Highly controversial Muslim leader in the United States Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, called Barack Obama the “Messiah” in a sermon recently.
“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth,” Farrakhan said.
“And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking,” he concluded.
Obama has been accused of the past of having ties to Farrakhan, a highly controversial black Muslim leader. The Obama campaign countered the attacks by denying any true, significant ties.
Although those ties may certainly not exist, one thing is clear: Louis Farrakhan thinks very highly of Barack Obama, he even uses the same words Obama uses frequently.
Does this say anything about Obama? Of course not. Politicians are not responsible for what any religious leaders say. It is worth reporting, though, that Farrakhan calls Obama the “Messiah” and clearly instructs his followers to vote for him. This is fascinating from a political, but also religious perspective; as a Muslim myself, I cannot help but be fascinated by the Islam of the Nation of Islam, which differs tremendously from Islam as I know it. It is a completely different, African American, kind of Islam which, in my humble opinion, is not ‘Islam’ at all. It is more of a distinctly African American religious sect than anything else.
It is interesting that the video of Farrakhan surfaces shortly before MSNBC reported that Obama’s Muslim outreach advisor secretly met with many controversial American Muslim leaders in September of this year, apparently in order to coordinate a get out of the vote effort. These controversial figures included Hamas and Hezbollah supporters Mahdi Bray and Nihad Awad. The conservative blog Gateway Pundit explained their views in a post published yesterday.
Watch Farrakhan say it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il9icsrv0X0[/youtube]
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