Weapons of mass insurrection. (Cover Story: The Home Front).

Revolutionary zeal unites Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam with urban street gangs and radical Muslim regimes, creating a serious threat to America's internal security.

"I am God," taunted the D.C. sniper in a message left for police during the rampage that killed 10 American citizens. This profane boast led many commentators to conclude that a Muslim extremist probably did not commit the murders, since devoted practitioners of Islam would recoil from such blasphemy. But suspected sniper John Allen Muhammad is a convert to Islam who reportedly changed his name following 9-11 as a gesture of solidarity with Osama bin Laden's terrorist cadres. Assuming that no pious Muslim would refer to himself as deity, and that Muhammad did commit the crimes, how do we account for this apparent contradiction?

One important clue is that Muhammad is not an orthodox Muslim, but rather an adherent of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam (NOI). While professing a belief in the Koran, the NOI preaches a bizarre amalgam of mysticism, science fiction, and warped theology, wrapped up in race war rhetoric. Though no evidence has emerged that any NOI member apart from Muhammad was involved in the sniper killings, this connection presents the troubling possibility that the terror war's next battlefield may be America's cities--with street gangs allied to the international terrorist network providing the foot soldiers.

The Bush administration continues to speak ominously of the potential threat of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, and preparations are underway for American soldiers to conduct "urban warfare" in Baghdad. But if the terror network succeeds in turning our nation's street gangs into a "weapon of mass insurrection," urban warfare on the home front will become a horrifying reality.

The Farrakhan Factor

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan burst onto the national scene as a "black leader" when he conducted his so-called "Million Man March" in 1995. A few months later, Farrakhan embarked on a "World Friendship Tour," visiting radical Muslim regimes in Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria.

Farrakhan, while in Teheran, laid a wreath at the tomb of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who could be regarded as the Lenin of modern radical Islam. Farrakhan expressed his love and respect for Khomeini, and warned: "We will use American Muslim unity as a lever of pressure against the arrogant policies of the United States." In a separate public address, Farrakhan praised Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution while a crowd of tens of thousands chanted "death to America!"

While in Tripoli, Farrakhan was warmly received by terrorist dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who reportedly promised a large cash donation to help the Nation of Islam "mobilize oppressed minorities to play a significant role in American political life," According to Qaddafi, "Our confrontations with America used to be like confronting a fortress from outside. Today, we have found a loophole to enter the fortress and confront it within." Alluding to a decades-old, Soviet-inspired black separatist vision, Qaddafi told Farrakhan that "American blacks could set up their own state within the United States with the largest black army in the world."

This wasn't the first time Farrakhan had brokered a deal between Qaddafi and urban street gangs. Consider Jeff Fort, leader of the Black P Stone Nation gang (sometimes known as El Rukn, Arabic for "The Foundation"). He is now serving an effective life prison sentence for a 1986 conspiracy to organize terrorist acts on behalf of Libya. In the late 1960s, when the gang was known as the Blackstone Rangers, Fort took control of the outfit and "formed a 'nation' consisting of many street gangs," notes a 1995 Chicago Crime Commission report. That "nation" is active in narcotic sales, drive-by shootings, battery, assault, extortion, intimidation, and murder."

But the "nation" has always been more than just a criminal syndicate. Lance Williams of the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health points out that "the Blackstones were the only [street] organization that had a main pillar of politics of the Black Power movement from their inception." But more importantly, the Rangers also benefited from federal largesse under the rubric of the "War on Poverty." In 1966, as a reward for arranging a gang truce with the Eastside Disciples, the Rangers were provided with a $972,000 federal grant for "job training" programs through the (now defunct) Office of Economic Opportunity.

This was the first of many such disbursements of federal aid to Fort and his comrades--including a young race hustler-turned-minister named Jesse Jackson. As Kenneth Timmerman documents in his study Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, Jackson frequently conscripted Fort's gangbangers to picket businesses targeted for "donations." Jackson claims to have baptized Fort, although the latter's conversion appears less than genuine. After being convicted for cocaine trafficking, Fort converted to the Black Nationalist variant of Islam in prison.

In his new Islamic guise, Fort took the name "Malik" and tried to have the gang recognized as a religious order called the "Moorish Science Temple of America, El Rukn tribe." As Timmerman points out, "The advantage of official recognition was that they could then hold private 'religious' services in prison without surveillance." On the pretext of conducting religious business, Fort continued to run his criminal syndicate by telephone from behind prison bars. One of his most ambitious schemes was to turn El Rukn into an asset of the international terrorist network.

In 1987, while serving a federal prison term in Texas, Fort learned that "Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan had received $5 million from the Libyan government," notes a 1997 Justice Department report. Accordingly, "Fort developed a plan to perform acts of terrorism within the United States in return for an annual payment of $1 million from Libya. In telephone conversations from inside prison, Fort discussed destroying a federal building, blowing up an airplane, killing a Milwaukee alderman, and committing a 'killing here and there' with his fellow gang members. Fort instructed gang members to meet with representatives from the Libyan government, which the gang members did on two occasions. Fort also instructed the gang members to purchase a hand-held rocket launcher, which they also did."

This was more than idle talk. Several El Rukn members "traveled to Libya, trained for terrorist operations in abandoned buildings, and sought to arm themselves with rocket-propelled grenades," wrote crime analyst John P. Sullivan in the November 1997 issue of Crime & Justice International. After the plot was uncovered, authorities charged Fort and several other El Rukn members in a 50-count indictment for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Convicted of the offense, Fort was sentenced to an additional 80-year term.

While Fort remains behind bars, his network remains intact. Just as importantly, the man who facilitated Fort's liaison with Qaddafi remains at large. "Louis Farrakhan was the person who introduced Jeff Fort to the people in Libya," testifies Lance Williams. "I happened to be [present] ... when Farrakhan had Qaddafi speak via satellite and brought some of the El Rukns up on the stage and said these are my 'angels of death.'"

Williams recalls that "Farrakhan was afraid that the government was about to get him like they got Malcolm [X] and so he used the Blackstone Rangers as a shield. But they didn't know what they were getting into." This suggests an interesting parallel with accused senior sniper John Allen Muhammad, who told friends in Tacoma, Washington, that he had helped provide security at the "Million Man March."

The "Five Percenters"

Urban studies author Mark Goldblatt notes that Muhammad may be connected to "a virulently racist black group called the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, to which several of today's most popular rap acts have acknowledged longstanding ties." The "Five Percenters," who split off from the Nation of Islam in 1964, retain the NOI's belief that black people represent the image of the "original man"--"the fathers and mothers of civilization." According to the group's creed, "the blackman [sic] is god and his proper name is ALLAH...." Men who belong to the movement (which doesn't call itself a religion) call themselves "gods," and refer to their wives and girlfriends as "earths."

Notes Goldblatt: "One letter from the [D.C.] sniper contained the demand that police call the author 'God' and a stock Five Percenter phrase, 'word is bond,' along with five stars, also used by the group." (Urban gangs that use the five-point star, or some variation thereof, as a symbol are sometimes called "five-point" gangs.) The concept behind the group's name is that 85 percent of the population are hopelessly ignorant and exploited by another cunning and evil 10 percent. Only the enlightened five percent understand the truth, and they are engaged in a war with the conniving 10 percent for global control.

Goldblatt points out that this ideology is woven into recordings by "some of the more influential hip-hop performers." A number entitled "Can I See You" by the rap act Sunz of Man is practically a Five Percenter doxology: "Camouflaged for the mission; use your third eye to see the Israelite; detect those who tell lies carry .45s in these last days and times I was born to survive a soldier, and I strive, with a duty to civilize these 85 an original black man with a plan to run these devils off our land; now listen real close while I explain the operation." (Punctuation in the original.)

According to Jonathan Moore of the University of Chicago Divinity School, "the Five Percenters were founded by Clarence 13X, who broke away from the Nation of Islam in 1964....In 1967 Clarence 13X opened the 'Allah School in Mecca,' and this Harlem institution still serves as the headquarters for the Five Percenters." Above the headquarters entrance is inscribed the legend: "The Black Man is God."

As with the Blackstone Rangers/El Rukn, the Five Percenters benefited from Establishment generosity in the 1960s. The Harlem property serving as the movement's headquarters was provided to them by New York City "thanks to Clarence 13X's close relationship with Mayor John Lindsey," according to crime reporter Alex Todorovic.

The movement also has schools in major cities coast to coast. Predictably, the Five Percenters are well represented in the prison system. The group's violent tendencies led prison officials in South Carolina to place 70 members of the group in solitary confinement in 1995, offering to release them if they signed a pledge to disaffiliate from the movement. Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Fay Pollard describes the Five Percenters not as a conventional gang, but as a "security-threat group."

The group poses a potential threat outside prison walls as well. "If they're calling themselves a 'five-point nation' and aligning themselves with the other five-point gangs, that's really frightening," a former Chicago street gang leader told THE NEW AMERICAN. The individual, who defected from his gang and became a grand jury witness in his early 20s, observed that a coalition of "five-point gangs" would "be a very powerful network, like an army occupying our major cities."

How big would that "army" be? The Chicago Crime Commission, citing FBI estimates, reports that as of 1995 there were nearly a half million gang members active in 700 cities nationwide.

Building the Urban "Army"

According to transnational crime analyst John P. Sullivan, "Gangs operating in urban areas have gone through three generational changes -- from traditional turf gangs, to market-oriented drug gangs, to a new generation that may mix political and mercenary elements." Such third-generation gangs -- of which the Blackstone Rangers/E1 Ruka would be representative -- are not only "politicized' but also "internationalized." Subsequent to Farrakhan's 1996 trip to Libya, the Nation of Islam and its offshoots began intense efforts to mold disparate street gangs into an internationalized, third-generation urban army.

In April 1996, about 500 representatives of black and Mexican gangs met in the Watts section of Los Angeles for the fourth annual LA Gang Truce Rally -- a celebration of Mexican and black gang unity. Gang colors and "Black Power" symbols were displayed alongside symbols of the "Aztlan Nation" (the mythical Chicano homeland in our Southwest). The featured speaker at that event was Tony Muhammad, the West Coast representative of the Nation of Islam. Speaking on Farrakhan's behalf, Tony Muhammad retailed the same message that Qaddafi had given to Farrakhan -- gang bangers should unite in an armed struggle against bourgeois society:

When we come together as one army, we can take Watts, we can take SouthCentral, we can take Los Angeles and then the West Coast, because God is going to send the Original Man. And when I say the Original Man that includes Mexicans -- that includes La Raza -- that includes the Brown, that includes the Yellow. God is going to bring us together, and from that he is going to raise a mighty army that's ready to move for God. So I'm not telling you to give up your weapons. I'm just telling you to turn them somewhere else.

The late Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a former Nation of Islam spokesman, lent critical aid to another element of that "mighty army"--the New Black Panther Party. Organized in 1989 by Dallas native Aaron Michaels, the New Black Panthers claim 26 chapters across the country and in Europe.

In a June 16th interview with Black World, New Black Panther national chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz declared: "Black people are in desperate need of an army to organize for our aims and interests." According to Shabazz, black street gangs will play an important role in the army his group is assembling: "We have Grips, Bloods and Blackstone Rangers in the New Black Panthers and we have alliances with various street organizations." The group is also reaching out to "our brown brothers and sisters, so-called Latinos and Hispanics. We have alliances with the red community, indigenous community. We have a general policy of alliances with peoples of color." He also boasts, "1 can pick up the phone and contact Reverend Al Sharpton, Mr. Kweisi Mfume and any leader in the Pan African and [Black] nationalist community."

Ideology, Not Theology

To what end are these alliances being forged? In a 1996 interview conducted in Dallas, THE NEW AMERICAN posed this question to New Black Panther Party founder Aaron Michaels. "We are seeing the beginnings of a new civil war," he replied, explaining that while the initial spark would come from conflict between races, the conflagration would eventually become a full-blown, Marxist-inspired class war:

The next civil war that will be fought in the United States will not be a civil war between black and white. It will be between the haves and the havenots. It's already happening. You see white people, poor white people, fighting against the government.... We have a low-intensity war that is being fought right now. On the front lines, you'll see more of the race hate groups coming up. And you'll see escalation between civil rights organizations and race hate groups. It began in the late 1980s, and it's on a peak now with the resurgence of the Black Power movements nationally and internationally.

It is this revolutionary aspiration, rather than the religious vision expressed in the Koran, that unites Farrakhan with the likes of Qaddafi and Khomeini. And it is this same commitment to revolution that binds Farrakhan's aberrant cult with radical groups and street gangs within our own borders.