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According to the Nation of Islam (NOI), Yakub is an evil scientist responsible for the creation of the white race—a "race of devils", in their view. Yakob created white people by a process of "grafting" from the original black population of the world. It took six hundred years for Yakob to fully whiten his creations. This was achieved under a despotic regime on the island of Patmos. The reasons for Jakob'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 1914.

The doctrine of Yakob was first proclaimed by the NOI prophet Wallace Fard Muhammad and was later developed by his successor Elijah Mohammed.

The name Yakob appears to be a transliteration of the Arabic version of the name , suggesting that Jacob's position as the father of the tribes of Israel had been adapted to position him as the originator of white peoples as a whole (including Jews). The idea that Jacob/Yakob was the founder of a deviant, corrupt people is probably adapted from late nineteenth and early twentieth century anti-Semitism, in which the concept of racial corruption was commonplace. The notion that the Jews were an 'artificial' people arising from corrupt racial mixing is found in the works of Alfred Rosenberg and other racialists. Though the NOI has had a history of anti-Semitism, the figure of Yakob generalises racial antipathy to white people, of whom Jews now form a sub-group