Presidential candidate Barack Obama received an endorsement he probably would have preferred to be without when he received nods from black extremist Louis Farrakhan on Sunday, the acting head of the Nation of Islam.

A longtime target of federal surveillance, the movement is highly secretive and generally suspicious of outsiders. Even researchers who follow the group closely do not know for sure how many members or mosques it has, how much money it takes in or whether it is shrinking or growing.

During most of Sunday's speech, Farrakhan publicly praised Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, calling him the "herald of the Messiah" and the "hope of the entire world" for change in the U.S., while suggesting Obama's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is the status quo.

The Obama campaign distanced itself from Farrakhan's praise, calling his support unsolicited and saying it disagreed with statements Farrakhan has made about Jews and whites.

In 1985 at a rally in New York City, Farrakhan said, "I happen to believe that being homosexual is submission to circumstances rather than anything genetic or innate in the human being... I consider it a problem. Maybe they don't consider it a problem, but AIDS is manifesting that there is a problem somewhere in this kind of social behavior."

Last update: 02-26-2008 01:44