Nation Of Islam As Malcolm X example essay topic

GENERAL ANALYSIS OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X (7 pages) The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley is a book that has, in many ways, altered the destiny of the United States of America, and to some extent, the entire world. It is one man's perplexing theory of what the solution to America's black / white racism dilemma should be. In this book, Malcolm X tells the story of his life – one of the most interesting lives in American history. In a sense, it is the story of America; the deep-rooted struggle that has dominated US politics and society for over two hundred years. Malcolm X begins the story of his life where it began, in Omaha, Nebraska.

It is generally a narration of his early childhood, occasionally accented with hindsight and contemplation. Early on, the narration has a deep undertone of angry and trouble. "Among the reasons that my father had decided to risk and dedicate his life to help disseminate this philosophy among his people was that he had seen four of his six brothers die by violence, three of them killed by white men, including one by lynching. What my father could no know then was that of the remaining three, including himself, only one, my Uncle Jim, would die in bed, of natural causes. Northern white police would later shoot my Uncle Oscar. And my father was finally himself to die by the white man's hands It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence.

I have done all that I can to be prepared,' (4). The narration also, in most places, has a moderate style and conversational tone which makes it more readable and interesting. Perhaps it is also conversational because the autobiography was told to Alex Haley and not written by Malcolm X. He discusses at length his troubled childhood, the atrocities that "the white man' committed on his family and other Negroes. Sometimes an author uses grammatical anomalies to indicate his opinion; it is interesting to note how X refers to all Anglo-Saxons as "the white man' – a single, collective identity with really no identity at all – while he refers to all African Americas as Negroes – individuals, not all identical in actions or beliefs.

Thus the author makes certain things know without truly saying them. The story continues as Malcolm grows up in Lansing, Michigan, watches his mother's condition deteriorate, and eventually ends up in a juvenile detention hall. The purpose of describing his early childhood experiences is to prove, by example, the human rights violations that occurred, and still occur, in America. He subtly begins interjecting between the narration to point out various things about the racial struggle. While explaining how well the white people, who ran the detention hall, treated Malcolm, he adds a much darker hue to the story. "This is the sort of kindly condescension which I try to clarify today, to these integration-hungry Negroes, about their "liberal' white friends, these so-called "good white people' – most of them anyway.

I don t care how nice on is to you; the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind. He may stand with you through thin, but not thick; when the chips are down, you ll find that as fixed I him as his bone structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he's better than anybody black. ' (33). It seems, from the above passage, that Malcolm X is speaking directly to black people; he refers to the reader as "you', and the white race in the third person. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is not simply meant to be an interesting story about a hoodlum-turned-revolutionary; it is a drastic political statement about the views of not just a revolutionary, but one of the most controversial revolutionaries of the 20th Century. As a result, it is beneficial for X to forge a close tie between himself and his own people, in an effort to create a following.

Also, it is meant to enrage "the white man' and cause the kind of revolutionary turmoil that Malcolm X cherished. As his life progresses towards adolescence, the style becomes more and more colloquial; it is as though the way he is telling the story is a metaphor for the direction in which it was headed. "I was growing up to be even bigger than Wilfred and P hilbert, who had begun to meet girls at the school dances, and other places, and introduced me to a few. But the opens who seemed to life me, I didn t go for – and vice versa. I couldn t dance a lick, anyway ' (35). Perhaps to foreshadow his philosophies, or perhaps simply to increase his own credibility over that of the many African Americans whom he strongly disagreed with, X often makes vague statements about "other' blacks who are somehow far worse, and very wrong about ideas such as integration which, until this point, he only briefly refers to and barely explains why he so strongly opposes it.

At the end of the second chapter, X states that "All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did. If I hadn t, I d probably still be a brainwashed black Christian,' (46). This is essentially the last time he refers to Islam and Allah for several chapters; at this point his life takes a very different direction, and the writing style, again, reflects these changes in his life. The degradation into a less moral way of life clearly becomes evident, early on in the story.

"He pointed out some gamblers and some pimps. Some of them had white whores, he whispered. I ain t going to lie – I dig them two-dollar white whores, Shorty said. "There's a lot of that action around here, nights: you ll see it. ' I said I already had seen some. "You ever had one?' he asked,' (54).

There is a group of people who firmly believe in the theory of evolution, and also its implications on human behavior. All species, it turns out, behave the way they do to increase their own evolutionary success; that is, the purpose of an organism's life is to conceive offspring. It is not surprising that one of the most sensitive subjects in the black-white racial war is sexual intercourse and cross-breeding between the races. Malcolm X goes to great extents to describe the sexual behavior, in light of the racist attitudes of both black and white people. Later on in the book, there is much analysis of this situation. However, very early on there is foreshadowing when X mentions "white whores' in black ghettos.

He takes residence in Roxbury, Massachusetts. X takes a significant amount of time describing the black ghettos; the various pimps, number runners, thieves and other "hustlers' who became his friends. This too has a crucial and deep-seeded intention. Because the ideas that Malcolm X were so revolutionary, and because he was not only opposing the white racists, but also many of his own people (including Dr. Martin Luther King), he needed an iron-clad reason that people should follow him. By describing his condition in the ghettos, the things he did, and the people he met, Malcolm X gives himself the kind of authoritative credential that is very hard to come by for revolutionaries. For X, unlike many of his college educated, upper / middle class black opponents, Malcolm X was a product of the poorest, most demoralized and oppressed ghettos in America.

He often confronted opponents, during panels and debates at universities across the nation, with: "Gentlemen, I finished the eight grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master's was taken in prison,' (325). No one could argue that the masses of black people, whom the entire debate concerned, lived in the same ghettos that X did. Thus who could better understand them and their needs than one of their own? Hence Malcolm X did not worry about revealing the immorality he took part in during his younger years; it was, in fact, beneficial for him to reveal his dark past.

"The first liquor I drank, my first cigarettes, even my first reefers, I can t specifically remember. But I know they were all mixed together with my fist shooting craps, playing cards, and betting my dollar a day on the numbers, as I started hanging out at night with Shorty and his friends,' (61). Soon, Malcolm tells of his travels to New York City, and his eventually taking residence in the Harlem district. He decides to take up a life of crime and "hustling'; "I was going to become one of the most depraved parasitical hustles among New York's eight million people – four million of whom work, and the other four million of whom live off them,' (87).

It is around this stage that Malcolm X introduces the role of sex in the racial struggle. He himself was involved with a white women whom he refers to as "Sophia' throughout the book (to protect her identity I image; she remained with X both before and after getting married to a white man in Boston). "From time to tome Sophia would come over to see me from Boston. Even among Harlem Negroes, her looks gave me status. They were just like the Negroes everywhere else. That was why the white prostitutes made so much money.

It didn t make a difference if you were in Lansing, Boston, or New York – what the white racist said, and still says, was right in those days! All you had to do was put a white girl anywhere close to the average black man, and he would respond. The black women also made the white man's eyes light up – but he was slick enough to hide it,' (108). One of the reasons that Malcolm X became such a controversial celebrity was that he strongly opposed what many other black civil rights activists were striving for; a system of "integration' between white and blacks – the "I Have a Dream' philosophy.

X claims that, "if you want to get right down to the real outcome of this so-called "integration,' what you ve got to arrive at is intermarriage,'. He argues that intermarriage harms both the black race and the white race because it produces "unwelcome d, unwanted, "misfits' in whichever world they try to live in,' and thus, "integration ultimately would destroy the white race and destroy the black race,' (318). The story takes a third turn when Malcolm X is imprisoned, and subsequently converts to Islam. Now, another reason that this book and its author are so widely debated is that not all Muslims, today, accept that Malcolm X was a Muslim – or at least not until much later on in his life.

What Malcolm X describes as Islamic teaching in black communities during the 1960's, largely led by Elijah Muhammad, is actually very different from the Islam that is followed in the rest of the world. Near the conclusion of his autobiography, Malcolm X describes going to the Holy City of Mecca to perform the Hajj pilgrimage; a kind of conclusive, spiritual enlightenment in the later years of his life. However, he also describes not knowing how to pray or anything other than a few words that he had learned; "I began to get nervous, knowing that from there in. it was going to be watching others who knew what they were doing, and trying to do what they did,' (371). Islam tries to be very particular about the line between the "believers' and the "non-believers.

' There is, however, some controversy amongst the scholars. For one thing, one set of scholars believe that a man is not a Muslim unless he prays with perfection, five times a day, seven days a week, as is instructed by the Qu arn. Another set believes that a man is a Muslim if he simply accepts that there is only one supreme being, Allah, and that he has no companions, and that the prophet Mohammad is his messanger. Now, either way, the sentence preceding this own has a very strict Arabic version, with very particular words, that must be read by every Muslim – and there is no controversy over this. This "oath' is known as the Qualma. When Malcolm X describes the Black Muslims of his time, and the Nation of Islam, there is no mention of this Qualma.

There is also no mention of any of them learning how to pray (even X didn t know how, as we see on page 371 above), or actually reading the Qu arn. In fact, the Nation of Islam, as Malcolm X describes it, seems to be more of a mostly well-intentioned cult, somehow mixed up as a drug addict's support group. At one point, Malcolm X describes the addicts that would come to the Nation of Islam "temples' (they later found, when Elijah Muhammad came back from a trip outside the United States, that these places of worship are called mosques and not temples): "When the addict's withdrawal sets in, and he screaming and begging, Just one shot, man!', the Muslims are right there talking junkie jargon to him. "Baby, knock that monkey off your back! Kick that habit!

Kick Whitey off your back!' The addict, writhing in pain, his nose and eyes running, is pouring sweat from head to foot. He's trying to knock his had against the wall he is vomiting, suffering diarrhea When the awful ordeal is ended, when the grip of dope is broken, the Muslims comfort the weak ex-addict, feeding him soups and broths, to get him on his feet again. He will never forget these brothers who stood by him during this time. He will never forget that it was the Nation of Islam's program which rescued him from the special hell o dope [the ex-addict] can scarcely wait to hit the same junkie jungle he was in, to "fish' out some buddy and salvage him!' (301).

This description is more of a cult that convinced people to join an organization when they are in their weakest state of mind and body – when they are more vulnerable than they will ever be in their life. This description, as a person of any faith can see, has no mention of any religion, aside from loosely referring to the recruiters as "Muslim brothers. ' Every bureaucratic religion (which includes all three religions of the scripture) has a set of procedures that must be followed to become a member of that faith. If all of these procedures are ignored by a group of people who have next to no knowledge of anything about that religion, by what measure are they members of that faith?

Malcolm X's autobiography is a deeply debated and controversial work that will always remain an inseparable part of American history. It is the story of a man who changed America with his words. With the same poetically and skillfully articulated words, X tells the story of his life from early childhood to his later years, where he found "spiritual enlightenment' and became far less militant in his view against integration. Whether Malcolm X only aided in increase racism and race superiority by preaching race pride and independence, or he gave the African American people to tools they needed to build a society free of oppression from the white man, and equal in greatness to white society remains to be seen..