| Black History Month is a strong reminder that we’re still trying to come to grips with that turbulent period known as "the ’60s." So many ideas and issues were brought to the fore that sometimes we can be taken aback at how fresh they still sound. For example, in the densely packed pages of his autobiography, many readers recognized Malcolm X’s condemnation of American racism.
"Listen! The white man’s racism toward the black man here in America is what has got him in such trouble all over the world, with other non-white peoples. The white man can’t separate himself from the stigma that he automatically feels about anyone, no matter who, who is not his colour. And the non-white peoples of the world are sick of the condescending white man!"
These attitudes linked the treatment and suffering of African-Americans to the Vietnam War. While Malcolm X was not alone in making this connection, he went further, suggesting that such actions by the United States, or the French in Algeria and the Dutch in Indonesia, were encouraging the growth of Islam.
"Two-thirds of the human population today is telling the one-third minority white man, ‘Get out!’ And the white man is leaving. And as he leaves, we see the non-white peoples returning in a rush to their original religions…. Only one religion – Islam – had the power to stand and fight the white man’s Christianity for a thousand years!"
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, mere weeks after speaking these words to Roots author Alex Haley. Since his break with the Nation of Islam in 1963, he had been under extreme pressure and threats of violence. While Malcolm X’s faith in the Nation had been shaken by evidence of adultery by its spiritual leader, Elijah Muhammad, his faith in Islam had not, and the following year he embarked on the hajj, or spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca. His autobiography is filled with his thoughts and comments about the Islamic world, and chief among these observations was the role that Islam played as an agent of anti-western opposition.
In the United States, the Nation of Islam was created to appeal to disillusioned African-Americans who found themselves on the outside of segregated institutions looking in. Throughout the civil rights era, many traditional African-American Christian Church congregations preached a middle-path approach of determined but non-violent change, headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For those disappointed by King’s pace, or who felt his position was compromised by his background in a European-dominated religion, the Nation stepped in, offering a militant brand of racial independence backed by a pedigree of religious independence. In its early days, the Nation made its biggest gains among the African-American prison population.
What impressed Malcolm X the most during his 1964 pilgrimage was the diversity of the Islamic experience. En route to the Holy City, he encountered Muslims from Russia, Germany, France, Ghana, Indonesia, China, Japan and Afghanistan, in addition to his Saudi hosts – all of them united by feelings of peace and brotherhood. Islam’s openness and acceptance of all peoples was in stark contrast to the Christian example set by the imperial powers of Europe and America.
"Sunday mornings in this year of grace 1965, imagine the ‘Christian conscience’ of congregations guarded by deacons barring the door to black would-be worshippers, telling them ‘You can’t enter this House of God!’"
For Malcolm X, the mainstream American Christian community’s complicity in segregation was the church’s greatest single failure.
Malcolm X was to the point – the West’s refusal to treat the non-western world as credible equals was leading to its own alienation. "…if the so-called ‘Christianity’ now being practiced in America displays the best that world Christianity has left to offer – no one in his right mind should need any much greater proof that very close at hand is the end of Christianity."
Today, Malcolm X’s appraisal of Islam’s current appeal seems every bit as vital. "It is the old ‘you sow, you reap’ story. The Christian Church sowed racism – blasphemously; now it reaps racism."
Malcolm X admitted that what initially attracted him to the Nation of Islam was its opposition to the white-dominated power structure and everything that went with it. This was the same allure he saw being exercised by Islam internationally. The irony here is that it was his exposure to, and dialogue with, other forms of Islam that led to Malcolm X softening his stance towards "white America" – not his dealings with any of the sympathetic elements within the civil rights movement. There is a lesson here that contemporary Americans would do well to observe.
While Malcolm X’s views on the status of African-Americans are traditionally prominent features of Black History Month, he was a multi-faceted speaker who continues to offer intriguing perspectives year-round. |
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