Yakub (Nation of Islam)

This article covers the figure in the theology of the black nationalist organization Nation of Islam. The name, also spelled Yaqub or Yakob, also applies to the mainstream (traditional) Islamic view of the Biblical Jacob. See Yaqub and Jacob for information on the latter.

According to the Nation of Islam (NOI), Yakub (also spelled Yacub or Yakob), was an evil scientist responsible for creating the white race — a race of devils, in their view. Yakub created white people by a process of grafting the "black germ" to a "white germ" from the original black population of the world. It took 600 years for Yakub and his successors to fully whiten his creations. This was achieved under a despotic regime on the island of Patmos. The reasons for Yakub's actions are unclear. According to NOI doctrine, his progeny were destined to rule for 6,000 years before the original black peoples of the world regained dominance, a process that began in 1914.

The doctrine of Yakub was first proclaimed by Wallace Fard Muhammad and was later developed by his successor Elijah Muhammad.

The name Yakub is a variant of the Semitic name referred to in European language versions of the Bible as Jacob or in modern Jewish communities as Ya’akov. Fard Muhammad appears to have adapted the Biblical Jacob's role as the father of the tribes of Israel to reposition him as the originator of white people as a whole (including Jews).

In recent times, the doctrine of Yakub has been rationalized within the NOI as an allegory for the evolution of whites from the original black-skinned human populations of Africa, and as a parable warning of the dangers of eugenics. Yakub's 600-year experiment is seen as colorful storytelling, little different from the Bible's account of God creating Eve from Adam's rib, or the creation of heaven and earth in six days. In his autobiography (written with Alex Haley), El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) notes that, in his travels in the Middle East, many Muslims reacted with shock upon their discovery of the doctrine of Yakub.

The African American author and playwright Amiri Baraka wrote a play titled A Black Mass based on the story of Yakub. Alice Walker's novel 'The Temple Of My Familiar' was greatly inflenced by the theology of the Nation Of Islam and their Yakub doctrine. Walker apparently embraces this doctrine as the true origin of what she thinks of 'the inferior white race'. The Yakub doctrine is essentially a form of black supremacist fascism.