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“I am and always will be a Muslim. My religion
is Islam.”
-Malcolm X
Early Life
_001.jpg) Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska.
His mother, Louis Norton Little, was a homemaker occupied with the family’s
eight children. His father, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister and
avid supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Earl’s civil rights
activism prompted death threats from the white supremacist organization Black
Legion, forcing the family to relocate twice before Malcolm’s fourth birthday.
Regardless of the Little’s efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929 their Lansing,
Michigan home was burned to the ground, and two years later Earl’s mutilated
body was found lying across the town’s trolley tracks when Malcolm was only six.
Louise had an emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband
and was committed to a mental institution. Her children were split up amongst
various foster homes and orphanages.
Malcolm was a smart, focused student and graduated
from junior high at the top of his class. However, when a favorite teacher
told Malcolm his dream of becoming a lawyer was no realistic goal for a nigger,
Malcolm lost interest in school and eventually dropped out at the age of
fifteen. Learning the ways of the streets, Malcolm became acquainted with
hoodlums, thieves, dope peddlers, and pimps. Convicted of burglary at twenty,
he remained in prison until the age of twenty-seven. During his prison stay he
attempted to educate himself. In addition, during his period in prison, he
learned about and joined the Nation of Islam, studying the teachings of Elijah
Muhammed fully. He was released, a changed man, in 1952.
The ‘Nation of Islam’
Upon his release, Malcolm went to Detroit, joined the daily activities of the sect, and was given instruction by Elijah
Muhammad himself. Malcolm’s personal commitment helped build the organization
nation-wide, while making him an international figure. He was interviewed on
major television programs and by magazines, and spoke across the country at
various universities and other forums. His power was in his words, which so
vividly described the plight of blacks and vehemently incriminated whites. When
a white person referred to the fact that some Southern university had enrolled
black freshmen without bayonets, Malcolm reacted with scorn:
When I slipped, the program host would leap on
the bait: Ahhh! Indeed, Mr. Malcolm X -- you can’t deny that’s an advance for
your race!
I’d jerk the pole then. I can’t turn around
without hearing about some ‘civil rights advance’! White people seem to think
the black man ought to be shouting ‘hallelujah’! Four hundred years the white
man has had his foot-long knife in the black man’s back - and now the white man
starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man’s supposed to
be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to
leave a scar!
Although Malcolm’s words often stung with the
injustices against blacks in America, the equally racist views of the Nation of
Islam kept him from accepting any whites as sincere or capable of helping the
situation. For twelve years, he preached that the white man was the devil and
the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was God’s messenger. Unfortunately, most images
of Malcolm today focus on this period of his life, although the transformation
he was about to undergo would give him a completely different, and more
important, message for the American people.
The Change to True Islam
On March 12, 1964, impelled by internal jealousy
within the Nation of Islam and revelations of Elijah Muhammad’s sexual
immorality, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam with the intention of starting his
own organization:
I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat
and under someone else’s control. I feel what I’m thinking and saying now is
for myself. Before, it was for and by guidance of another, now I think with my
own mind.
Malcolm was thirty-eight years old when he left
Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. Reflecting on reflects that occurred prior
to leaving, he said:
At one or another college or university, usually
in the informal gatherings after I had spoken, perhaps a dozen generally
white-complexioned people would come up to me, identifying themselves as
Arabian, Middle Eastern or North African Muslims who happened to be visiting,
studying, or living in the United States. They had said to me that, my
white-indicting statements notwithstanding, they felt I was sincere in
considering myself a Muslim -- and they felt if I was exposed to what they
always called true Islam, I would understand it, and embrace it. Automatically,
as a follower of Elijah, I had bridled whenever this was said. But in the
privacy of my own thoughts after several of these experiences, I did question
myself: if one was sincere in professing a religion, why should he balk at
broadening his knowledge of that religion?
Those orthodox Muslims whom I had met, one after
another, had urged me to meet and talk with a Dr. Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi. . .
. Then one day Dr. Shawarbi and I were introduced by a newspaperman. He was
cordial. He said he had followed me in the press; I said I had been told of
him, and we talked for fifteen or twenty minutes. We both had to leave to make
appointments we had, when he dropped on me something whose logic never would
get out of my head. He said, No man has believed perfectly until he wishes for
his brother what he wishes for himself. (a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, may
the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.
The Effect of the Pilgrimage
Malcolm further continues about the Hajj:
The pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, is a
religious obligation that every orthodox Muslim fulfills, if able, at least once
in his or her lifetime.
The Holy Quran says it:
“..Pilgrimage to the House (of God built by the
prophet Abraham) is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey…”
(Quran 3:97)
“God said: ‘And proclaim the pilgrimage
among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will
come from every deep ravine.’” (Quran 22:27)
Every one of the thousands at the airport, about
to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and
no on e would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out
to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun
intermittently calling out Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka! (Here I come, O
Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people,
blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All
honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other…
That is when I first began to reappraise the white
man. It was when I first began to perceive that white man, as commonly used,
means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.
In America, white man meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black
man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen
that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else
had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole
outlook about white men.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from
all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to
black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual
displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white... America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its
society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have
met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been
considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the
religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood
practiced by all colors together, irrespecitve of their color.
Malcolm’s New Vision of America
Malcolm continues:
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to
have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial
animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism
of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do
believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the
younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting
on the wall, and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth -- the
only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must
lead to.
I believe that God now is giving the world’s
so-called ‘Christian’ white society its last opportunity to repent and atone
for the crimes of exploiting and enslaving the world’s non-white peoples. It
is exactly as when God gave Pharaoh a chance to repent. But Pharaoh persisted
in his refusal to give justice to those who he oppressed. And, we know, God
finally destroyed Pharaoh.
I will never forget the dinner at the Azzam home
with Dr. Azzam. The more we talked, the more his vast reservoir of knowledge
and its variety seemed unlimited. He spoke of the racial lineage of the
descendants of Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, the
Prophet, and he showed how they were both black and white. He also pointed out
how color, and the problems of color which exist in the Muslim world, exist
only where, and to the extent that, that area of the Muslim world has been
influenced by the West. He said that if on encountered any differences based
on attitude toward color, this directly reflected the degree of Western
influence.
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