Replies

Son of Black Muslim leader shot dead
- Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

(10-26) 10:30 PDT OAKLAND -- The son of a well-known Black Muslim leader was shot and killed last night as he filled his car's tank at a gas station in North Oakland.

Antar Bey, 24, was shot at the Union 76 gas station at 55th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way just after 7:30 p.m. as he gassed up his black BMW 745, Oakland police said. He was gunned down as he stepped away from the car and spoke on his cell phone, police said.

Bey is the son and appointed successor of the late Yusuf Bey, who died of cancer in 2003. Police Lt. Lawrence Green said the slaying was either an attempted carjacking or an assassination-style "hit."

Investigators have declined to discuss what might have been a motive for the slaying. But officers have in the past have speculated that there is a power struggle going on within the religious organization, which also runs several businesses, including Your Black Muslim Bakery on San Pablo Avenue.

Police said an unidentified gunman fired shots at Antar Bey twice during the past several weeks without injuring him.

Antar Bey's slaying is the second unsolved slaying of a senior member of the group since the elder Bey died.

On July 20, a dog walker found the badly decomposed body of Waajid Aljawwaad, 51, in a shallow grave near a fire trail in King Estates Park in East Oakland, police said. Investigators said it appeared he was killed elsewhere and his body was dumped there. Aljawwaad, 51, was reported missing Feb. 29, 2004, one day after he last spoke with family members.

Aljawwaad, who in some records added Bey to his surname, was the president and chief executive officer of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the best known of the businesses affiliated with the religious group.

John Bey, another son of Yusuf Bey, was seriously wounded in June when a gunman ambushed him while he was leaving his home about 6:30 a.m. in the 1700 block of Indian Way in the Montclair District. John Bey was a senior manager with Universal Distributors Security, one of companies affiliated with the local Black Muslim organization. Police said they had not motive for the attempt on John Bey's life.

E-mail Jim Zamora at jzamora@sfchronicle.com.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNGAEFE9KL5.DTL

Dr Yusef Bey Transcends Eurocentric American Culture

SNIP:

Many people might say he was a bad man, but no one can say he did no good whatsoever, after all, look at the block of businesses he has established on San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland. Where else can one purchase healthy food from an African American business? Where else in the Bay can you buy a loaf of bread baked by black people? Who else will hire convicts, dope fiends, and prostitutes? So Allah will weigh his works on the scale of justice in the judgment hall, as He shall do each one of us. For every ounce of good Dr. Bey has done, he shall be rewarded, and for every ounce of evil he has done, he shall be rewarded.

Like many blacks, he migrated from Texas to Oakland, where he worked in his father's bakery, then later established his own. He joined the Nation of Islam and would eventually become a captain, his brother Billy or Rabb was the minister of the Oakland mosque. Sometimes there was violent competition between the Oakland and San Francisco temples, until Dr. Bey finally focused on his bakery business, holding meetings at the bakery for his employees and the general public.

A Muslim who practiced polygamy, he fathered many children. As he made his transition, he was facing charges of child abuse, although several counts were thrown out because of a recent Supreme Court decision.