It was nearing midnight when Minister Jasiri X, in shimmering blue suit and tie, stood to offer solace to a roomful of Duquesne University students gathered two nights after a campus shooting.

Days before, Minister X had led a group of 15 into the City-County Building to show support for a black mother who said a police officer pointed a gun at her 7-year-old. Earlier in the month, he was reminding a forum of political science students to vote.

And on another fall evening, Minister X walked through Homewood with a group of other black men after a series of violent incidents in August left six wounded.

Minister X, of the Hill District, is the 33-year-old leader of Muhammad Mosque No. 22 in Wilkinsburg.

A new generation of leader -- he's always glancing at his buzzing BlackBerry -- he's the man with the baby face, the soft voice and the plan to turn a traditionally insular branch of Islam, the Nation of Islam, away from the bow-tie-wearing, bean-pie-selling, hate-whitey stereotypes.

The mosque he leads is affiliated with the Nation of Islam, the 70-year-old religion headed by the controversial Minister Louis Farrakhan that is based on the principles of Islam but centered on black nationalism.

The Nation has been criticized as racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.

Not so Minister X.

He doesn't shun black gays, believing that no voice should be discounted in the fight for black survival.

He says he doesn't endorse sexism, though he believes the times call for men to be more accountable for protecting their communities.

And, when it comes to white people, whom earlier leaders have called "blue-eyed devils," the minister said, "We don't hate them, either."

"We're complete human beings and have our own independent thoughts," he said. "I consider myself an intelligent individual. How can I not dialog with my brother?"

His style is low-key, but with his crisp suits, piercing dark eyes and intense presence, he is someone who gets noticed wherever he goes.

He's not afraid to criticize, said Celeste Taylor, who's worked with the minister on police brutality and economic justice issues. "But he doesn't scream it. If there's injustice in sweatshops or in immigration policy, he'll talk about where he thinks the inequality comes from."

Since he was appointed lead minister a little more than a year ago, Minister X has thrown himself into building what he calls "operational unity" -- collaboration with any group he considers to be serious about black community uplift.

In the past, leaders with the Nation of Islam in Pittsburgh were little known outside the mosque. But times are different, said Minister X. He said that in reaching out to others, he and his mosque are following the mandate of the movement started with the 1995 Million Man March organized by Mr. Farrakhan: to come together.

There have been no wholesale changes in the community since his appointment. He can't point to any new policies. The breakthrough, he said, has come in attitudes, people now believing that they can work together and that the Nation of Islam can be at the table.

"Jasiri X is a motivator," said Tim Stevens, chair of the Black Political Empowerment Project and former head of the Pittsburgh NAACP.

"He has the sensitivity and can relate to a wide range of people and is not locked into talking to a certain group," said Mr. Stevens.

'Wake up'

It's a cool September night and Minister X is among a score of men who've come for a walk through Homewood as dusk drops over the busy streets, a determined counter-presence to the violence in that Pittsburgh neighborhood. The group, friends and strangers, first gathered in August after a 24-hour-period in Homewood during which six people, including two children ages 3 and 4, were wounded.

"Too often here, BC means before crack, and AD means after death," Minister X says as two men stumble out of a corner store and drunkenly spit curse words at each other.

"We're not going to just pray and everything will be all right," he said. For Homewood and the rest of the black community to generate revival, "we have to go out and begin to do the work."

While the decline is not everyone's fault, he said, "it will take all of us to get us out of it. There's no superman that is going to fly down and save blacks."

Paradise Gray, a community advocate and North Side business owner, has walked the Homewood streets with the minister.

He said the minister "is correct in his assessment that it is time for black men to stand up! Wake up!" said Mr. Gray.

"Firing shots into the homes of our precious babies, shooting two of them in their tiny little hands. That has to stop."

Surviving low points

Minister X, born Jasiri Oronde Smith, grew up on Chicago's South Side in a gang-infested neighborhood known as the Wild Hundreds.

His father was a gang member and, as a child, it was tough to have what he called "a regular life."

In the mid-'80s, his single mom moved to Monroeville, where she enrolled in college and went to work to take care of her two small children.

His father's absence and his mom's character and sacrifice -- she rarely dated and early on worked a job she disliked -- deeply influenced her son's life.

He believes that women have done enough and shouldn't have to do anymore. Minister X graduated Gateway High at 16 and headed for the University of Maryland. He participated in Inroads, a national mentoring program to fast-track minorities into business careers.

He thought he'd be a lawyer.

After transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, he began to hang out with friends who were not in school. At 19, he dropped out.

For a while, he performed as Jo Smith, and worked the Spoken Word circuit and was a poet/master of ceremonies. A member of a group that opened for national acts such as Foxy Brown, he recorded an introduction for WAMO radio, and was educated on the politically conscious rap of groups like KRS-1.

There were low points. His apartment caught fire and he never earned more than minimum wage. At 23, he was living back at home and smoking weed every day.

Opening doors

Islam crept into his life, first from friends who talked about it. Then, he'd see television interviews with Mr. Farrakhan, the spiritual leader of the Nation.

"It was like a father talking to a son," said Minister X, of Mr. Farrakhan's convictions, which made him ready to read more but not quite ready to join.

In 1997, he met an adherent who took him to Mosque No. 22, a branch formed in the 1960s that now is in an old Wilkinsburg factory.

The following year, Minister X met Minister Farrakhan, who was in Pittsburgh for a boycott. He went to Chicago and became a registered member. Not long after, he was appointed assistant minister of the Wilkinsburg mosque. Last year, as minister.

On most Sundays, there are 40 to 50 worshipers at Mosque No. 22, the only Nation of Islam site recognized in Western Pennsylvania.

The minister's goal is to open the doors to the community. He's had public lectures on black history. Once a month, the mosque sells soul food dinners. The cluttered third floor of the mosque is being cleaned for use as a boxing gym.

"I had talked to the minister for months about having a program here," said Larry Chisholm, a former inmate who started a boxing program to keep young men off the streets.

"He's an inspiration to this community," said Mr. Chisholm. "Especially kids, he wants to teach them about living and not dying."

But the married father of two doesn't call himself a leader.

"I've got no juice," he said, "just got the backing of Allah. I'm a servant who takes responsibility."

Minister Jasiri X

First Published: October 9, 2006, 4:00 a.m.