A political photographer and journalist released a bombshell photograph this week, showing former President Barack Obama posing with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; revealing that the image was kept hidden in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.
Photojournalist Askia Muhammad unveiled the controversial photo on Friday, saying he believes the image “absolutely would have made a difference” in Obama’s race for the White House against Senator John McCain.
The image was taken in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting at the United States Capitol, and depicts then-Senator Obama smiling aside the controversial Muslim leader.
Muhammad tells Fox News the Congressional Black Caucus contacted him the same day he took the photograph, urging him to conceal the image fearing a political fall-out against the up-and-coming Senator from Illinois.
“A staff member from the black caucus called me and said, ‘We have to have the picture back,’ and I was kind of taken aback. And we talked a couple of times on the phone after that, and I said ‘Okay, I will give the picture back to Minister Farrakhan’s chief of staff,’” Muhammad said.
“I gave the original disk to him and in a sense swore myself to secrecy because I had quietly made a copy for myself,” he added. “It’s my picture, it’s my art, and it’s my intellectual property. I owned it and I wanted to keep it.”
