UNITED STATES: Black Muslims Mend Fences to Defend One of Their Own

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Jan 20 1995 (IPS) - Old foes of the black American Muslim community symbolically came together this week when Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan publicly defended the daughter of Malcolm X.

The U.S. government claims that Qubilah Shabazz, the 34-year- old daughter of Malcolm X, conspired to kill Farrakhan to revenge her father’s 1965 assassination.

But Farrakhan surprisingly announced Tuesday that the government had set her up.

The two camps split bitterly with the murder of Malcolm X. Activists blamed the U.S. government and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammed for seeking to silence the eloquent Muslim radical.

Farrakhan, who was one of Elijah Muhammed’s chief lieutenants at the time, has denied having anything to do with the killing.

The new developments may, however, mend some fences.

Farrakhan told a Chicago audience Tuesday the charges against Shabazz were an attempt to divide black people. He said he was “personally saddened” over the arrest and indictment of Malcolm X’s daughter.

Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, welcomed Farrakhan’s statement: “I was totally surprised with the extent of his humanity, and the understanding that my daughter had nothing to do with this.”

And Ron Kuby, one of Qubilah Shabazz’s attorneys, said “Farrakhan has shown a tremendous degree of understanding.”

“He knows that the real enemy of the Nation of Islam isn’t Qubilah Shabazz, the real enemy is the U.S. government setting them both up,” the lawyer argued.

Those words bely the bitterness that has burned among the divided Muslims since the day Malcolm X, who took the name El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was shot dead as he delivered a speech to loyalists in Harlem.

Farrakhan — at the time known as Louis X — was a trusted deputy of Elijah Muhammed, whom Malcolm X scorned as a hypocrite and a false Muslim. The Nation of Islam expelled Malcolm X in 1964, and threatened him afterwards for his efforts to set up an alternative, radical Muslim organisation.

Questioned about his shadowy role in Malcolm X’s harassment, Farrakhan — who succeeded Elijah Muhammed as the Nation’s chief — responded in 1984, “If we silence one of our own…what the hell business is it to you?”

Other people — including Betty Shabazz — have contended that Farrakhan made no secret in the past of his involvement in the 1965 assassination.

But now, with Qubilah Shabazz facing up to 90 years in prison and more than two million dollars in fines if she is found guilty of seeking to kill Farrakhan, some people have changed their minds about the Nation of Islam leader.

“The people responsible for Malcolm X’s death are the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), (then-FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover, and the U.S. Justice Department,” Kuby said. “They set the atmosphere conducive for his assassination.”

Many activists further argue that the government continues to play the feuding Muslims off against each other. The Shabazz case — and, in particular, the role of Shabazz’s alleged ‘hit man’ in the plot, Michael Fitzpatrick — may be just the latest chapter.

Shabazz herself pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of conspiring to hire Fitzpatrick to kill Farrakhan in a Minneapolis, Minnesota, court Wednesday.

Kuby argued, “Clearly, Qubilah is the least likely person to involve herself in any kind of criminal activity. She lived a totally peaceful, quiet and law-abiding existence until Michael Fitzpatrick got jailed on a cocaine charge and (then) met up with her.”

Shabazz’s lawyers contend that Fitzpatrick entrapped Shabazz in collaboration with the FBI, simply to pay off massive debts he had incurred from drug use.

Fitzpatrick, who went to school in New York with Shabazz, has had prior drug use convictions. More importantly for Shabazz’s defenders, he became an informer in 1977 to incriminate two Jewish radicals for seeking to blow up the Egyptian Embassy here.

“He got caught trying to blow something up and then he quickly ratted on his colleagues,” Kuby claimed. “After that, he became a provocateur and found a much more reliable means of paying his bills” — allegedly by informing on radicals for the FBI.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune Thursday cited two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, who seem to back up claims that Shabazz participated less actively in planning a plot against Farrakhan than Fitzpatrick.

The officials say the FBI has 20 audio tapes and almost an hour of videotape recorded last September that show Shabazz and Fitzpatrick talking about killing Farrakhan.

In the tapes, one official said, Shabazz “is not pleased. She’s coming up with reasons, objections, why (Fitzpatrick) shouldn’t do it…She objects that innocent people could be killed.”

Perhaps the most fitting bit of irony in the Shabazz case — which is to go to trial in March — is the similarity between that taped exchange and the plots to discredit black activists during the FBI-sponsored Counter-Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s.

During COINTELPRO’s operation, many groups — including Malcolm X’s followers and the Black Panther Party — were encouraged to perform acts of violence by people who later turned them in. In subsequent years, many convictions of COINTELPRO victims were overturned on rulings that the government had set them up.

COINTELPRO, one activist said, was designed “to discredit, disrupt and neutralise black organisations.” Some now believe the Shabazz case is more of the same.