Malcolm X is a Muslim leader and African-American nationalist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. He advocated for Black empowerment and frequently spoke about his belief in Islam to those surrounding him and to the public. Malcolm X began a philosophical shift toward nonviolent tactics to advancing equality after a pilgrimage to Mecca. His life was cut painfully short on February 21, 1965.
People don’t realise how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.
Malcolm X
He was born on May 19, 1925 at Omaha, Nebraska but grew up in Lansing, Michigan. His original name is Malcolm Little, while his Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Malcolm X was sentenced to prison in 1946. While in prison became a member of the Nation of Islam.
After his parole in 1952, he became one of the Nation’s leaders and chief spokesman. In 1953, he was named assistant minister of Temple Number One in Detroit, Michigan and by 1954 he had established Boston’s Temple Number Eleven and expanded Philadelphia’s Temple Number Twelve.
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
During his lifetime, he helped grow the Nation of Islam, an African American religious and political movement, from a few hundred members to nearly 75,000 people, before differences with the organization’s leader forced him out in March 1964. After leaving, he became a Sunni Muslim, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
In 1964, Malcolm X spent half the year abroad, much of that in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. During his pilgrimage in Mecca he met with Prince Faisal. Also he attended the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity as a representative of the OAAU.
I am a Muslim because it’s a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X respected President Nasser and praised him for his projects and for his anti-imperialist ideology and for his support to African Liberation Movements. He traveled across West Africa including Guinea meeting with other pan-Africanist of his time.
He was a staunch supporter of Palestine, he even visited several refugee camps in Gaza. Malcolm X returned to the United States with a new energy and vision for his work.
Malcolm X preached about human rights, freedom, action, and community building.
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.
Malcom X
Nine days before his assassination he was actually walking the streets of Steel Pulse’s neighbourhood, in England. Apparently, he was invited over by an Asian committee to help fight the injustices of minorities being denied housing in a then, “White district.”
In February of 1965, his family home was firebombed days of arriving back home, in Queens, NY. He and his wife, Betty Shabazz, had to grab their 4 little girls and stand out in the frost bitten streets in the 20-degree weather, watching their house burn to the cinders.
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
– Malcolm X
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot while on stage during his newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity meeting in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom, New York, United State of America and he was pronounced dead at 3:30pm (20:30GMT). He was 39 — the same age as Martin Luther King Jr. when he was killed.
