The Ideas of Malcolm X

Gezim Mavriq

Time: Tuesdays, 16:00 19:00 Date: June 5, 2012

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A black civil rights activist Malcolm X died at age of 45. However in the 90s he become

a legend again he discovered the hip hop culture. One of the best rappers in the

country have used his sample speeches in the lyrics, even the U.S. President Bill Clinton

was wearing a black cap with the big white X. The most fascinating thing was that

Spike Lee filmed his life with Denzel Washington in the lead mean role. What is his

life still present today, I regret to say: in the various Muslim communities is the racism

that would overcome Malcolm X, however, it still felt today.

On 29 of May 1925, a child has born in the deep side of Omaha, Nebraska. It was the

fourth child of Earl and Louise Little. The child should be called after his grandfather

John, however, as the grandfather heard that the child was almost white and so they

decided to name Malcolm.

Malcolm's mother was raised on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Her father who was

Scottish she has never met, while her mother died when she was very young. However,

she was raised by her grandmother and aunt; she was very authoritarian and brutal,

"educated". As she grew older, she was sent away from home. She felt empty, lonely and

useless. Finally, she immigrated to Montreal in Canada. Latter on they moved to

Philadelphia and then to Omaha, where Malcolm was born. After several other stations,

they settled down in Lansing near Detroit in Michigan in 1929. The family bought a farm

house in a residential area inhabited only by whites. Earl was always kind to his white

neighbors and gave them vegetables from his garden. Also that he had married a very

light-skinned women and favored son of his brightest fit poorly to the fact that he also an

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activist of the first American black movement. In Omaha, Earl Little was chairman of the

UNIA-local group. Malcolm later reported that the family left after an attack by the Ku

Klux Klan at their home in Omaha.

In March 1948, Malcolm moved to Norfolk, which was due to his liberal prison paradise.

There he visited his brother Reginald and continue to agitate him. He opened it, all whites

were devils. Malcolm thought about it long, whom he had met through the Spirit. In

Reginald's next visit, he was ready to shoot. Reginald said that robbed the blacks through

slavery that has its cultural roots and therefore there are "spiritually dead" (Imms, 2004,

p. 42). Malcolm wrote a letter to the cult leader Elijah Muhammad. In response he

received money and a letter in which he declared that was not him but the criminals of

white society. With great effort to Malcolm ranking for "submission to Allah". It took

him a week before he brought it over to kneel, and pray for forgiveness. On 10th of March

1949, he joined the "Nation of Islam" Karl Marx wrote in 1844: "Religion is the sigh of

the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless

conditions It is the opium of the people (Rabaka, 2002, p. 154-157). For Malcolm, the

capitalist and racist society of the United States had pushed so deep into the gutter, which

was "submission to Allah, is necessary in order to straighten up the company over again.

For him it was a crutch with which he will gain confidence in them and to be learned -

until it became a captive. But first, Islam for Malcolm was the power to convert

completely. He now took up the sunbaths, which he had already ordered his mother to be

dark to shave his head and read with even more fervor than before. He occupied himself

with history, especially with the history of slavery, and philosophy. What he read, he

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passed on to all who would listen to him. To increase its effective radius, he wrote letters.

He participated in the debating society of the prison to learn public speaking. Through

these activities, he came to the conclusion that he had spent his whole life in a prison, and

now liberated by Islam that was in prison. A first test of endurance had its religious

subjugation, as Reginald was excluded because of "sex outside of marriage" from the

"Nation of Islam." On the orders of Elijah Muhammad's family broke off contact with

Reginald (Tyner, 2004, p. 333).

Agitator of the Black Muslims

What was the land that has been released into the Malcolms? In 1952 the situations of

American blacks were anything but rosy. They had twice as high unemployment; the

annual income was about 40% lower, the infant mortality rate higher than 75%. Illiteracy

was 10% for whites 1.8%. The state of Mississippi spent for education of a white child

more than three times as much as for a black. In Florida, they had to use some different

textbooks. In seven countries tuberculosis patients were separated according to race, in

eleven states in the schools for the blind school children.

History of the Black Muslims

The Detroit Mosque of the "Nation of Islam," said Temple Number One, because it is the

first foundation of Elijah Muhammad's movement. Muhammad's followers were called

the Black Muslims, although for themselves has been seen as ordinary Muslims. In fact,

many of their teachings with the orthodox and Islam were incompatible. Muhammad

insisted stoutly that there were no white Muslims. He treated his followers as his

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children, in a small group he referred to them as babies. Elijah Muhammad was originally

named Robert Poole. In his twenties he was like Earl Little Garvey's UNIA activist.

Around 1930 he met the rain coat and silk (and drug) dealer Wallace Dodd Ford, who

told him that all whites were devils. Ford described himself as a light-skinned blacks

time, sometimes as Arabs, sometimes as a half-Polynesians, compared with whites as

whites. Ford, who later called Wallace Fard Delaney claimed to come from Mecca, and a

messenger of Allah to be. For a fee, he changed the last names of his followers in "X" to

indicate that her former name of a slave name and her real name is unknown. When a

first name appeared more than once was counted ("2X", "3X" ...). Thus, even from

Malcolm Little Malcolm X. Later, the X was often replaced by Arabic names.1933 Ford

was arrested several times, Muhammad became his deputy. 1934 Ford mysteriously

disappeared; Muhammad stood at the head of the movement, but moved to Chicago,

because Ford's supporters were in Detroit too much (Tyner, 2004, p. 334). He gradually

brought under control. He taught that all whites would become extinct by 1936, but the

older blacks would be young again and potent. He also said that Ford had been God for

himself and that he is (and not Ford) Allah's messenger. After Ford's disappearance

Muhammad became increasingly afraid of being murdered. He traveled from place to

place, and let himself stand by his followers. His wife and eight children had to make

without him for years.

Malcolm is confidant of Muhammad

In the fall of 1952, Malcolm became Elijah Muhammad for the first time in person. In the

following months, he tried tirelessly to attract new members for the "Nation of Islam." In

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June 1953 he was an assistant priest of the Detroit Black Muslims. Muhammad is for him

a kind of surrogate father, the loving father he never had (after a while he turned out to be

just as tyrannical as his real father). After Malcolm's probationary period had expired and

he could move freely again, he was sent to Boston in order to open a mosque. The

"Nation of Islam" called on its members an ascetic lifestyle: no alcohol, no other drugs

(not including cigarettes), no gambling, no form of crime, hard work with little vacation,

little sleep, as not attending sports events and movie theaters , no TV (later himself was

frequently on television as Malcolm, these programs were allowed), no dancing, no

beauty in women. Members should pay attention to cleanliness and eat only once a day as

possible. The relationships between men and women were regulated more strictly: in the

mosque they had to sit separately, "not to distract the attention." You should not go

swimming together; private appointments were taboo, forbidden sex outside marriage

strictly. This way of life at least has thoroughly refuted the myth that blacks were

inherently horny, lazy, crazy and criminal. Malcolm submitted to the rigid discipline of

the "Nation of Islam" for fear of falling back into his old way of life otherwise (Tyner,

2004, p. 338).

Ideology of the Black Muslims

One of the main demands of the "Nation of Islam" as with Garvey was an independent

state. He should either occur in Africa or in a cut out of the U.S. territory. The attempt to

integrate them into American society is doomed to failure. Mixing of the races was

harmful. Prominent blacks that white women were married were sharply criticized. It is

wrong to put the Black Nationalism with nationalism and chauvinism of white Americans

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on an equal footing. Trotsky once described the nationalism of oppressed nations "as the

shell of an immature Bolshevism." The nationalism of oppressor nations is always

reactionary. The nationalism of oppressed nations has also reactionary, but also very

revolutionary sites. The one we fight nationalism with all his might, when we try other

loyal criticism by the revolutionary core to develop and separate from the reactionary

envelope. Prime example, that the independent state was possible was for Malcolm, the

establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Lenin and Trotsky were one of the views that

after the overthrow of capitalism, Jews who want to be happy, to have the right to be on

their own - and after the October Revolution was also a Yiddish Soviet republic created.

But a Jewish state in capitalism would be a reactionary utopia. And what happened

actually from Israel: a bridge-head of U.S. imperialism, in which the Palestinians are

being hounded, in which must also live the Jewish population with mass unemployment,

housing disaster and fear of terror to the death irritated Palestinian youth. Israel is the best

argument against, not for the possibility of a black-State Allegations, the demand for

separation would mean a kind of apartheid; Malcolm responded that that the voluntary

separation was anything other than the enforced racial segregation, remains in control of

the blacks from the whites. Trotsky had in the thirties, advised his American comrades to

support demands for an independent black state in the U.S., if collected by the blacks -

themselves. At that time there were still several U.S. states with black majorities (Tyner,

2004, p. 339). The mechanization of agriculture after the Second World War, millions of

black farm workers lost their jobs and small tenants. Many migrated to the large

industrial centers of the North. From 1870 to 1939 were 2.2 million blacks to the North,

from 1940 to 1959 2.4 million. Thus, the demand for a separate state was always

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unworkable. For the blacks in the North in 1960 95% lived in large cities. What could be

a viable state in the black ghettos of big cities? Against such arguments made in the

"Nation of Islam" insensitive religious faith with their disaster: Soon will come the Day

of Judgment, Allah will punish and destroy the white devil and then the world is again

in the blacks, the actual people (Tyner, 2004, p. 333).

The "Nation of Islam" who had the ambition to help the blacks boycotted the civil rights

movement in full. Malcolm could not endorse this attitude on life. In 1963, the civil rights

movement in Birmingham, Alabama was chosen as a focus. The city was a stronghold of

segregation. In it, even a book was forbidden, which was shown in how to mix black and

white rabbit. Even this time joined the white terror bombings. The fact provoked riots

gave the pretext for intensified police terror. In this situation, the local imam announced

at the Black Muslims, Malcolm would come and hold several events. Malcolm was

denying that shortly afterwards. It was rumored that Elijah had forbidden the trip. In

August, in Washington was a March against the civil rights movement, Malcolm had

only scorn for it left. Thus he fulfilled a directive hand of Muhammad; on the other hand,

his attacks could also be a radical political critique of the "farce on Washington" read.

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References:

Rabaka, R. (2002). Malcolm X and/as critical theory Philosophy, Radical Politics, and

the African American Search for Social Justice. California State University-Long

Beach. 145-161

Imms, W. (2004). Malcolms Story. Art Education. 40-45

Tyner, J. A. (2004). Territoriality, social justice and gendered revolutions in the speeches

of Malcolm X. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 330-343.

Smallwood, A. P. (2005). The Intellectual Creativity and Public Discourse of Malcolm X:

A Precursor to the Modern Black Studies Movement. 248-263