Malcolm X: The Prince of Islam
Originally Posted on the Quran and Bible Blog
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْم
I am currently reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. It has always been on my bucket-list, and I finally got around to it. Of course, since he was such an influential figure, I already know all about his life amazing life and its tragic end. As I am reading the first chapter of the book, titled “Nightmare”, I am amazed at the fortitude of brother Malcolm, coming as he did from such a difficult and horrific childhood. In his autobiography, he tells of his domineering father, who was a Baptist minister and follower of Marcus Garvey, “savagely” beating his children but not Malcolm. His “whippings” came from his mother. Nevertheless, his father was able to provide a meager existence for his wife and 8 children. But they lived in a racially divided country, and survival was never easy. It got worse after Malcolm’s father was murdered by the ironically-named “Black Legion”. This was actually a white hate group, which didn’t like how the senior Little (the family name was Little) was spreading Garvey’s message of going back to Africa. After his father’s murder, life of course seemed to get harder. His mother worked to provide for her children, but would get fired as soon as the employers found out she was black (her complexion made it difficult to tell). Brother Malcolm relates how the “state Welfare people”, who were of course white, seemed to treat his family as “things” rather than as “people”.
As he grew up, experiencing firsthand the oppression of his people and embracing a life of crime, he eventually joined the so-called “Nation of Islam” (it’s not really an Islamic organization), and the rest is history. After a falling-out with Elijah Muhammad and the NOI, brother Malcolm had a truly miraculous transformation: his famous pilgrimage to Mecca and conversion to (true) Islam. He knew that his new message of the brotherhood of humanity, regardless of color, was heresy to the NOI and he knew that they wanted him dead. Regardless, he carried on. He probably could have saved himself by publicly apologizing to Elijah Muhammad and reaffirming his loyalty, but instead, he chose to face the threats on his life, eventually embracing martyrdom.
Here are some interesting quotes from the first chapter of the autobiography, which speak volumes about the humble beginnings of this great man, and how his transformation from criminal to racist to humanitarian shows how the message of Islam can bring peace and brotherhood to humanity…”by any means necessary”:
“The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her [Malcolm’s mother] that we had better get out of town because ‘the good Christian white people’ were not going to stand for my father’s ‘spreading trouble’ among the ‘good’ Negroes of Omaha with the ‘back to Africa’ preachings of Marcus Garvey.”
“It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.”
“…nearly everywhere my father went, Black Legionnaires were reviling him as an ‘uppity nigger’ for wanting to own a store, for living outside the Lansing Negro district, for spreading unrest and dissention among ‘the good niggers’.”
“I remember we were outside in the night in our underwear, crying and yelling our heads off. The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned down to the ground.”
“…my memories are of the friction between my father and mother. They seemed to be nearly always at odds. Sometimes my father would beat her.”
“My father was also belligerent toward all of the children, except me. The older one he would beat almost savagely if they broke any of his rules–and he had so many rules it was hard to know them all. Nearly all my whippings came from my mother.”
“Even at that young age, I just couldn’t believe in the Christian concept of Jesus as someone divine.”
“Back when I was growing up, the ‘successful’ Lansing Negroes were such as waiters and bootblacks. To be a janitor at some downtown store was to be highly respected.”
“The day was to some when our family was so poor that we would eat the hole out of a donut; but at that time we were much better off than most town Negroes.”
“The white kids didn’t make any great things about us, either [for going to the same school]. They called us ‘nigger’ amd ‘darkie’ and ‘Rastus’ so much that we thought those were our natural names. But they didn’t think of it as an insult; it was just the way they thought about us.”
“My father’s skull , on one side, was crushed in, I was told later. Negroes in Lansing have always whispered that he was attacked, and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half.”
Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told to Alex Haley (New York: Ballantine Books, 2015)
@ QB
But Ken said this era was the Golden Age of Christianity in America? 🤔🤔🤔
Because Kennywise is a closet racist, just like his savior.
@ QB
Oh okay, that makes sense. Curse of Ham and all that…
I never said that was a golden age.
Racism and hatred of other ethnicities is wrong.
The New Testament is clear about that –
that God accepts people from all nations, tribes, cultures, ethnicities languages.
Revelation 5:9
Ephesians 2:11-22
Colossians 3:9-11
Galatians 3:28
Acts 10-11; 15
I just meant that the ethics of sexual morality were better back then.
There was no public approval of homosexuality or so called “same sex marriage” or transgenderism or gender confusion.
“I just meant that the ethics of sexual morality were better back then.”
This is another myth that I will debunk later, inshaAllah.
For now…as for racism, your mangod was a racist. He called a Gentile woman a dog, all for teaching his disciples (according to you).
Also, the entire Bible is obsessed with the “chosen people” and God doesn’t seem to care about the rest of the world and his plan of salvation for them. Billions of people lived before the coming of Jesus. What was your god’s plan to save them? Apparently none, because he was more concerned with the Israelites.
” . . . through you [Abram] all the nations / families of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 12:3
Genesis 18:18
Genesis 22:17-18
“through you and your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 26:4
Genesis 28:14
Genesis 49:10
through Judah will come the obedience of the peoples (ethnic people groups, nations)
Psalm 67
God, bless us, so that Your way may be known in all the earth.
Psalm 96:3
“Tell of His glory among all the nations”
Isaiah 49:6
“I will make you a light for the nations”
The NT says Jesus Al Masih is the fulfillment of all of that antecedent theology.
Isaiah 53
Psalm 16
Mark 10:45
Mark 14:25
Mark 14:60-64
Galatians 3:6-8
Romans chapters 4-5
Galatians 3:14-16 and all of Galatians chapter 3
Hebrews chapters 7-10
That doesn’t answer the question, you idiot. What was your god’s plan of salvation for all the other nations before the coming of your mangod?
And how exactly were other nations “blessed” through Abraham’s lineage before Jesus? I mean your god had most of them wiped out in the holy Land. As for the others in the world, we have to wonder if he was even aware of their existence.
Jesus was using a Jewish cultural expression for the Gentiles, especially Canaanites / Syro-Phoenicians, and He was testing the disciples and their ethnic pride; and he was also testing the woman. The woman did not make any excuses – she was not full of bitterness and she did not “self-pity” or “victim mentality” tactic on Him. She did not say “you Jews oppressed us way back in the book of Joshua, etc.” She was admitting her pagan and idolatrous background by not complaining about Him using that terminology.
Mark 7:20-23 – pride and arrogance are one of the sins in the heart of mankind – ethnic pride / racisim / hatred of other ethnicities comes from sinful pride and arrogance and Jesus was exposing that in the disciples’ hearts because they were saying “send her away” – in the parallel in Matthew 15.
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/was-jesus-cruel-to-the-canaanite-woman-mark-724-30-matthew-1521-28/
So, concerning the so-called “golden age” that Kennywise keeps talking about, where “sexual morality was better”, this is a myth.
It just so happens that I came across this when I was reading chapter 2 of Malcolm X’s autobiography. Referring to his experiences as a teenager in the 1930s when he was in Lansing, Michigan, he said:
“[f]rom what I heard and saw on the Saturday nights I spent hanging around in the Negro district I knew that race-mixing went on in Lansing. […] Every Negro in Lansing, I guess, knew how white men would drive along certain streets in the black neighborhoods and pick up Negro streetwalkers who patrolled the area. And, on the other hand, there was a bridge that separated the Negro and Polish neighborhoods, where white women would drive or walk across and pick up Negro men, who would hang around in certain places close to the bridge, waiting for them. Lansing’s white women, even in those days, were famous for chasing Negro men.” (p. 32)
Now, this certainly cannot be applied point-blank at American culture in general. It’s possible that this was the culture in certain areas. But the problem is that studies were done by sex researchers such as Alfred Kinsey (d. 1956) which destroyed the myth of American sexual purity. The following is from the book “Human Sexuality: Diversity in Contemporary America” by William Yarber and Barbara Sayad:
“Alfred C. Kinsey (1894-1956), a biologist at Indiana University and American’s leading authority on gall wasps, destroyed forever the belief in American sexual innocence and virtue. He accomplished this through two books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male…and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female…These two volumes statistically documented the actual sexual behavior of Americans. In massive detail, they demonstrated the great discrepancy between public standards of sexual behavior and actual sexual behavior.” (p. 43)
The authors also note that Kinsey’s works invited “political pressure” to shut down his funding. There goes the “freedom of thought” myth as well!
Among the shocking details Kinsey exposed were that “50% of the men and 28% of the women in his studies had had same-sex experiences and that 38% of the men and 13% of the women had had orgasms during these experiences…” (p. 44)
So, there you go. That’s the “golden age” that Kennywise keeps harping about. The myth of American purity was destroyed long ago, and educated people know the truth. But people like Kennywise continue to spread the myth out of ignorance.
It later came out that Kinsey’s research was fraudulent and mostly relied on criminals in prison for his studies and statistics.