Malcolm X (22 page)

Louis became Malcolm’s first true protégé. Many other young men would follow, fashioning their sermons and temple activities on Malcolm’s dynamic model. It was not long before they were widely, and sometimes disparagingly, known within the Nation as “Malcolm’s Ministers.”

Malcolm believed that Muslim clergy could be divided into two categories—evangelists and pastors. Few outstanding evangelists excelled as pastors, which called for skill in providing comfort and support to congregants, while relatively few pastors could call their congregations to embrace a spiritual vision in the manner of a great evangelist. “My desire has always been to be good at both,” he said. Several years later, he would equate himself with the greatest Christian evangelist of his time, Billy Graham.

He considered every sermon he delivered an evangelical opportunity, because usually the congregation included a small number of first-time guests. A typical NOI service was very different from most Christian services. The temple’s secretary or captains might open the meeting with announcements; then the minister would lecture, frequently using a blackboard or posters to reinforce points being made. Malcolm would encourage his audience to ask questions, and even welcomed banter and debate with visitors. At one typical Philadelphia meeting, Malcolm declared that the Nation was “the only place in the ‘wilderness of North America’ that the ‘black man and black woman’ [hear] the truth about themselves.” The lecture hammered at two themes. First, Malcolm repeatedly emphasized that blacks were spiritually dead as a group, and that their reawakening depended solely on their acknowledgment of the truth, represented by Elijah Muhammad. Second, Malcolm discussed the Nation’s expectations of how women and men should relate to each other. Urging men to “respect their women,” he also warned women to dress modestly. Women who attracted the amorous attentions of men by “the display of their bodies,” Malcolm declared, “were as common as the dog we see chasing the other dog in the streets.”

At another 1955 Philadelphia temple sermon he used experiences of racial oppression to explain why whites had no right to describe the Nation of Islam as subversive:

Throughout the Philadelphia sermon, Malcolm presented a vivid picture of damnation for those who continued their allegiance to white values, though as an orator he had learned how to modulate his tone. Frequently he employed humor, and occasionally even references to bebop slang. “North America is already smothering with fire,” he warned. “You think you are so hep and, Jack, you can’t even smell the smoke.” He even “ran the dozens,” in the colloquial language of black folk culture, by making negative references to black mothers: “Your mother is a prostitute when you are not respecting women—you might as well say this because this is what is proven by your actions.” He declared that he had no fear of government surveillance: “The FBI follows me all over the country and they cannot do anything about this teaching unless it is the will of Allah. The devils have lost their power now and the only thing they can do is try to frighten the black men who are still dead.”

As the sermon ended, he observed that, while there had been a large number of male converts recently, “there is something very wrong that sisters are not coming in.” Instead of questioning the Nation’s sexist practices that discouraged the recruitment of new female members, Malcolm blamed the excessive gossiping of the temple’s females. “I’d rather put all of the sisters out for bickering and go out and get a lot of prostitutes. That sounds harsh, but I cannot stand this disunity.” Tirades like these earned Malcolm a reputation for being aggressively hostile to black women and suspicious of the institution of marriage. Taking his cue, many Fruit members applauded and imitated the minister's sexist attitudes and rhetoric.

Malcolm frequently cited episodes in American history, emphasizing the legacy of the slave trade to condemn both Christianity and the U.S. government. In another sermon, he remarked that all Negroes were “American citizens, but you cannot prove this because you have been fighting for civil rights ever since the enemy brought you to Jamestown, Virginia, in the year of 1555. You do not own any state in North America but today you say you are American.” Black people could not look to whites to redeem their lives. “Today the white man does not have any power left and it is only the black man who has any chance to save himself.” On another occasion, he reminded members that people of European descent were hopelessly outnumbered globally by Africans, Asians, and other nonwhites. “There are only two kinds of people, the white and the black, so if you are not white you must be black.” He urged NOI members to patronize businesses managed or owned by Muslims. Without mentioning Wilfred by name, he noted that, in Detroit, “one of the brothers is the manager of a large department store and hires as many members . . . as he possibly can.”

By 1955, Malcolm’s popularity had become so intense that NOI headquarters called on him to relocate to Chicago for three weeks, to promote a membership drive in Temple No. 2. Recruitment efforts were ongoing, and during the mid-1950s the Nation of Islam seems to have looked closely at the model of Islamic proselytizing practiced by the controversial Ahmadi Muslims. Despite the Ahmadis’ refusal to consider the Prophet Muhammad the Seal of the Prophets, which deeply disturbed nearly all orthodox Muslims, and at a time when the Pakistani government was moving to designate the sect a non-Muslim religious group, emigrant Ahmadis had successfully formed political coalitions and working relationships with Sunni Muslims in the United States and frequently worshipped side by side with them. By the late 1950s a significant number of African-American Ahmadis had joined the Nation, partially due to its explicitly black identification. In doing so, they introduced a more orthodox interpretation of classical Islam, as well as a long-standing commitment to the international Islamic community. No matter how sectarian and heretical the NOI's theological tenets, Elijah Muhammad always insisted that his ministers present his creed as part of a global community of Muslims. These factors helped shape Malcolm’s version of
da’wa
, and his pastoral duties. This was the main reason why, in the early 1960s, Malcolm would so vigorously criticize the phrase “Black Muslims” to describe the Nation of Islam.

As the Nation grew, it began to interact with traditional or orthodox Muslims in different ways. And despite the Nation’s adherence to the theologically bizarre tenets of Yacub’s History, the fundamental spiritual terrain that defined Islam’s contours had a direct and inescapable pull on the NOI’s evolution. Within orthodox Islam, there are two great divisions: the Sunni, who represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and the Shi’a, a group who believe that Ali, the Prophet’s nephew and son-in-law, and his descendants were the sole successors to Muhammad. For Sunnis, ordained clergy do not exist. The leader of the observance of
salat
, or prayer service, may be anyone knowledgeable. This leader, the
imam
, strives to be “a pattern for the rest to follow, so as to preserve the required precision and order of the service.” In Islam, the imam may also be a prominent theologian or legal scholar. The Shi’a, by contrast, perceive their imams as divinely inspired. Two main branches of the Shi’a, the Isma’ilis and Imanis, define their imams by hereditary descent and believe that their leaders possess a god-given understanding of Islam, first represented by Ali. The imams possess the powers of the “cycle of prophecy” (
nubuwwa
) and, as one Islamic scholar puts it, “they serve as intercessors between humans and God.”

Over centuries, Islamic political thought evolved in two strikingly different directions. For most Sunnis, the foundation of all religious teachings is the
sharia
, the law, which in turn is grounded in
haqiqat
, a literal interpretation of the Qur'an. For the Shi’as, spiritual knowledge is esoteric, hidden, secret. The Shi’a Muslim approaches the Qur'an not for the construction of laws but for knowledge that reveals truth. Because Shi’as frequently functioned as persecuted minorities in predominantly Sunni societies, they withdrew from politics and civil society. The Shi’as view most political leaders as illegitimate, and except in states like Iran in which they control the government, they generally have not participated in politics.

Although the Lost-Found Nation of Islam can hardly be considered orthodox, it shares striking parallels with Shi’ism. Both view their faiths from the vantage point of persecuted minorities; both are convinced that all civil authorities and politics are corrupt; both espouse what in Arabic is called
hikmat’ At-tadrij
, the gradual communication of religious knowledge and truth over time. When Elijah Muhammad elevated Wallace D. Fard to the status of Allah, Muhammad immediately became the sect’s sole conduit with God. Muhammad also acquired the authoritative power of prophecy and, as in the case of Shi’a Muslims, an infallibility that could not be challenged. Also like most Shi’a, Elijah Muhammad firmly believed that key positions within the temple’s leadership should be linked, either through genetic connections (for example, Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff, Herbert Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, Jr., Wallace Muhammad) or through marriage (for example, Raymond Sharrieff). For this reason, despite Malcolm’s filial relationship with Muhammad, most members of the patriarch’s family strongly rejected him as a potential heir apparent because he was not related by blood. On a lower level, it was not unusual for local leaders to be relatives. By the late 1950s, for instance, three Little brothers were ministers of important temples—Wilfred in Detroit, Philbert in Lansing, and Malcolm in Harlem.

Despite the NOI’s heterodoxy, Elijah Muhammad perceived his sect as part of a global brotherhood, the
ummah
, which transcended the distinctions of ethnicity, nationality, class, and even race. NOI ministers were trained to see themselves as dedicated warriors in a spiritual struggle against God’s enemies. Such an imam can be described as a
mujahid
, one who devotes his life to the service of Allah, but who also practices spiritual self-discipline.

Members of the Nation of Islam with a more sophisticated knowledge of orthodox Islam found allegorical reasons for believing that the sect would ultimately grow away from its heretical roots and rejoin more conventional Islam. They compared Elijah’s flight from Detroit to Chicago and the
hegira
of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. The persecution of the first Muslims was subsequently experienced by Elijah and his early followers who resisted the U.S. draft. Perhaps most persuasively, all Muslims knew that the Holy Qur'an was a book of Muhammad’s recitations compiled over a period of twenty-two years. Muslims believe that the work contains a unitary message; nevertheless, the focus and content of the
surahs,
or chapters, changed over time. In a similar fashion, Elijah distributed “lessons” to his followers to be studied and committed to memory. Each lesson reflected a “divine truth,” yet together they were incomplete, to be superseded by subsequent revelations. As Elijah’s connections with the larger Islamic world grew, the likelihood for some sort of theological evolution, or “Islamization,” also increased. In fact, this is exactly what happened upon Elijah’s death in 1975, when his rebellious son Wallace took over the leadership of the Nation; he instituted a total rejection of the Nation’s dissident religious dogma and accepted orthodox Islam.

One decisive step occurred, curiously enough, through global politics. The Nation of Islam had always viewed African Americans as “black Asiatics,” and in its realm of the saved there was no distinction between Asians and Africans. Consequently, the NOI took special note when in April 1955 representatives from twenty-nine African and Asian nations met in Bandung, Indonesia, to plan how they might cooperate politically. Participating states included Burma, Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, India, Thailand, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Ethiopia, and the Gold Coast, but by far the largest contingent was made up by nations with majority Muslim populations: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen. In the opening address, the Indonesian president Achmed Sukarno declared the gathering the first transnational conference of colored peoples in history.