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Yakub (sometimes spelled Yacub or Yaqub) is a figure in the mythology of the Nation of Islam (NOI). According to the NOI's doctrine, Yakub was a black scientist who lived 6,600 years ago and began the creation of the white race through a form of selective breeding, referred to as "grafting", while he was living on the island of Patmos. The story has, throughout its history, caused disputes within the NOI. The story was originated in the writings of the NOI's founder Wallace Fard Muhammad, but was rejected by some of its later leaders. Under its current leader Louis Farrakhan, the NOI continues to assert that the story of Yakub is true. Summary The story of Yakub originated in the writings of Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, in his doctrinal Q&A pamphlet Lost Found Moslem Lesson No. 2 from the early 1930s. It was developed by his successor Elijah Muhammad in several writings, most fully in a chapter entitled "The Making of Devil" in his book Message to the Blackman in America. According to the story, at the start of human history, a variety of types of black people inhabited the moon; when a black "god-scientist" became frustrated that all those living on the moon did not speak one language, he blew up the moon. A piece of this destroyed moon became the Earth, which was then populated by a community of surviving, morally righteous black people, some of whom settled in the city of Mecca. Yakub was born a short distance outside the city, and was among the third of original black people who were discontented with life in this society. A member of the Meccan branch of the Tribe of Shabazz, Yakub acquired the nickname "big head", because of his unusually large head and arrogance. At the age of six, he discovered the law of attraction and repulsion by playing with magnets made of steel. This insight led to a plan to create a new people. He "saw an unlike human being, made to attract others, who could, with the knowledge of tricks and lies, rule the original black man". By the age of 18, he had exhausted all knowledge in the universities of Mecca. He then discovered that the original black man contained both a "black germ" and a "brown germ". With 59,999 followers, he went to an "isle in the Aegean Sea called Pelan", which Muhammad identified as modern-day Patmos. Once there, he established a despotic regime, starting to breed out the black traits of his followers, killing all darker babies, and succeeded in creating a brown race after 200 years. Yakub died at the age of 150, but his followers carried on his work. After 600 years of this deliberate eugenics system, the white race was created. The brutal conditions of their creation determined the evil nature of the new race: "by lying to the black mother of the baby, this lie was born into the very nature of the white baby; and, murder for the black people was also born in them—or made by nature a liar and murderer". All the races other than the black race were by-products of Yakub's (spelled Yacub in the biography) work, as the "red, yellow and brown" races were created during the "bleaching" process; however, the "black race" included Asian peoples, considered to be shared ancestors of the Moors. "Whites" were defined as Europeans. Elijah Muhammad also asserted that some of the new white race "tried to graft themselves back into the black nation, but they had nothing to go by". As a result, they became gorillas: "A few were lucky enough to make a start, and got as far as what you call the gorilla. In fact, all of the monkey family are from this 2,000 year history of the white race in Europe". The new race traveled to Mecca, where they caused so much trouble they were exiled to "West Asia (Europe), and stripped of everything but the language. [...] Once there, they were roped in, to keep them out of Paradise. [...] The soldiers patrolled the border armed with swords, to prevent the devils from crossing". For many centuries they lived a barbaric life, surviving naked in caves and eating raw meat, but were eventually drawn out of the caves by Moses who "taught them to wear clothes". Moses tried to civilize them, but eventually gave up and blew up 300 of the most troublesome white people with dynamite. However, the whites had learned to use "tricknology"; a plan to use their trickery and lack of empathy and emotion to usurp power and enslave the black population, bringing the first slaves to America. According to NOI doctrine, Yakub's progeny were destined to rule for 6,000 years before the original black peoples of the world regained dominance, the end of which was the year 1914. Role in the Nation of Islam The doctrine of Yakub was one of the reasons for splits in the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X in his Autobiography notes that, in his travels in the Middle East, many Muslims reacted with shock upon hearing about the doctrine of Yakub, which, while present in NOI theology, does not appear in mainstream Islam. He rejected the story in his later statements, asserting that anyone of any race who intentionally deprives others of basic human rights is a "devil". Warith Deen Mohammed, who took over the Nation of Islam after his father Elijah's death, rejected it almost immediately and tried to re-invent the Nation as a mainstream Sunni Islam movement. Louis Farrakhan reinstated the original Nation of Islam, and has reasserted his belief in the literal truth of the story of Yakub. In a 1996 interview, Henry Louis Gates, Chairman of Harvard University's Afro-American Studies Department, asked him whether the story was a metaphor or literal. Farrakhan claimed that aspects of the story had been proven accurate by modern genetic science and insisted that "Personally, I believe that Yakub is not a mythical figure—he is a very real scientist. Not a big-head silly thing, as they would like to say". Farrakhan's periodical The Final Call continues to publish articles asserting the truth of the story, arguing that modern science supports the accuracy of Elijah Muhammad's account of Yakub. The NOI splinter groups the Five-Percent Nation and the United Nation of Islam also believe in the Yakub doctrine. Origins of the story The name Ya'qub (Yakub) is the Arabic variant of the name of the Biblical Patriarch known as Jacob in English language versions of the Bible, and as Ya'qob in Biblical Hebrew. Fard Muhammad's Yakub has some parallels to the Biblical Jacob's role as the father of the tribes of Israel. The idea that Jews were an "artificial race" created by interbreeding and dependent on "tricks and lies" already existed in antisemitic theories of the time. The story of Yakub includes Jews as part of a wider artificially created "white" race. In speeches by Malcolm X, Yakub is identified completely with Jacob. Referring to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Malcolm X states that Elijah Muhammad told him that "Jacob was Yacub, and the angel that Jacob wrestled with wasn't God, it was the gove.... Discover the Eden Finley Saxon James popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Eden Finley Saxon James books.