"He has been gravely ill since January," longtime Nation of Islam member Jabril Muhammad writes in the current issue of The Final Call, the Nation's house organ.

"He is engaged in one of the greatest struggles of his life. My Brother is struggling to overcome the forces of death."

Farrakhan announced in 1991 that he had prostate cancer. He was treated by Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy's doctors, but the cancer has apparently returned.

Earlier this month, after a black leadership summit in New York, Farrakhan announced his prostate cancer had spread.

The Final Call report did not say whether the illness is cancer-related. But it did make it clear that the situation is grave.

"During the 44 years that I have known him, I've never seen him this sick," Muhammad wrote. "At one point, he was at death's door."

Nation officials in Chicago and New York did not return calls yesterday.

This week's Village Voice, quoting an unnamed Nation of Islam source, reports that Farrakhan believes he was poisoned - possibly by government agents.

"The Minister says he knows who [poisoned him], he knows where, and he knows why," the Voice source said. "He just doesn't know what [was used to] poison him."

The allegation of a government-sponsored poison plot would match a similar claim made by black activist Stokely Carmichael just before his death from prostate cancer last year.

But Farrakhan - who has greatly curtailed his speaking schedule while he's been sick - has not played up the poisoning conspiracy publicly.

In a speech last month in Chicago, he said the illness "took me down so fast. I have never been sick like this in my life."

Farrakhan said he'd lost 20 pounds in less than two weeks and that "all the muscle mass that I had built in eight years of my working out had turned to flab."

Farrakhan became the undisputed leader of the Nation of Islam more than 20 years ago, after a power struggle following the death of Nation founder Elijah Muhammad.

Since then, he has controlled every element of Nation teaching, preaching black self-sufficiency and self-determination - a message, critics say, that is underpinned with anti-white and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The death of Farrakhan could set off a new power struggle, with several deputies all having a claim on the leadership position.

Farrakhan downplayed any internal conflicts in the Chicago speech, saying his enemies were outside, rather than inside, the Nation.

"I say to the government of America, 'Lose no stone. Do everything you can to destroy me and watch my God, Allah, destroy you and all my enemies.'"

-- Gersh Kuntzman - 3/17/99