Nation of Islam Antisemitic Propaganda

The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 in Chicago. It has national headquarters at Mosque Maryam at 7351 South Stony Island Ave. in Chicago, making it a close neighbor to Illinois Congressional District 7. Louis Farrakhan himself, head of the Chicago Mosque and now 92 years old, has a home in the Kenwood area (next to Hyde Park).

While his influence has waned over the past few years, the Chicago area and the 7th Congressional District has experienced the influence of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. For over forty years, Farrakhan has regularly made antisemitic statements referring to Jews as “Satanic,” the “enemy of God,” calling Judaism a “gutter religion,” and praising Adolf Hitler.

Especially damaging, in 1991 and under Farrakhan’s leadership, the Nation of Islam published or promoted false conspiracies stating that Jews controlled the Transatlantic Slave Trade—debunked as early as 1992 by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., and as recently as December 2025 in a new documentary. (See Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.)

In 2018, Congressman Danny Davis stated in an interview that Louis Farrakhan was an “outstanding human being” and refused to condemn his antisemitic statements (he later walked back some of these statements when pressed).

Farrakhan is identified as an antisemite by the ADL as well as by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which also highlighted his anti-LGBTQ views.

Farrakhan’s influence was felt during the 2017 Women’s March when two national organizers, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, reportedly defended Farrakhan and pressed upon their Jewish co-organizers the libel that Jews were disproportionately responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of Black and brown people. (Tablet Magazine.) The damage this caused to the effort to mobilize against the first Trump administration is incalculable.

It is important that candidates who seek to represent Jewish voters in the district repudiate these teachings.

For an excellent new PBS series by renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, repudiating antisemitism in the Black community and anti-Black racism in the Jewish community, including addressing the antisemitic slave trade myth, see Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.