25 Facts About Louis Farrakhan

1. Under the name "The Charmer", Louis Farrakhan released a few calypso records and even had some hits that made the charts.

2. Louis Farrakhan joined the movement soon after hearing its leader speak.

3. At the age of 21, in 1955, Louis Farrakhan was taken by a friend to hear Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam.

4. Louis Farrakhan is a leader of one branch of the Nation of Islam, more popularly known as the Black Muslims.

5. Louis Farrakhan moved his group closer to orthodox Sunni Islam in 2000, when he and Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the leading American orthodox Muslim, recognized each other as fellow Muslims.

6. Louis Farrakhan became known to the American public through a series of controversies that began during the 1984 presidential campaign of the Rev Jesse Jackson, whom Farrakhan supported.

7. Louis Farrakhan disagreed with Wallace Muhammad's attempts to move the Nation to orthodox Sunni Islam and to rid it of Elijah Muhammad's radical black nationalism and separatist teachings, which stressed the inherent wickedness of whites.

8. Louis Farrakhan was appointed head minister of Boston Temple No 11, which Malcolm had established earlier.

9. Louis Farrakhan often engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric including recently referring to Jews as "termites" in a video that drew widespread condemnation.

10. Louis Farrakhan memorized and recited verbatim the 10 questions and answers of the NOI's Student Enrollment.

11. Louis Farrakhan intimated that his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was, in part, an effort to heal a rift between him and the Jewish community.

12. Louis Farrakhan was released from his five-week hospital stay on January 28, 2007, after major abdominal surgery.

13. Louis Farrakhan announced that he was seriously ill in a letter on September 11, 2006 that was directed to his staff, Nation of Islam members, and supporters.

14. Louis Farrakhan has repeatedly denied referring to Judaism as a "gutter religion" explaining that he was instead referring to what he believed was the Israeli Government's use of Judaism as a political tool.

15. Louis Farrakhan was accepted to speak at Shaare Shalom in the native country of his father, after being rejected to appear at American synagogues, many of whom had fear of sending the wrong signal to the Jewish community.

16. Louis Farrakhan has made many comments that have been deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League and others.

17. At an event in Milwaukee in August 2015, Louis Farrakhan said: "White people deserve to die, and they know, so they think it's us coming to do it.

18. On May 8, 2010, Louis Farrakhan publicly announced his embrace of Dianetics and has actively encouraged Nation of Islam members to undergo auditing from the Church of Scientology.

19. In 2008, Louis Farrakhan publicly criticized the United States and supported then-Senator Barack Obama who was campaigning at the time to become the president of the United States of America.

20. Louis Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service because of the low estimate from the Park Police.

21. In 1985, Louis Farrakhan obtained working capital in the amount of $5 million, in the form of an interest-free loan from Libya's Islamic Call Society.

22. Louis Farrakhan made substantial changes to the organization in the late 1970s, taking most members into a closer relationship with traditional Islam, and renaming the group "World Community of Islam in the West", and eventually the American Society of Muslims, to indicate the apparent change.

23. Louis Farrakhan made numerous incendiary statements about Malcolm X, contributing to what was called a "climate of vilification.

24. Louis Farrakhan completed three years at Winston-Salem Teachers College, where he had a track scholarship.

25. Louis Farrakhan received his first violin at the age of six, and by the time he was 13 years old he had played with the Boston College Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony.