First on Fox: Biden is a top white House The consultant served for decades as a minister at a church in Washington, D.C., that has hosted numerous activists and religious leaders with a long history of anti-Semitism, including a Black activist who called for the killing of “Zionists” in Israel, including their children, during a 2002 speech.
The Rev. Thomas Bowen, who is listed as the minister of social justice on the Shiloh Baptist Church website and has served in several leadership roles at the church since 2002, joined the White House in February to serve as senior adviser for social justice. White House Office of Public EngagementWhich “works at the local, state, and national levels to ensure that community leaders, diverse perspectives, and new voices have the opportunity to inform the President’s work.”
Shiloh Baptist Church, a historic Black church visited by Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Visited on Christmas Day in 2022The ministry is led by the Reverend Doctor Wallace Charles Smith, Shiloh’s senior minister and Bowen’s longtime mentor. During a sermon before Shiloh’s congregation last month, Bowen called Smith his “hero,” “friend” and “guide … to whom I owe a debt I can never repay.”
Bowen’s social media too full of praise Rev. Smith, who invited many activists with a long history of anti-Semitism to his church.
Thomas Bowen serves as Biden’s senior adviser for public engagement (Instagram/Thomas Bowen)
In April 2018, Rev. Smith hosted the National Black Men’s Convention at Shiloh Baptist Church, which was billed as a five-day summit to “mobilize and organize brothers for a better future for our community” and protest. President TrumpEach day had a different topic, including reparations, and many of the speakers at the summit had a problematic history of anti-Semitism and hateful rhetoric against white people.
In the months leading up to the conference, Rev. Smith met with conference co-host Malik Shabazz, founder of Black Lawyers for Justice and former chairman of the New Black Panther Party, at Shiloh Baptist Church. Shabazz, who has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “a racist black nationalist who has a long, well-documented history of violently anti-Semitic comments and accusations about the inherent evil of white people,” posted a picture of her and wrote on her Facebook hugging Smith and saying they had a “great meeting together”. Shabazz also said that “Pastor Smith and other pro-Black Christian preachers will be speaking at the conference”.
Shabazz, who in 2020 posted a photo with notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan with the caption, “I’ve worked with the best” and last year called the Nation of Islam leader “one of the greatest influences in my life,” made numerous other posts in the months leading up to the 2018 conference calling Shiloh Baptist Church the conference’s host, including videos showing he attended church events while Bowen was on the church’s payroll.
The SPLC’s website lists several hateful quotes attributed to Shabazz, Includes comments from the 2002 speech in Washington, D.C., where he reportedly said, “Kill every Zionist in Israel! Little children, old women! Blow up the Zionist supermarkets!” In another speech in the early 2000s, he also made anti-Semitic remarks about “Zionists” controlling the media and foreign policy.
Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan delivers a speech at St. Sabina Church in Chicago on May 9, 2019. (Ashley Regin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
Earlier this year, Shabazz posted a picture of her and met former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2012 and said his “views were shaped by my experiences.” He said he was invited by a now-deceased journalist for the Nation of Islam publication and said Farrakhan was in attendance along with dozens of imams. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called Israel an “illegal regime” and called for its “eradication.”
When asked by Fox News Digital about his relationship with Farrakhan and his long history of anti-Semitic comments, he responded, “I have no relationship with Louis Farrakhan. I am not an anti-Semite.” Fox put up a post on social media that featured him and Farrakhan, prompting him to say, “That means I have no current relationship with him.”
The other co-host of the conference was Minister Hashim Nzinga, who is now deceased and was serving as the New Black Panther Party’s chief of staff when he died in 2020. According to the SPLC, he also made a number of controversial statements, including saying, “Every white person and every Jew is Satan by nature.” During a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he was asked to respond to Shabazz’s remarks about killing Zionists, prompting him to admit, “I still always say that. You have to kill them before they kill you. … If somebody harms us, we will kill them.”
Biden Cabinet official poses for photo with one of Farrakhan’s ‘top soldiers’ at the DNC
Malik Shabazz announces plans for the Million Youth March on September 6 at Restoration Plaza on Fulton Street in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. (Todd Maisel/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
“In addition, Nzinga said in the interview that homosexuality is evil, Jews control the media and are responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and that black people are God’s ‘chosen people,’ Jesus himself was black,” the LA Times reported at the time.
An old program for the conference revealed that Leonard Jeffries, the controversial uncle of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, was also a speaker at the event. Jeffries, long associated with anti-Semitism, is described on the conference website as a “political scientist” who “gained national prominence in the early 1990s for his historical statements about Jews” and highlights how Jeffries “stated that Jews financed the slave trade, used the film industry to harm Black people, and said that Whites (sic) are ‘Ice People’ while Africans are ‘Sun People.'”
Shabazz posted Jeffries’ speech on her Facebook page, where he began his remarks by saying “Black Power” and then asked the crowd to applaud Shabazz and Nzingha for organizing the conference. He also praised Farrakhan during his remarks.
Another speaker at the conference was Dr. Boyce Watkins, who wrote the book “The 10 Commandments of Black Economic Power” and is a staunch supporter of Farrakhan. In a 2018 tweet, Watkins said that Defending Farrakhan Comparing Jews to termites, he said, “Anyone who is attacking (Louis Farrakhan) for his statement of being ‘anti-termite’ is probably a termite themselves.” He has also said that anti-semitic tropes Like saying that Jews control Hollywood and the music industry.
In September 2023, Watkins said, “I love Farrakhan. That’s it.” And in a 2022 video, he bragged about being invited to the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviors Day event and said the Nation of Islam “are like brothers to me. When I go there, when I get there, I get a lot of love from all the NOI brothers and sisters. I want to give them a shoutout right now.”
It’s unclear if Bowen, who previously worked as director of African American strategic engagement in D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s executive office, was involved in planning the conference or attended. But an archived version of Shiloh’s website states he was one of five “assistant pastors” at the conference. He did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
A few years earlier, in 2015, Rev. Smith hosted Farrakhan and dozens of black community leaders at his church for an invitation-only event to discuss the upcoming 20th anniversary of the “Million Man March.” Farrakhan, Rev. Smith and Cora Masters were surrounded by several members of the Nation of Islam, in addition to Barry, who faced criticism for an event earlier this summer. etched clip “White women be damned,” he said at the private event.
An article by the Washington Informer, a woman-owned multimedia news organization serving African-Americans in the D.C. area, reported at the time that Farrakhan, speaking at Shiloh, said he believed it was time for black people to “share the pain” so that they would not be the only ones suffering.
President Biden during the White House Creator Economy Conference in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House in Washington, DC, August 14, 2024. (Yuri Grippus/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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That year Shiloh also hosted former President Obama’s controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. According to a tweet by Bowen Saying he was “preaching” the “false teachings of the Palestinians.” Wright previously delivered the viral “God Damn America” sermon and used anti-Semitic rhetoric accusing Jews of trying to stop Obama from speaking to the press after he won the 2008 presidential election. The Anti-Defamation League reacted sharply at the time, calling Wright’s comments “inflammatory and false.”
“The notions of Jewish control of the White House in Reverend Wright’s statement express classic anti-Semitism in its most disgusting form,” An ADL spokesperson said in 2009“In one short, succinct sentence, Reverend Wright succeeds in labeling some of the president’s closest advisers based solely on their religious beliefs and giving them powers even higher than the president himself.”
The White House and Shiloh Baptist Church did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
