(FinalCall.com) - It was blatant. It was wicked. It was a lie.

The news wire service United Press International and the Washington Times newspaper willfully distorted the words of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan spoken while on a Peace Mission to Iraq, according to members of the Nation of Islam, including its general counsel Abdul Arif Muhammad, Esq.

The attorney has fired off letters to the news organizations demanding an apology for articles that he said �creates an atmosphere in which the leader of the Nation of Islam may be harmed.�

The statements that were attributed to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and printed by those news organizations and distributed on their websites �are not only totally false, but reprehensible, outrageous and dangerous,� attorney Muhammad told The Final Call. �In a climate where American citizens can be arbitrarily designated as an �enemy combatant� and, as a consequence, be imprisoned without the benefit of due process rights, and deprived of the right to legal representation, further demonstrates the egregious, wanton, reckless and willful conduct on the part of their organizations.

�The character of these legally offensive and actionable statements demonstrate conclusively that their articles were published with a reckless disregard for the truth, which has already created an atmosphere and climate resulting in injury to the Minister.  This injurious falsehood has created such hatred against the Minister that he and our organization have become the victims of hate crimes,� he said.

In a July 6 dispatch, UPI quoted Min. Farrakhan as saying �the Muslim American people are praying to almighty God to grant victory to Iraq� in war with the United States.

UPI even ran a follow-up �Hot Buttons: Talk show topics� article that asked, �Is Farrakhan more a member of the Nation of Islam than he is an American?�

The highly circulated news dispatch that also was carried by the Washington Times created a barrage of media reports and talk show chatter. It also created a stir of hatred and disparaging comments about Min. Farrakhan and his peace effort.

When the news hit, Min. Farrakhan interrupted a leg of his Peace Mission in Durban, South Africa, for the inauguration of the African Union to respond to the misquotes by the American news agencies.

He appeared on CBS, ABC, BET, CNN, the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show on radio, and other media.

�It�s an outright lie,� Min. Farrakhan said of the UPI and Times report, speaking from Durban to BET talk show host Ed Gordon. �There will be no winner in a military confrontation. American soldiers� lives will be lost. Many American families will be grieving. And on the Iraqi side there will be many, many lives lost there.

�My prayer is for the victory of peace over war and right over wrong. I would never, ever say that I wished that somebody would prevail in a military conflict. I went there for peace and that is my hope, that is my prayer, and that is what the people of Iraq want,� he said.

Hate e-mail hit The Final Call website as soon as the UPI report was published, according to webmaster Barnar Muhammad. The email covered the spectrum of asking whether he really said that to calling for the Minister�s death, he said.

�The hate mail just started piling in, and also negative messages on Internet message boards and news groups,� he said. �The tone was belligerent, crazy, insane rage. The majority of it was with racism, and the hypocrisy was that the one�s that called him a traitor also called him a nigger.�

Barnar Muhammad also noted that the news sites �gave only 15 percent of the juice� to the Minister�s correction of the errant story than they gave to the original story.

 �This UPI and Washington Times article is aimed to make Negroes run away from the Minister,� said Min. Ava Muhammad, an Atlanta-based attorney for the Nation of Islam. �The Honorable Elijah Muhammad once said that the aim of this world is to kill the messenger of Allah. In Minister Farrakhan, Black people and humanity in general have our last chance to be reconciled with God and saved from the inevitable path of self destruction that this world is on.

�It�s really an act of sacrifice for any Black leader to attempt to enlighten the Black community to the nature and effect of American foreign policy,� she said.

Nation of Islam National Secretary Kamal Muhammad warned that efforts to destabilize Min. Farrakhan�s base would not be successful. He cited a long history of attempts to do such a thing to the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and now Min. Farrakhan, including the New York Post�s attempt to incite Blacks against Min. Farrakhan by claiming that the late Betty Shabazz claimed the Minister was responsible for Malcolm X�s death.

�Our efforts have been to educate the public about the reality of the Peace Mission and what he actually said as opposed to what the U.S. media has claimed he has said. The U.S. media has never been a friend of Minister Farrakhan, but his friends are solidly behind him,� he said.

If not for the incorrect reports, Min. Farrakhan�s effective mission might have gone virtually unreported by the White media, despite the fact that he met with four heads of state in the Middle East prior to going to South Africa and called for a 90-day moratorium on suicide bombings on Muslim broadcast networks. In fact, there have not been any suicide bombings since he made the pronouncement.

Yet, since the UPI and Times reports, papers like the Chicago Sun Times have editorialized that �What unites Farrakhan with Saddam (Hussein) � is a deep anti-Americanism.�

�It appears that this was a deliberate effort to undermine Minister Farrakhan�s Peace Mission and to portray him as un-American and un-patriotic and create an atmosphere whereby the Minister can be harmed,� commented Min. Ishmael Muhammad, assistant minister at Chicago�s Mosque Maryam. �We�re serving notice to the media and all those who historically have misconstrued Minister Farrakhan�s words and taken his statements out of context, we will not continue to let this go unanswered. �

�The first thing that came to my mind was that these erroneous reports would allow some mischief maker to set him up to be harmed,� said Min. Khadir Muhammad, Mid-Atlantic and Eastern region minister.

Living in the nation�s capital, Min. Khadir said the airwaves and the street were abuzz, but not all Blacks were buying the hype.

�Right after the report hit, we flooded the streets with flyers of the Minister�s words in the centerfold of The Final Call titled, �The Way of Peace,� which laid out the purpose of his Peace Mission,� Min. Khadir said.