Photo: Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan during his interview with The Tripoli Post in Tripoli, Libya, 4 July 2009. (The Tripoli Post photo by Mukhlus Al-Ajaili)

With tears in his eyes the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam in the United States of America, said Michael Jackson was his brother whom he knew well as a fighter who wanted to regain his own position from what he described as a wicked propaganda campaign leveled against him for so long.

At the end of an exclusive interview he gave to the weekly The Tripoli Post on Saturday in Tripoli, Libya, Mr. Farrakhan tearfully said "that is my brother. I knew him well. I love him much. He gave the world much and he’s gone too soon."

However, Mr. Farrakhan said Michael Jackson was never left alone by those who feared he would become Muslim and turn millions toward Islam.

Farrakhan said Michael Jackson's planned English tour was to be his last. "He went to England and said 'This is It'."

The tour was to be Michael's last battle which, according to Minister Farrakhan, he was to win it and then he was not to do tours anymore.

"I want you to watch his militant stand when he said 'This Is It'," Farrakhan said.

"He raised his fist because Michael was ready to fight, to regain his own position from the slaughter of wicked propaganda from those who feared Michael would become Muslim and turn millions toward Islam," Mr. Farrakhan told The Tripoli Post.

When asked how black and white America would view Michael Jackson's legacy, Minister Louis Farrakhan said "he was a man whose art, transcended race, culture, religious persuasion, ethnicity, his culture and his art united people of all races, all ethnic groups, and all religious affiliations."

"He was a magnificent soul, tortured, because he felt he never really had a childhood," Minister Farrakhan added.

Because of a skin disease, Farrakhan said, Michael Jackson went from black to white in what he described as a painful journey. "That was his awkward journey, but inwardly he was journeying from white to black," the Minister stressed.

Farrakhan said Michael Jackson was disappointed when two famous film directors, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, and his other Jewish friends, refused to help him promote and produce his vision to show black people in America their actual heritage.

"Listen, Michael told me personally that he wanted to show Africans not in the way that Hollywood showed Africa with bones and noses, that they, I would say, the crude part of African culture. He wanted to show Africa as the mother and the father of civilization," Farrakhan said.

"When they refused him, he said I would do it myself," he added.

Minister Farrakhan strongly defended Michael Jackson against accusation of child abuse leveled at him in 1993.

"Michael Jackson, this is Farrakhan talking, never bothered children. Michael Jackson loved children. Michael Jackson took his money and built Neverland with all these rides, bumper cars etc. I went there as his guest and took some of my security people, and while I was talking with Michael in a private session, they were on the bumper cars enjoying something they may be never experienced in their childhood," the Honorable Minister Farrakhan told The Tripoli Post.

"When you go up in his theater, he had a special place for children that were disabled, children that were under medication where they could lay with their IVs and look through a glass at the movies that were being shown.

"This is not a man who hated children to the point that he would ruin their lives sexually. This is a man who felt comfortable with children because children are not deceptive. He felt comfortable with animals not with grown up human beings who have hurt him all his life," Farrakhan added.

"But as a Muslim, I told his brother Jamine: Allah who gives life and Allah is the ultimate cause of death, and Allah says in the Qur’an, “wherever a misfortune befalls a believer, the believer says: Allah is my patron and to him is my eventual return,” concluded Minister Louis Farrakhan.