and anti-Semitism his entire life. That includes his public and repeated repudiations of Louis Farrakhan’s views over the years. Today is no different — he still rejects the harmful and divisive views Farrakhan continues to espouse.”

Davis, who was interviewed by The Daily Caller, a conservative news site, after the photo emerged, called Farrakhan an “outstanding human being,” and later said he was not bothered by the leader’s position on “The Jewish Question.”

After a monthlong backlash about that interview, largely in conservative media, Davis said in a statement to Forward on Thursday that “I reject, condemn and oppose Minister Farrakhan’s views and remarks regarding the Jewish people and the Jewish religion.”