Malcolm X

This book was published in 2016, 51 years after the assassination of El-hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X (1925–1965), who is considered by many as one of America’s greatest minds: one who left Christianity to embrace Islam. The volume’s 13 chapters are written by no less than 15 international authors, i.e. Dustin Byrd, Seyed Javad Miri, William David Hart, John McClendon III, Stephen Ferguson II, Rudolf Siebert, Louis DeCaro, Jr., Farid Alatas, John Andrew Morrow, Emin Poljarevic, Bethany Beyyette, Yolanda van Tilborgh, and Nuri Tinaz. Malcolm is described here well as one who ‘wondered as he wandered’ (p. 5), leaving behind a Baptism preaching father and Seventh-day Adventist mother in his extended quest for genuine Sunni Islam. On this road, he had to leave behind his former ‘divinely taught and divinely missioned’ mentor, Elijah Muhammad (p. 11), from whom he could distance himself only after having performed hajj in 1964. Before his break with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm had believed that black people were the original man and white people, in contrast, a race of devils. No wonder that Malcolm’s conflict with the Nation threw him into chaos (p. 16 f.). He still believed that only black people could solve problems of the black people. His alternative was an alternative hajj plus ‘the ballot or the bullet’ (p. 38)....