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{{Short description|Figure in the mythology of the Nation of Islam}}
:'''''Name:''' This article covers the figure in the theology of the ]. The name, also spelled Yaqub or Yakob, also applies to the Islamic view of the Biblical ]. See ] and ] for information on the latter.''
{{pp|small=yes}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2024}}{{other people||Yakub}}
]'s ''The Holy Tablets'', 1993|upright=1.2|alt=Black and white front-facing drawing of a black man with a bulbous, oversized head.]]
{{Nation of Islam|Beliefs}}
'''Yakub''' (also spelled '''Yacub''' or '''Yaqub''') is a figure in the mythology of the ] (NOI) and its offshoots. According to the NOI's doctrine, Yakub was a black Meccan ] who lived 6,600 years ago and created the ]. According to the story, following his discovery of the ], he gathered followers and began the creation of the white race through a form of ] referred to as "grafting" on the island of ]; Yakub died at the age of 150, but his followers continued the process after his death. According to the NoI, the white race was created with an evil nature, and were destined to rule over black people for a period of 6,000 years through the practice of "tricknology", which ended in 1914.


The story and idea of Yakub originated in the writings of the NOI's founder ]. Scholars have variously traced its origins in Fard's thought to the idea of the Yakubites propounded by the ], the ], or alternatively say it may have been created originally with little basis in any other tradition. Scholars have argued the tale is an example of a black ], with similarities to ] with Yakub as ], as well as the story of ]. It has also been interpreted as a reversal of the contemporary racist ideas that asserted the inferiority of black people.
According to the ] (NOI), '''Yakub''' (also spelled '''Yacub'''), was an evil scientist responsible for creating the ] — a "race of devils", in their view. Yakub created white people by a process of "grafting" from the original black population of the world. It took six hundred years for Yakub and his successors to fully whiten his creations. This was achieved under a despotic regime on the island of ]. The reasons for Yakub's actions are unclear. His progeny are destined to rule for six thousand years before the original black peoples of the world regain dominance, a process that began in ].


The story has, throughout its history, caused disputes within the NOI. Under its current leader ], the NOI continues to assert that the story of Yakub is true, not a metaphor, and has been proven by modern science. Several other splinter groups and other black nationalist religious organizations, including the ], the ] and the ], share a belief in Yakub.
The doctrine of Yakub was first proclaimed by ] and was later developed by his successor ].


==Summary==
The name Yakub is a variant of the Semitic name referred to in European language versions of the Bible as ] or in modern Jewish communities as "Ya`akov". Fard Muhammad appears to have adapted the Biblical Jacob's role as the father of the ] to reposition him as the originator of white peoples as a whole (including Jews). The idea that Jacob/Yakub was the founder of a deviant, corrupt people is probably adapted from late nineteenth and early twentieth century ], in which the concept of racial degeneration was commonplace. The notion that the ] were an 'artificial' people arising from corrupt racial mixing is found in the works of ] and other ]. Yakub's "grafting" activities seem to refer to the ideas of ], popular at the time. Though the NOI has had a history of anti-Semitism, the figure of Yakub generalizes racial antipathy to all white people, of whom Jews now form a sub-group.
=== Original version ===
According to the story, at the start of human history, a variety of types of black people inhabited the moon; when a black "god-scientist" became frustrated that all those living on the moon did not speak one language, he blew up the moon. A piece of this destroyed moon became the Earth, which was then populated by a community of surviving, morally righteous black people, some of whom settled in the city of ].{{sfn|Nelson|2006|p=140}} Yakub was born a short distance outside the city, and was among the third of original black people who were discontented with life in this society.{{sfn|Nelson|2006|p=141}} A member of the Meccan branch of the ], Yakub acquired the nickname "big head", because of ] and arrogance.<ref name="Gomez2005" />


At the age of six, he discovered the ] by playing with ]s made of ].<ref name="Gomez2005">{{harvnb|Gomez|2005|p=311}}</ref> He connected this to the rules of human attraction: the "unlike" people would attract, manipulate the original "like" people.{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}}{{sfn|GhaneaBassiri|1997|p=146}} By the age of 18, he had finished his education and had learned everything that Mecca's universities had to teach him, widely known as a successful scientist.{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}}{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=147|2a1=Curtis IV|2y=2016|2p=15}} He then discovered that the original black man contained both a "black germ" and a "brown germ", with the brown being the recessive one, and believed that if he could separate them by "grafting", he could graft the brown germ into a white germ.{{sfn|GhaneaBassiri|1997|p=146}}{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}} This insight led to a plan to create a new people, who, using tricks and lies, could rule the original black man and destroy them.<ref name="Gomez2005" />{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}}
In recent times, the so-called "doctrine of Yakub" has been rationalised within the NOI as an ] for the evolution of whites from the original black-skinned human populations of Africa, and as a ] warning of the dangers of eugenics. Yakub's six hundred year experiment is seen as colorful storytelling, little different from the Bible's account of God creating Eve from Adam's rib, or the creation of heaven and earth in six days. In his autobiography (ghostwritten by ]), ] notes that, in his travels in the Middle East, many Muslims reacted with shock upon their discovery of the doctrine of Yakub.


He attracted a following but caused trouble, leading the Meccan authorities to exile him and his 59,999 followers.{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=147|2a1=Curtis IV|2y=2016|2p=15|3a1=Finley|3y=2022|3p=30}}{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=148|2a1=Tsoukalas|2y=2004|2pp=453–454|3a1=Curtis IV|3y=2016|3p=15|4a1=Finley|4y=2022|4pp=30-31}} They then went to an isle in the ] called Pelan, which Elijah Muhammad identified as modern-day ].{{sfn|GhaneaBassiri|1997|p=146}}{{sfn|Deutsch|2000|p=106}} Yakub developed Christianity to fool the black people into supporting him and to trick them into not knowing their true history.{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=164}} Once there, he established a ] regime, starting to breed out the black traits of his followers. This entailed breeding new children, with those who were too dark being killed at birth and their bodies being fed to wild animals or incinerated.{{sfn|Deutsch|2000|p=106}}{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=148|2a1=Tsoukalas|2y=2004|2pp=453–454|3a1=Curtis IV|3y=2016|3p=15|4a1=Finley|4y=2022|4pp=30-31}} Yakub died at the age of 150, but his followers carried on his work as he passed down his knowledge. After 600 years, the ] was created.{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}} All the races other than the black race were by-products of Yakub's work, as the ] were created during the "bleaching" process, with the red germ coming out of the brown, the yellow coming from the red, and from the yellow the white.{{sfn|Nelson|2006|p=141}}{{sfn|Finley|2017|p=163}}
African-American Playwright ] wrote a play entitled "A Black Mass" based on the doctrine of Yakub.

The brutal conditions of their creation determined the evil nature of the new race: "by lying to the black mother of the baby, this lie was born into the very nature of the white baby; and, murder for the black people was also born in them—or made by nature a liar and murderer".<ref name="Deutsch2000">{{harvnb|Deutsch|2000|pp=104–108}}</ref> As a group of people distinct from the Original Asiatic Race, the white race are bereft of divinity,{{sfn|Gardell|1996|pp=59, 148}} being intrinsically prone to lying, violence, and brutality.{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=148|2a1=Tsoukalas|2y=2004|2p=454|3a1=Curtis IV|3y=2016|3p=22|4a1=Finley|4y=2022|4p=43}} According to the Nation's teachings, Yakub's newly created white race sowed discord among the black race, and thus were exiled to live in the caves of Europe ("West Asia").{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=151|2a1=Berg|2y=2005|2p=692|3a1=Finley|3y=2022|3p=32}} In this narrative, it was in Europe that the white race engaged in ] and degenerated, losing everything except their language. They were kept in Europe by guards.{{sfn|Gardell|1996|p=152}}<ref name="Deutsch2000" /> Elijah Muhammad also asserted that some of the new white race tried to become black, but failed. As a result, they became ] and other monkeys.<ref name="Deutsch2000" />

To help the whites develop, the ruling Allah then sent prophets to them, the first of whom was ] (]), who taught the whites to cook and wear clothes.{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=152|2a1=Finley|2y=2022|2p=32}} Moses tried to civilize them, but eventually gave up and blew up 300 of the most troublesome white people with ].<ref>{{harvnb|Muhammad|1973|p=120}}</ref> According to the Nation, ] was also a prophet sent to try and civilize the white race.{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1p=235|2a1=Curtis IV|2y=2016|2p=16|3a1=Finley|3y=2022|3p=32}} However, the whites had learned to use "tricknology"; a plan to use their trickery and lack of empathy and emotion to usurp power and enslave the black population, bringing the first slaves to America.{{sfn|Nelson|2006|p=141}} According to NOI doctrine, Yakub's progeny were destined to rule for 6,000 years before the original black peoples of the world regained dominance, the end of which was the year 1914.<ref>{{harvnb|Berg|2009|p=89}}</ref>

=== Nuwaubian version ===
An alternative version of the story was told by the ], a ] ] run by ]: this is set out in a roughly 1,700 page book called ''The Holy Tablets''. In the Nuwaubian telling of the Yakub myth, 17 million years before the first of many "intergalactic battles", the ancestors of black people (given a variety of names, including Riziquians) were gods, but subservient to the "Supreme God". Riziquians lived in another galaxy on a planet known as "Rizk", which was located in the "Original Tri-Solar System" which featured a "moveable throne"/spaceship, Nibiru.<ref name=":0">{{harvnb|Nuruddin|2006|p=|pages=161–163}}</ref>

In their telling the original protective atmospheric layer of this planet, necessary to protect from the UV rays of its three suns, had been destroyed by an evil being who was the leader of the fallen angels, ]. Shaitan had been asked by the supreme god to move, either off the planet entirely or to a different location on it. He refused, and instead set off an atomic explosion "like an H-bomb", destroying part of the atmosphere. The scientists of the planet were able to repair it with gold, but there wasn't enough gold on the planet, necessitating excursions into space on the Nibiru to mine gold from planet ], where colonies were established.<ref name=":0" />

The Riziquians did not want to mine gold, believing it was beneath their status as angels. They spliced genes of '']'' with their own genomes, producing mankind to do it for them. Humans originally had various psychic abilities, but after wars and ], the gland responsible for these psychic powers was removed from the human brain by the Riziquians. Yakub was born with two brains (the Nuwaubian explanation for the size of his large head), making him a genius capable of gene-splicing experiments, which resulted in white people. After his experiments were finished, one of his brains exploded, resulting in his death.<ref name=":0" />

==Origins of the story==
], the founder of the Nation of Islam, explaining the beliefs of the group to police following his arrest for ] committed by a member of the NOI. |upright=1.2]]
The story of Yakub originated in the writings of ], the founder of the Nation of Islam, in his doctrinal Q&A pamphlet ''Lost Found Moslem Lesson No. 2'' from the early 1930s.<ref name="Allen2000">{{harvnb|Allen|2000|pp=192, 213}}</ref> It was developed by his successor ] in several writings, most fully in a chapter entitled "The Making of Devil" in his book '']''.<ref name="Deutsch2000" />{{sfn|Curtis IV|2016|p=14}} The story of Yakub includes Jews as part of a wider artificially created "white" race.<ref>{{harvnb|Kidd|2006|p=268}}</ref>

In speeches by ], Yakub is identified completely with Jacob. Referring to the story of ], Malcolm X states that ] told him that "Jacob was Yacub, and the ] that Jacob wrestled with wasn't ], it was the government of the day". This was because Yakub was seeking funds for his expedition to ], "so when it says Jacob wrestled with an angel, 'angel' is only used as a symbol to hide the one he was really wrestling with". However, Malcolm X also states that ] was also Yakub, and that the ] refers to his deeds: "John was Yacub. John was out there getting ready to make a new race, he said, for the word of the Lord".<ref>{{harvnb|X|Karim|1989|p=53–54}}</ref>

Ernest Allen argues that "the Yakub myth may have been created out of whole cloth by Prophet ]".<ref name="Allen2000" /> Allen says the Yakub story could conceivably have been influenced by a real historical event during the struggle between Muslims and Christians for control of Spain. Muslim leader ] defeated the Franks at the ] (1195). After the battle, 40,000 European prisoners of war were taken to ] to labor on Yaqub's building projects. They were then set free and "allowed to form a valley settlement located somewhere between ] and ]. On his deathbed Ya'qub lamented his decision to allow these Shibanis (as they came to be called) to form an enclave on Moroccan soil, thereby posing a potential threat to the stability of the ]".<ref name="Allen2000" />

Yusuf Nuruddin says that a more direct source was the doctrine of the "Yacobites" or "Yakubites" propounded by ]'s ], to which Fard may have belonged before he founded the NOI. According to Drew, early ] were founded by a ] "named Yakub who landed on the ]", whose people evolved into "a race of scientific geniuses with large heads". Drew's followers said this was supported by the large heads of the ], which they claimed ]; Nuruddin argues this indicated that the Yakub myth was influenced by the Moorish Science Temple's theology.<ref name="Nuruddin2000">{{harvnb|Nuruddin|2000|p=192}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Nuruddin|2006|p=150}}</ref>

==Role in the Nation of Islam==
]The Yakub story attempts to rationalize "black suffering" through the lens of Islamic theologies, trying to give it a religious meaning and understanding.{{sfn|Finley|2022|p=16}} Even for those members who refused to take the story literally, it provided a useful metaphor for racial relations and oppression.{{sfn|Robinson|2001|p=39}} Elijah Muhammad repeatedly referred to whites as "the devil".{{sfn|Curtis IV|2016|p=16}} The Nation maintains that most white people are unaware of their true origins, but that such knowledge is held by senior white ].{{sfnm|1a1=Gardell|1y=1996|1pp=148–149|2a1=Knight|2y=2000|2p=165}}

The doctrine is not present or substantiated in mainstream Islam.{{sfn|Finley|2022|p=16}} As a result, it has led to controversy: ] in ] notes that, in his travels in the ], many Muslims reacted with shock upon hearing about the doctrine of Yakub.<ref>{{harvnb|X|Haley|1992|p=192}}</ref> When Malcolm founded his own religion organization, ], he did not carry over the concept of Yakub.<ref name=":1">{{harvnb|Robinson|2001|p=122}}</ref>

] reinstated the original Nation of Islam, and has reasserted his belief in the literal truth of the story of Yakub. In a 1996 interview, ], Chairman of Harvard University's Afro-American Studies Department, asked him whether the story was a metaphor or literal. Farrakhan claimed that aspects of the story had been proven accurate by modern genetic science and insisted that "Personally, I believe that Yakub is not a mythical figure—he is a very real scientist. Not a big-head silly thing, as they would like to say".<ref>{{harvnb|Gates|1996|p=163}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Ostow|1998|p=86}}</ref> However, he did later cease speaking of the related "white devil" concept.<ref name=":1" /> Farrakhan's periodical '']'' continues to publish articles asserting the truth of the story, arguing that modern science supports the accuracy of Elijah Muhammad's account of Yakub.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-10-24 |title=Myth or high science? Is there evidence of Mr. Yakub? |url=http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Perspectives_1/article_7371.shtml |website=The Final Call |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-05-23 |title=National Geographic Proves Teaching on Mr. Yakub |url=http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Perspectives_1/article_9878.shtml |access-date=2019-09-19 |website=The Final Call |language=en-US}}</ref> The NOI splinter groups the ] and the ] also believe in the Yakub doctrine.{{sfn|Andrews|2013|p=70}}

== Commentary ==
] in his book '']'' argues that Yakub combines elements of the biblical God and the ] concept of the ], saying that "Yakub has an irksome memorability as a crude but pungent Gnostic Demiurge".<ref>{{harvnb|Bloom|1992|p=252}}</ref> Nathaniel Deutsch also notes that Fard and Muhammad draw on the concept of the Demiurge, along with traditions of esotericism in Biblical interpretation, absorbing aspects of Biblical tales to the new narrative, such as the swords of the Muslim warriors keeping the "white devils" from Paradise, like the flaming sword of the angel protecting the ] in Genesis.<ref name="Deutsch2000" /> Yusuf Nuruddin also compared the Yakub story to the Genesis story, with the opposing group to the initial utopian society being comparable to the ] in the Garden of Eden. In his view the story of the later expulsion of Yakub was comparable to the expulsion of Adam and Eve, as well as the ].<ref>{{harvnb|Nuruddin|2006|p=148}}</ref>

Edward Curtis calls the story "a black ]: a story grounded in a mythological view of history that explained the fall of black civilization, the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas, and the practice of Christian religion among slaves and their descendants".<ref name="Curtis2006">{{harvnb|Curtis|2006|p=11}}</ref> Stephen C. Finley also called it a theodicy.{{sfn|Finley|2022|p=16}} Several commentators state that the story, by associating blacks with ancient high civilizations and whites with cave-dwelling barbarians and gorillas, both uses and spectacularly reverses the populist and scientific racism of the era which identified Africans as primitive, or closer to apes than whites. This drew on earlier criticisms of white supremacist ], creating a mythic version of "attacks on AngloSaxon lineage and behavior that had been voiced by more mainstream black thinkers during the nineteenth century. With these references the Muslims replicated the images of European savagery in the Middle Ages that were so pervasive in nineteenth-century black racial thought".<ref>{{harvnb|Bay|2000|p=213}}</ref>

==In popular culture==

The American author and playwright ]'s play '']'' (1965) takes inspiration from the story of Yakub.{{sfn|Nelson|2006|p=138}} In Baraka's version the experiment creates a single Frankenstein-like "white" monster who kills Jacoub and the other magician-scientists and bites a woman, transforming her in a vampire-like way into a white-devil mate for himself. From this monstrous couple the white race is descended.<ref name="McAlister2001" /> According to critic Melani McAlister, "the character of Yakub, now called Jacoub, is introduced as one of three 'Black Magicians' who together symbolize the black origin of all religions". McAlister argues that Baraka turns the Yakub story "into a reinterpretation of the Faust story and a simultaneous meditation on the role and function of art." saying that "As with Faust, Jacoub's individualism and egotism are his undoing, but his failings also signal the destruction of a community." He also compared his version of the story to ], in its conflation of "the six hundred years of Elijah Muhammad's "history" into a single, terrible moment of the creation of a monster."<ref name="McAlister2001">{{harvnb|McAlister|2001|p=105–107}}</ref>

According to Charise L. Cheney, the doctrine of Yakub has had a significant influence in rap culture, mentioning several rappers. She argues that the rapper ] (a member of the NoI), in his 1995 song "Keep tha Peace", uses the Yakub doctrine in order to explain "the roots of black-on-black crime and gang violence in America's inner cities", noting the lyrics:<ref name="Cheney2005" />

{{blockquote|text=I'm really not knowin' who to blame or fault / for this tension / I mention this gump / Yakub's cavey / the blue-eyed punk / playin' both sides against each other / now that's the real mutha}}

She also notes ]'s 1990 lyric, in which he announces that "his calling was to bring enlightenment to black people and an end to white domination" saying "Here comes the god to send the devil right back to his cave. We're gonna drop the bomb on the Yakub crew".<ref name="Cheney2005">{{harvnb|Cheney|2005|pp=81, 135}}</ref> ] of ] also refers to the story in his song "Party for Your Right to Fight", referring to the Yakub story by attributing the deaths of African American radicals to the "grafted devils" conspiring against the "Black Asiatic Man".<ref name="Cheney2005" />

== See also ==
* ]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

;Sources
{{refbegin|colwidth=25em}}

;Primary sources
* {{Cite book |last=Muhammad |first=Elijah |author-link=Elijah Muhammad |title=Message to the Blackman in America |title-link=Message to the Blackman in America |publisher=Elijah Muhammad Books |year=1973 |isbn=978-1-884855-14-6 |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last1=X |first1=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm X |title=The Autobiography of Malcolm X |title-link=The Autobiography of Malcolm X |last2=Haley |first2=Alex |publisher=] |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-345-37975-7 |edition=1st trade |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last1=X |first1=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm X |title=The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X |last2=Karim |first2=Benjamin |publisher=] |year=1989 |isbn=978-1-55970-006-1 |language=en}}

;Academic articles
* {{Cite thesis |last=Andrews |first=Pamela |title="Ain't No Spook God": Religiosity in the Nation of Gods and Earths |date=2013 |degree=Masters |publisher=]}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Berg |first=Herbert |date=2005-09-01 |title=Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims |journal=Journal of the American Academy of Religion |language=en |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=685–703 |doi=10.1093/jaarel/lfi075 |issn=1477-4585}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Curtis IV |first=Edward E. |date=2016-08-01 |title=Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam |journal=] |language=en |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=5–31 |doi=10.1525/novo.2016.20.1.5 |issn=1092-6690}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Gates |first=Henry Louis |date=Summer 1996 |title=Farrakhan Speaks |journal=Transition: An International Review |issue=70 |language=en-US |pages=140–167 |doi=10.2307/2935354 |jstor=2935354}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Nuruddin |first=Yusuf |date=November 2006 |title=Ancient black astronauts and extraterrestrial Jihads: Islamic science fiction as urban mythology |journal=] |language=en |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=127–165 |doi=10.1080/08854300600950277 |issn=0885-4300}}

;Books
* {{Cite book |last=Bay |first=Mia |author-link=Mia Bay |title=The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925 |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-19-771791-2 |language=en |doi=10.1093/oso/9780195100457.001.0001}}
* {{Cite book |last=Berg |first=Herbert |title=Elijah Muhammad and Islam |publisher=] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8147-9123-3 |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Bloom |first=Harold |title=The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post Christian Nation |title-link=The American Religion |publisher=] |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-671-67997-2 |location=New York |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Cheney |first=Charise L. |title=Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism |publisher=] |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-8147-1613-7 |language=en |jstor=j.ctt9qg0nz}}
* {{Cite book |last=Curtis |first=Edward E. IV |title=Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 |publisher=] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-8078-5771-7 |location=Chapel Hill |doi=10.5149/9780807877449_curtis |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Deutsch |first=Nathaniel |title=Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-19-511258-0 |language=en |chapter=The Proximate Other The Nation of Islam and Judaism}}
* {{Cite book |last=Finley |first=Stephen C. |title=In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam |publisher=] |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-4780-2341-8 |series=Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People |pages=15–45 |language=en-US |chapter=Elijah Muhammad, the Myth of Yakub, and the Critique of 'Whitenized' Black Embodiment |doi=10.1515/9781478023418-003}}
* {{Cite book |last=Gardell |first=Mattias |title=In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam |publisher=] |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-8223-1852-1 |series= |location=Durham |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=GhaneaBassiri |first=Kambiz |author-link=Kambiz GhaneaBassiri |chapter=African-American Muslims |title=Competing Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Angeles |publisher=] |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-313-29951-3}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Gibson |first1=Dawn-Marie |title=New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam |last2=Berg |first2=Herbert |date=2017 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-317-29584-6 |language=en}}
** {{Harvc |last=Finley |first=Stephen C. |year=2017 |in=Gibson |in2=Berg |chapter="The Secret... of Who the Devil Is": Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam, and Theological Phenomenology}}
* {{Cite book |last=Gomez |first=Michael Angelo |title=Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas |publisher=] |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-521-60079-8 |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |title=Muslims on the Americanization Path? |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-19-513526-8 |editor-last=Haddad |editor-first=Yvonne Yazbeck |language=en |editor-last2=Esposito |editor-first2=John L.}}
** {{Harvc |last=Nuruddin |first=Yusuf |year=2000 |in=Haddad |in2=Esposito |chapter=African-American Muslims and the Question of Identity Between Traditional Islam, African Heritage, and the American Way}}
** {{Harvc |last=Allen |first=Ernest |year=2000 |in=Haddad |in2=Esposito |chapter=Identity and Destiny: The Formative Views of the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam}}
* {{Cite book |last=Knight |first=Peter |title=Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-415-18977-4 |location=London; New York |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Kidd |first=Colin |title=The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 |publisher=] | year=2006 |isbn=978-0-521-79729-0 |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=McAlister |first=Melani |title=Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000 |publisher=] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-520-22810-8 |location=Berkeley, CA |language=en}}
* {{Cite book |last=Nelson |first=Alondra |author-link=Alondra Nelson |title=New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement |publisher=] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-8135-3695-8 |editor-last=Collins |editor-first=Lisa Gail |language=en |chapter=A Black Mass as Black Gothic: Myth and Biosacience in Black Cultural Nationalism |editor-last2=Crawford |editor-first2=Margo}}
* {{Cite book |last=Ostow |first=Mortimer |title=Black Myths and Black Madness: Is Black Antisemitism Different? |publisher=] |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-274-66070-4 |editor-last=Helmreich |editor-first=Alan |language=en-US |editor-last2=Marcus |editor-first2=Paul}}
* {{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=Dean E. |title=Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought |publisher=] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-511-60603-8 |language=en |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511606038}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Tsoukalas |first=Steven |date=October 2004 |title=Understanding the Nation of Islam: Toward a More Effective Evangelism |journal=] |language=en |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=449–464 |doi=10.1177/009182960403200404 |issn=0091-8296}}
{{refend}}

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Latest revision as of 06:06, 24 December 2024

Figure in the mythology of the Nation of Islam

For other people with the same name, see Yakub.
Black and white front-facing drawing of a black man with a bulbous, oversized head.
Depiction of Yakub from Dwight York's The Holy Tablets, 1993
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Yakub (also spelled Yacub or Yaqub) is a figure in the mythology of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and its offshoots. According to the NOI's doctrine, Yakub was a black Meccan scientist who lived 6,600 years ago and created the white race. According to the story, following his discovery of the law of attraction and repulsion, he gathered followers and began the creation of the white race through a form of selective breeding referred to as "grafting" on the island of Patmos; Yakub died at the age of 150, but his followers continued the process after his death. According to the NoI, the white race was created with an evil nature, and were destined to rule over black people for a period of 6,000 years through the practice of "tricknology", which ended in 1914.

The story and idea of Yakub originated in the writings of the NOI's founder Wallace Fard Muhammad. Scholars have variously traced its origins in Fard's thought to the idea of the Yakubites propounded by the Moorish Science Temple, the Battle of Alarcos, or alternatively say it may have been created originally with little basis in any other tradition. Scholars have argued the tale is an example of a black theodicy, with similarities to gnosticism with Yakub as demiurge, as well as the story of Genesis. It has also been interpreted as a reversal of the contemporary racist ideas that asserted the inferiority of black people.

The story has, throughout its history, caused disputes within the NOI. Under its current leader Louis Farrakhan, the NOI continues to assert that the story of Yakub is true, not a metaphor, and has been proven by modern science. Several other splinter groups and other black nationalist religious organizations, including the Nuwaubian Nation, the Five-Percent Nation and the United Nation of Islam, share a belief in Yakub.

Summary

Original version

According to the story, at the start of human history, a variety of types of black people inhabited the moon; when a black "god-scientist" became frustrated that all those living on the moon did not speak one language, he blew up the moon. A piece of this destroyed moon became the Earth, which was then populated by a community of surviving, morally righteous black people, some of whom settled in the city of Mecca. Yakub was born a short distance outside the city, and was among the third of original black people who were discontented with life in this society. A member of the Meccan branch of the Tribe of Shabazz, Yakub acquired the nickname "big head", because of his unusually large head and arrogance.

At the age of six, he discovered the law of attraction and repulsion by playing with magnets made of steel. He connected this to the rules of human attraction: the "unlike" people would attract, manipulate the original "like" people. By the age of 18, he had finished his education and had learned everything that Mecca's universities had to teach him, widely known as a successful scientist. He then discovered that the original black man contained both a "black germ" and a "brown germ", with the brown being the recessive one, and believed that if he could separate them by "grafting", he could graft the brown germ into a white germ. This insight led to a plan to create a new people, who, using tricks and lies, could rule the original black man and destroy them.

He attracted a following but caused trouble, leading the Meccan authorities to exile him and his 59,999 followers. They then went to an isle in the Aegean Sea called Pelan, which Elijah Muhammad identified as modern-day Patmos. Yakub developed Christianity to fool the black people into supporting him and to trick them into not knowing their true history. Once there, he established a despotic regime, starting to breed out the black traits of his followers. This entailed breeding new children, with those who were too dark being killed at birth and their bodies being fed to wild animals or incinerated. Yakub died at the age of 150, but his followers carried on his work as he passed down his knowledge. After 600 years, the white race was created. All the races other than the black race were by-products of Yakub's work, as the "red, yellow and brown" races were created during the "bleaching" process, with the red germ coming out of the brown, the yellow coming from the red, and from the yellow the white.

The brutal conditions of their creation determined the evil nature of the new race: "by lying to the black mother of the baby, this lie was born into the very nature of the white baby; and, murder for the black people was also born in them—or made by nature a liar and murderer". As a group of people distinct from the Original Asiatic Race, the white race are bereft of divinity, being intrinsically prone to lying, violence, and brutality. According to the Nation's teachings, Yakub's newly created white race sowed discord among the black race, and thus were exiled to live in the caves of Europe ("West Asia"). In this narrative, it was in Europe that the white race engaged in bestiality and degenerated, losing everything except their language. They were kept in Europe by guards. Elijah Muhammad also asserted that some of the new white race tried to become black, but failed. As a result, they became gorillas and other monkeys.

To help the whites develop, the ruling Allah then sent prophets to them, the first of whom was Musa (Moses), who taught the whites to cook and wear clothes. Moses tried to civilize them, but eventually gave up and blew up 300 of the most troublesome white people with dynamite. According to the Nation, Jesus was also a prophet sent to try and civilize the white race. However, the whites had learned to use "tricknology"; a plan to use their trickery and lack of empathy and emotion to usurp power and enslave the black population, bringing the first slaves to America. According to NOI doctrine, Yakub's progeny were destined to rule for 6,000 years before the original black peoples of the world regained dominance, the end of which was the year 1914.

Nuwaubian version

An alternative version of the story was told by the Nuwaubian Nation, a black supremacist new religious movement run by Dwight York: this is set out in a roughly 1,700 page book called The Holy Tablets. In the Nuwaubian telling of the Yakub myth, 17 million years before the first of many "intergalactic battles", the ancestors of black people (given a variety of names, including Riziquians) were gods, but subservient to the "Supreme God". Riziquians lived in another galaxy on a planet known as "Rizk", which was located in the "Original Tri-Solar System" which featured a "moveable throne"/spaceship, Nibiru.

In their telling the original protective atmospheric layer of this planet, necessary to protect from the UV rays of its three suns, had been destroyed by an evil being who was the leader of the fallen angels, Shaitan. Shaitan had been asked by the supreme god to move, either off the planet entirely or to a different location on it. He refused, and instead set off an atomic explosion "like an H-bomb", destroying part of the atmosphere. The scientists of the planet were able to repair it with gold, but there wasn't enough gold on the planet, necessitating excursions into space on the Nibiru to mine gold from planet Earth, where colonies were established.

The Riziquians did not want to mine gold, believing it was beneath their status as angels. They spliced genes of Homo erectus with their own genomes, producing mankind to do it for them. Humans originally had various psychic abilities, but after wars and Cain and Abel, the gland responsible for these psychic powers was removed from the human brain by the Riziquians. Yakub was born with two brains (the Nuwaubian explanation for the size of his large head), making him a genius capable of gene-splicing experiments, which resulted in white people. After his experiments were finished, one of his brains exploded, resulting in his death.

Origins of the story

Black and white photo of Fard sitting next to two police officers. He is reading a book set in front of him.
Photo of Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, explaining the beliefs of the group to police following his arrest for a crime committed by a member of the NOI.

The story of Yakub originated in the writings of Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, in his doctrinal Q&A pamphlet Lost Found Moslem Lesson No. 2 from the early 1930s. It was developed by his successor Elijah Muhammad in several writings, most fully in a chapter entitled "The Making of Devil" in his book Message to the Blackman in America. The story of Yakub includes Jews as part of a wider artificially created "white" race.

In speeches by Malcolm X, Yakub is identified completely with Jacob. Referring to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Malcolm X states that Elijah Muhammad told him that "Jacob was Yacub, and the angel that Jacob wrestled with wasn't God, it was the government of the day". This was because Yakub was seeking funds for his expedition to Patmos, "so when it says Jacob wrestled with an angel, 'angel' is only used as a symbol to hide the one he was really wrestling with". However, Malcolm X also states that John of Patmos was also Yakub, and that the Book of Revelation refers to his deeds: "John was Yacub. John was out there getting ready to make a new race, he said, for the word of the Lord".

Ernest Allen argues that "the Yakub myth may have been created out of whole cloth by Prophet Fard". Allen says the Yakub story could conceivably have been influenced by a real historical event during the struggle between Muslims and Christians for control of Spain. Muslim leader Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur defeated the Franks at the Battle of Alarcos (1195). After the battle, 40,000 European prisoners of war were taken to Morocco to labor on Yaqub's building projects. They were then set free and "allowed to form a valley settlement located somewhere between Fez and Marrakesh. On his deathbed Ya'qub lamented his decision to allow these Shibanis (as they came to be called) to form an enclave on Moroccan soil, thereby posing a potential threat to the stability of the Moorish empire".

Yusuf Nuruddin says that a more direct source was the doctrine of the "Yacobites" or "Yakubites" propounded by Timothy Drew's Moorish Science Temple, to which Fard may have belonged before he founded the NOI. According to Drew, early pre-Columbian civilizations were founded by a West African Moor "named Yakub who landed on the Yucatan Peninsula", whose people evolved into "a race of scientific geniuses with large heads". Drew's followers said this was supported by the large heads of the Olmec statues, which they claimed reflected African features; Nuruddin argues this indicated that the Yakub myth was influenced by the Moorish Science Temple's theology.

Role in the Nation of Islam

1997 photo of Farrakhan, the leader of the NoI. He is staring to the right, away from the camera, and wearing a suit.
Farrakhan, pictured 1997.

The Yakub story attempts to rationalize "black suffering" through the lens of Islamic theologies, trying to give it a religious meaning and understanding. Even for those members who refused to take the story literally, it provided a useful metaphor for racial relations and oppression. Elijah Muhammad repeatedly referred to whites as "the devil". The Nation maintains that most white people are unaware of their true origins, but that such knowledge is held by senior white Freemasons.

The doctrine is not present or substantiated in mainstream Islam. As a result, it has led to controversy: Malcolm X in his Autobiography notes that, in his travels in the Middle East, many Muslims reacted with shock upon hearing about the doctrine of Yakub. When Malcolm founded his own religion organization, Muslim Mosque, Inc., he did not carry over the concept of Yakub.

Louis Farrakhan reinstated the original Nation of Islam, and has reasserted his belief in the literal truth of the story of Yakub. In a 1996 interview, Henry Louis Gates, Chairman of Harvard University's Afro-American Studies Department, asked him whether the story was a metaphor or literal. Farrakhan claimed that aspects of the story had been proven accurate by modern genetic science and insisted that "Personally, I believe that Yakub is not a mythical figure—he is a very real scientist. Not a big-head silly thing, as they would like to say". However, he did later cease speaking of the related "white devil" concept. Farrakhan's periodical The Final Call continues to publish articles asserting the truth of the story, arguing that modern science supports the accuracy of Elijah Muhammad's account of Yakub. The NOI splinter groups the Five-Percent Nation and the United Nation of Islam also believe in the Yakub doctrine.

Commentary

Harold Bloom in his book The American Religion argues that Yakub combines elements of the biblical God and the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, saying that "Yakub has an irksome memorability as a crude but pungent Gnostic Demiurge". Nathaniel Deutsch also notes that Fard and Muhammad draw on the concept of the Demiurge, along with traditions of esotericism in Biblical interpretation, absorbing aspects of Biblical tales to the new narrative, such as the swords of the Muslim warriors keeping the "white devils" from Paradise, like the flaming sword of the angel protecting the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Yusuf Nuruddin also compared the Yakub story to the Genesis story, with the opposing group to the initial utopian society being comparable to the snake in the Garden of Eden. In his view the story of the later expulsion of Yakub was comparable to the expulsion of Adam and Eve, as well as the fall of man.

Edward Curtis calls the story "a black theodicy: a story grounded in a mythological view of history that explained the fall of black civilization, the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas, and the practice of Christian religion among slaves and their descendants". Stephen C. Finley also called it a theodicy. Several commentators state that the story, by associating blacks with ancient high civilizations and whites with cave-dwelling barbarians and gorillas, both uses and spectacularly reverses the populist and scientific racism of the era which identified Africans as primitive, or closer to apes than whites. This drew on earlier criticisms of white supremacist Nordicism, creating a mythic version of "attacks on AngloSaxon lineage and behavior that had been voiced by more mainstream black thinkers during the nineteenth century. With these references the Muslims replicated the images of European savagery in the Middle Ages that were so pervasive in nineteenth-century black racial thought".

In popular culture

The American author and playwright Amiri Baraka's play A Black Mass (1965) takes inspiration from the story of Yakub. In Baraka's version the experiment creates a single Frankenstein-like "white" monster who kills Jacoub and the other magician-scientists and bites a woman, transforming her in a vampire-like way into a white-devil mate for himself. From this monstrous couple the white race is descended. According to critic Melani McAlister, "the character of Yakub, now called Jacoub, is introduced as one of three 'Black Magicians' who together symbolize the black origin of all religions". McAlister argues that Baraka turns the Yakub story "into a reinterpretation of the Faust story and a simultaneous meditation on the role and function of art." saying that "As with Faust, Jacoub's individualism and egotism are his undoing, but his failings also signal the destruction of a community." He also compared his version of the story to Frankenstein, in its conflation of "the six hundred years of Elijah Muhammad's "history" into a single, terrible moment of the creation of a monster."

According to Charise L. Cheney, the doctrine of Yakub has had a significant influence in rap culture, mentioning several rappers. She argues that the rapper Kam (a member of the NoI), in his 1995 song "Keep tha Peace", uses the Yakub doctrine in order to explain "the roots of black-on-black crime and gang violence in America's inner cities", noting the lyrics:

I'm really not knowin' who to blame or fault / for this tension / I mention this gump / Yakub's cavey / the blue-eyed punk / playin' both sides against each other / now that's the real mutha

She also notes Grand Puba's 1990 lyric, in which he announces that "his calling was to bring enlightenment to black people and an end to white domination" saying "Here comes the god to send the devil right back to his cave. We're gonna drop the bomb on the Yakub crew". Chuck D of Public Enemy also refers to the story in his song "Party for Your Right to Fight", referring to the Yakub story by attributing the deaths of African American radicals to the "grafted devils" conspiring against the "Black Asiatic Man".

See also

References

  1. Nelson 2006, p. 140.
  2. ^ Nelson 2006, p. 141.
  3. ^ Gomez 2005, p. 311
  4. ^ Finley 2017, p. 163.
  5. ^ GhaneaBassiri 1997, p. 146.
  6. Gardell 1996, p. 147; Curtis IV 2016, p. 15.
  7. Gardell 1996, p. 147; Curtis IV 2016, p. 15; Finley 2022, p. 30.
  8. ^ Gardell 1996, p. 148; Tsoukalas 2004, pp. 453–454; Curtis IV 2016, p. 15; Finley 2022, pp. 30–31.
  9. ^ Deutsch 2000, p. 106.
  10. Finley 2017, p. 164.
  11. ^ Deutsch 2000, pp. 104–108
  12. Gardell 1996, pp. 59, 148.
  13. Gardell 1996, p. 148; Tsoukalas 2004, p. 454; Curtis IV 2016, p. 22; Finley 2022, p. 43.
  14. Gardell 1996, p. 151; Berg 2005, p. 692; Finley 2022, p. 32.
  15. Gardell 1996, p. 152.
  16. Gardell 1996, p. 152; Finley 2022, p. 32.
  17. Muhammad 1973, p. 120
  18. Gardell 1996, p. 235; Curtis IV 2016, p. 16; Finley 2022, p. 32.
  19. Berg 2009, p. 89
  20. ^ Nuruddin 2006, pp. 161–163
  21. ^ Allen 2000, pp. 192, 213
  22. Curtis IV 2016, p. 14.
  23. Kidd 2006, p. 268
  24. X & Karim 1989, p. 53–54
  25. Nuruddin 2000, p. 192
  26. Nuruddin 2006, p. 150
  27. ^ Finley 2022, p. 16.
  28. Robinson 2001, p. 39.
  29. Curtis IV 2016, p. 16.
  30. Gardell 1996, pp. 148–149; Knight 2000, p. 165.
  31. X & Haley 1992, p. 192
  32. ^ Robinson 2001, p. 122
  33. Gates 1996, p. 163
  34. Ostow 1998, p. 86
  35. "Myth or high science? Is there evidence of Mr. Yakub?". The Final Call. October 24, 2010.
  36. "National Geographic Proves Teaching on Mr. Yakub". The Final Call. May 23, 2013. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  37. Andrews 2013, p. 70.
  38. Bloom 1992, p. 252
  39. Nuruddin 2006, p. 148
  40. Curtis 2006, p. 11
  41. Bay 2000, p. 213
  42. Nelson 2006, p. 138.
  43. ^ McAlister 2001, p. 105–107
  44. ^ Cheney 2005, pp. 81, 135
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