“You right!”
“In other words,” Malcolm shouts, “the white man is therefore absolutely evil, a snake and a devil, and his time of destruction draws nigh!”
With this the crowd breaks with joy. The applause lasts for several minutes; white policemen standing guard at the meeting nudge white onlookers, telling them to “move on.”
This argument, that God is black and the white man a devil, presents the Black Muslims with the identical philosophical dilemma that has plagued most religions: How could a good (black) God create a bad (white) thing?
The doctrine concerning Yakub is the Black Muslims’ attempt to answer that riddle. In biological terms of reference, accepting the Muslim notion that the black man is the original man, they must explain how the black race produced white people. Elijah Muhammad states the argument in these terms: The Caucasian race was created out of the weak of the black race; they are the handiwork of Yakub, a black scientist who rebelled against Allah. Dr. Eric Lincoln is correct when he says that the doctrine of Yakub is the central myth of the Black Muslim movement. But it is also the tenet the Black Muslims seem to know least about.
Writing in the Pittsburgh Courier, Elijah Muhammad detailed in these words the mechanics by which the black scientist Yakub made the white man:
Who are the white race? I have repeatedly answered that question in this [column] for nearly the past three years. “Why are they white-skinned?” Answer: Allah (God) said this is due to being grafted from the Original Black Nation, as the Black Man has two germs (two people) in him. One is black and the other brown. The brown germ is weaker than the black germ. The brown germ can be grafted into its last stage, and the last stage is white. A scientist by the name of Yakub discovered this knowledge ... 6,645 years ago, and was successful in doing this job of grafting after 600 years of following a strict and rigid birth control law.
According to Elijah Muhammad the experiment was a success, but it also resulted in the “blue-eyed devils” who now people the world and have low physical and moral stamina. Muhammad then goes on to show the physical superiority of the black man by underlining the victories of Negro ballplayers and prize fighters. He then points up what he calls the low morality of the white man by citing the gas chambers of Germany, the atomic bomb of Hiroshima, and all the abuses white Southerners (and Northerners) have heaped upon the Negro.
Summing up the results of Yakub’s experiment, Elijah Muhammad issues this finding: