CHICAGO (AFP) — Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, on Sunday hailed president-elect Barack Obama as a God-given leader with extraordinary vision, but warned of the racial animosity stirred up by his victory.
Farrakhan said that Senator Obama's presidential candidacy had inspired a "oneness of spirit" -- a kind of popular excitement not seen since Robert F. Kennedy ran for the White House in 1968.
But he said the country remained "divided and polarized," and pointed to evidence of racial tensions in the wake of Obama's historic election victory earlier this week.
"Many of the voters that voted for Senator McCain were older Americans, and most reside below the Mason-Dixon line where racial attitudes and traditions die hard," he told a congregation of about 1,200 people at Mosque Maryam on Chicago's South Side.
The Mason-Dixon line is regarded as the boundary between free and slave states before the Civil War.
Senator John McCain, the defeated Republican presidential candidate, gave a gracious concession speech on Tuesday but it had not assuaged "the pain of loss and frustration and disappointment to those who felt great pain at Obama's rise," Farrakhan said.
"We can change laws, but it's difficult to change attitudes," he said.
The 75-year-old preacher, clad in a scarlet robes and a matching fez, cited news reports that said gun sales had surged since Obama's electoral victory, and told of how fights had broken out in some schools, with white students chanting "white power," while blacks students chanted "black power."
"I'm sure that many of our people have unfortunately lost their lives because of the absolute hatred that is manifested now that one of our own has risen to such a high office," he told the crowd at the national headquarters of the Nation of Islam.
For some people, the prospect of a black family in the White House, was a "sacrilege," he said.
But even as he talked about the undercurrents of racial tensions, Farrakhan could barely suppress his joy at Obama's victory and its significance for the black community.
The 75-year-old leader of the black Islamic movement, who has courted controversy in the past for his anti-Semitic remarks, never formally endorsed Senator Obama during his long campaign.
On Sunday, Farrakhan said he had deliberately held his peace after he saw how some positive comments he made about Obama during the Democratic primaries made trouble for the aspiring presidential candidate.
Farrakhan's comments led to some uncomfortable moments for Obama during a televised debate in February, when the moderator persistently quizzed him about his response to Farrakhan's apparent support.
Obama distanced himself from Farrakhan, saying he had publicly disavowed Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments, and had not sought his support.
Farrakhan said he also saw how Obama's association with his long-time pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright became a major liability for the candidate, when it emerged that Wright had made anti-American and racially divisive comments from the pulpit.
That controversy dragged on for almost two months, putting Obama on the defensive and ending with him breaking with his pastor.
Reflecting on those turbulent times at a public forum on Thursday this week, Wright said the media had used him as a "weapon of mass destruction" in an effort to derail Obama's campaign, according to news reports.
"I feel freer today to say the things that are on my mind, said Farrakhan on Sunday.
He went on to heap praise on the 47-year-old senator, saying he faced the toughest job of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who governed during the Great Depression, but that he had the capacity and vision to get the job done.
"It was god who has laid on this young man this horrible burden at the worst time in the history of America and the world, but it's also god who has given this young man the tremendous capacity to handle what god has put on his shoulders.
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