Top Democratic officials in Michigan’s largest county reportedly attended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s speech on Sunday, just days ahead of the state’s Democratic primary.
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans and Deputy Executive Assad Turfe were in the audience of a Nation of Islam event headlined by Louis Farrakhan on Feb. 25, The Detroit Free Press reported.
During his speech, Farrakhan claimed that the United States is “enslaved” to Jews, that COVID-19 vaccines are harmful and that Israeli Jews are going to have to leave the Middle East, among other things, per a recording of the speech.
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The speech occurred just days before Michigan residents are set to vote in the state’s presidential primary.
Some Arab leaders in Michigan are urging their community members to vote “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s primary to protest the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. One Arab-American from Michigan told Fox News that Biden “shot us in the back” and that he’s be voting for former President Donald Trump in 2024.
Farrakhan touched on the situation in Israel and railed against Jewish people in his Sunday remarks.
At one point, he said that America was “enslaved” to the “synagogue of Satan,” appearing to refer to the Jewish people. He also claimed that Jewish people had taken control of the NAACP by threatening to withdraw their funding.
Farrakhan said that Biden needs to find a way “to grow his testicles” after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those remarks followed a tirade on how he thinks people are afraid of resisting “Jewish power” and how Biden “looked like a school boy being chastised by a principal” when meeting the Israeli prime minister.
He previously, in the speech, called Netanyahu “a very feared Caucasian.”
By contrast, Farrakhan had positive things to say about the size of his own testicles, joking that they are so large that he has to “walk with a wheelbarrow.”
Farrakhan also made dubious claims about the conflict in the Middle East, asserting that Hamas didn’t rape Israeli women and that Israel had created Hamas. Hamas’ practice of systematic rape has been well-documented by Israeli sources.
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The American Jewish Committee and other Jewish organizations consider Farrakhan to be an antisemite.
During his speech, Farrakhan praised Detroit’s Democratic city leadership for “the wonderful and kind way you have received us.”
The Nation of Islam, the religious organization led by Farrakhan, is a black nationalist sect generally regarded as heretical by Muslims. The Nation of Islam believes, for instance, that white people were created by an evil black scientist named Yakub, according to an archived copy of its webpage.
Turfe has been involved with the Biden campaign’s attempts to smooth over relations with the state’s sizeble Arab and Muslim populations. Dearborn, Michigan, which is in Wayne County, has the largest per capita Muslim population in the United States, according to Politico.
Turfe and a group of community members canceled a January meeting with President Joe Biden’s campaign manager in Dearborn, according to CBS News.
“It’s actually dehumanizing to send campaign staff to ask us what would it take to earn your support in November when you have an active genocide that is being funded and supported and defended by the current administration,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who was also invited to the meeting but declined, said.
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Biden’s aides contacted Turfe on Feb. 8, after which he said that “the Biden administration must act swiftly and decisively to end this violence, honoring the principles of justice and human rights,” according to The New York Times.
“There is an assumption that the Arab American community will simply fall in line,” Turfe said, according to The Detroit News. “As a proud Democrat, I understand the stakes for 2024. But I refuse to risk the hard-earned credibility that I have built over two decades.”
Turfe and local activists later met with Biden campaign surrogate Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on Feb. 22 to discuss the war in Israel. Khanna did not meet with the community leaders on behalf of the Biden campaign, The Associated Press reported.
Khanna campaigned for Biden during the New Hampshire and South Carolina Democratic primaries and is a member of the Biden campaign’s advisory board.
The Biden campaign, Wayne County Executive’s Office and the Nation of Islam did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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