'Nightline' Exclusive: Farrakhan Doesn't Regret 'Speaking the Truth'

March 8, 2007 — -- Minister Louis Farrakhan, at age 73, doesn't know how many more sermons he has to preach.

The Nation of Islam's leader for the last 30 years is being treated for prostate and colon cancer. But he was in a conciliatory mood two weeks ago at the annual Savior's Day service that marks the birthday of the Nation of Islam's founder, Wallace Fard.

"Christians and Muslims, we have to break down these artificial divisions that divide us and come together as a family," he said that day.

It seems that Farrakhan has moderated with age -- even though he still refuses to recant some of his most inflammatory remarks.

"I can never, ever regret speaking the truth," he told "Nightline." "But the way I speak truth, the passion I have for the truth that I speak can sometimes get in the way of people hearing what I have to say. That's all part of my growth and development. So I'm not today what I was, but I'm hoping that the language that I use will get past yesterday's barriers, and that I will be more clear and understood." (Click here to read excerpts from Martin Bashir's interview with Louis Farrakhan.)

In a conversation at his home in Chicago, "Nightline" learned that Farrakhan believes Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., whom he likes "very much," may have a real shot at the presidency. But "Nightline" also learned the minister maintains some extremely controversial positions -- like a firm opposition to interracial marriage.

Farrakhan insists he wants to "get past yesterday's barriers," but some would say that he is responsible for erecting those same barriers many years ago.

The son of Caribbean immigrants, he was born Louis Eugene Walcott in 1933. After hearing Fard's successor, Elijah Mohammad, who led the Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975, Farrakhan converted to this variant of Islam at the age of 22.

At the time, he was a calypso musician -- called the Charmer. Soon after his conversion, he gave up music to focus on drawing attention to the discord that he says exists between black and white America.