Last week, Bernie Sanders surrogate Linda Sarsour and former Women’s March Co-Chair Tamika Mallory posted multiple tributes on Facebook honoring a major Nation of Islam leader.
“To God we belong, to God we return. Rest in power Minister Abdul Hafeez Muhammad,” Sarsour wrote honoring the Eastern regional minister and representative of Louis Farrakhan, who passed away on April 11 due to COVID-19 complications.
Muhammad, 56, was the student minister of the historic Mosque No. 7 in Harlem who worked under Louis Farrakhan, who has a prolific history of anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks. The Nation of Islam has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I could count on Abdul Hafeez Muhammad! That means a lot,” Mallory wrote on her Facebook wall. “Not many people are consistent, dependable and kind. He was that. Long live Abdul Hafeez Muhammad.”
In another post, Mallory wrote about how Muhammad arranged transportation from an airport during a family crisis, to which Sarsour commented: “He was one of a kind.”
In her third public post about the Nation of Islam leader, Mallory gave a shout out to the organization. “I was so caught up in my personal feelings about Min Hafeez, I forgot to give my condolences to the entire Nation of Islam family,” she wrote. “Ameen,” Sarsour replied in the comments.
Both activists faced controversy for their ties to the Nation of Islam while they led the Women’s March. Sarsour delivered a speech at a 2015 rally organized by Louis Farrakhan in his celebration and has hired the group as her personal security. She strongly defended fellow Mallory when Mallory was criticized for attending a speech where Farrakhan declared, “The powerful Jews are my enemy.”
Mallory has yet to condemn any of Farrakhan’s comments against Jewish people, but did post a photo on Instagram of them together, calling him the “GOAT,” shorthand for “greatest of all time.”
During the controversy, Muhammad publicly defended the Women’s March from accusations of anti-Semitism. “We salute Tamika Mallory for standing firm as a strong Black woman in the face of these attacks,” Muhammad said during a sermon in 2018. In his speech, Muhammad claimed that the anti-Semitism accusation against Mallory was a “deception” to distract from the “truth” of Farrakhan’s conspiracy theories about Jewish people.
During Farrakhan’s Feb. 25, 2018 speech, which Mallory attended, he claimed that “white people running Mexico are Mexican-Jews,” Jews control the FBI, are the architects of “degenerate behavior in Hollywood turning men into women and women into men,” and that they are chemically inducing homosexuality in black men through cannabis.
“A tool of the liar is deception,” Muhammad said. “So you expose the deception by exposing the liar. The liar fights truth. This requires one who knows the truth also having the courage to tell the truth. And, most of all the willingness to face the opposition that results. Farrakhan is that person. The question is who will stand with him?”
Following his passing, Sarsour is standing with Abdul Hafeez Muhammad.
“You always showed up,” Sarsour wrote of the minister above a video of him giving a sermon. “You always had our back. You always had the right encouraging words. You always reminded us where we came from.”
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