The Tribune

CARMICHAEL Road’s Jamaat-Ul-Islam Mosque said it has no involvement in, and no comment on, the visit of the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Mr Farrakhan arrived in the Bahamas last week and has since visited several areas around Nassau and was formally presented to the Governor General at Government House.

He also gave a sermon at the Zion South Beach Baptist Church, toured the Clifton National Heritage Park and spoke at the College of the Bahamas last night.

Yesterday, Faisal Hepburn of the Jamaat-Ul-Islam Mosque told The Tribune: “We are not involved at all. He did not contact us and we did contact him.

“We have no comments on his situation, at all. He’s free to do whatever he wants to do.”

Mr Farrakhan leaves today for Bimini to retrace the footprints of the late US congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

The Nation of Islam is a religious movement whose stated spiritual goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social and economic condition of African Americans and all of humanity.

In May 2000, Mr Farrakhan stated that some of the things he said in the past may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X.

“I may have been complicit in words that I spoke”, he said.

“I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being.”

In 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation, included some of Farrakhan’s comments on its list of the Top 10 anti-Semitic slurs of that year. Mr Farrakhan says he isn’t anti-Semitic.

He has said he opposes same-sex relationships and believes women’s role in society is to stay home and raise children.