Yakub (sometimes spelled Yacub or Yakob) is, according to the Nation of Islam, a black scientist who lived “6,600 years ago” and was responsible for creating the white race to be a “race of devils”. The Nation of Islam theology claims that Yakub is the biblical Jacob. Traditional Muslims do not have this belief, or anything similar to it.
The story of Yakub was 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. It was developed by Elijah Muhammad in several writings, most fully in a chapter entitled “The Making of Devil” in his book Message to the Blackman in America.
Yakub said to have been born in Mecca at a time when 30% of original black people were “dissatisfied”. He was a member of the Meccan branch of theTribe of Shabazz. Yakub aquired the nickname “big head”, because of his unusually large head and his 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 dastardly plan to create 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 the island of Patmos, where he established a despotic regime and set about breeding out the black traits, killed all darker babies, and created a brown race after 200 years. After 600 years of this deliberate eugenics, 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”. 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.”
According to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, all the races other than the black race were byproducts of Yakub’s work; however, the “black race” included all Asian peoples, considered to be shared ancestors of the Moors. “Whites” were defined as Europeans. Elijah Muhammad also argued 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.”
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, a process that had begun in 1914.
The Autobiography further notes that, in Malcolm X’s 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.
