Did you even read the book?

Submitted by Kareem Abdullah (United States), Aug 6, 2012 at 07:11

Mr. Harrison:

May this correspondence find you in the best of health and spirit. Did you read The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (vol. 1 or 2)? The reason why I ask this is because what you describe as "casual lies and blithely stated inaccuracies" related to the books, you ascribe to Minister Louis Farrakhan, who had no direct involvement in compiling the documents. The NOI Historical Research Team put the books together.

Interestingly, you failed to mention, like many of the books' critics, that all of the alleged "lies" and "inaccuracies" were not Farrakhan or NOI assertions, but relayed research from reputable Jewish scholarship and Rabbinical sources. The books are devoid of empty rhetoric, antisemitic diatribe, insults, emotionalism, etc. To the contrary, even detractors (who actually read the books) tend to acknowledge the books' objectivity and scholarship.

Furthermore, your charge that Farrakhan somehow omitted others' involvement in the slave trade is totally unfounded, even fallacious in the context of the books' premise. The complicity of all parties involved in the African slave trade is well documented. Farrakhan and many others have condemned African, European, and Arab involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

However, most historians fear pointing out Jewish involvement, for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, the charge evokes an emotional, blind ignorance in the general populace towards the subject-in-question; as evidenced by your fiery letter to Daniel Pipes, criticizing your own straw-man perception of what you suppose are the books' contents. What is the basis of your position that Jews had little to no involvement in the slave trade? If Jewish scholars contradict your position, and the NOI published what they wrote, then your issue should be with the Jewish scholarship; not with those scholars who had the courage to bring that information out of the Jewish libraries to the general public. Unfortunately, black scholarship is not given the level of respect, dialogue, or discourse afforded other scholars. There seems to be an arrogant, omniscient tone undertaken by detractors of black scholarship, where very capable people resort to fallacy, generalization, omission, and emotionalism; ignoring the specific points of discussion, much like the mock trials held by lynch mobs during Reconstruction.

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