Elijah Muhammad Quotes

Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better." -said by Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X

Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, [.....] just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better.

OBEY DIVINE MESSENGERS “And we sent no Messenger but that he should be obeyed by Allah’s command” (Holy Qur-an 4:64) The so-called American Negroes have never had a Divine Messenger sent to them before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

You and I may go to Harvard, we may go to York of England, or go to Al Ahzar in Cairo and get degrees from all of these great seats of learning. But we will never be recognized until we recognize our women.

You are not American citizens or members of the white man’s world. The only American citizens are the white people who are originally from Europe. So why fight a losing battle by trying to be recognized as something you are not and never will be. I am not trying to disillusion you but merely telling you the truth.

No nation will ever respect us as long as we beg for that which we can do for ourselves. There has never been a leader of our people who went all-out to set up an economic plan for our people. I use the saying of Jesus, “All before me were thieves and robbers.

Christianity has long taught “Thou Shall Not Kill,” but for centuries the most devastating killings have occurred constantly by Christians killing Christians, killing Buddhists, killing Moslems, killing Jews and killing members of their own family or the families of friends or associates.

Within the Nation, he [Malcolm] explained that his purpose was to present the views of Elijah Muhammad and to challenge distortions about their religion. In fact, his objectives were to turn upside down the standard racial dialectic of black subordination and white supremacy, and to show off his rhetorical skill at the expense of white authorities and Negro integrationists (185).

Therefore, there will be much opposition to him from his people who want to lead and not be followers of others. Especially the middle class, the black Christian preachers, and the college and university students who feel so proud of their worldly education and positions.

Beware of the national elections, my black brothers and sisters. There is no salvation in them for you—only false promises. The only salvation for you and me now is in unity and being under the guidance of Allah through His Messenger and His program for us all.

And Isaiah says in his prophecy concerning us that God said He would call them by a new name that He, Himself, would give them, one of His own names, and would take away the names of the enemy and would slay the enemy.

The devils reared the poor so-called Negroes for 400 years and put fear in them when they were babies. They (the devils) kept them apart from their own kind coming in from abroad, so as to deprive them of any knowledge other than what he (the devil) has taught them. As soon as they hear of a so-called Negro learning and teaching his own people that which they (the devils) would not teach them, the devils then seek to kill that one or trail him wherever he goes, threatening those who would listen to him, believe him and follow him. Knowing that their very presence and inquiries might frighten or scare Negroes they. ask, “What is this you are listening to and believing in?” This will frighten most of them away from accepting his or her own salvation and keep them from returning to their own God, religion and people.

The black man in America as well as the black man abroad has never been able to provide good leadership for himself under Christianity, because Christianity is not the true religion of God. It is a division of religions and uses a division of God

I was born in the South. I married and went to Detroit with my two children in 1923. I know the South and the Southern white people. They are actually a people who envy any success that comes to he so called Negro in any way. If you own a little more than the white man there, why he’s against you; he may even kill you. He may bomb you or destroy your property. He just doesn’t like the fact of your having anything. Whether in court, in justice or in any way. This is naturally in their blood. They want the black man to have nothing

You are absolutely the boss, and we have nothing. And we are asking to leave you, that’s all we’re asking. We can’t get along with you in peace; you don’t want us in peace. “If we sit over there in that house across the street, peaceful all day and all night, after a while that worries you. You will send someone around to see what is going on over there in that house. “It’s the white man’s way of starting trouble—breaking the peace of people by interfering with their peace. We’re not sitting over there in that house planning anything but are trying to plan peace for the house.

I will raise them up a prophet from among thy brethern like unto thee and will put my words in his mouth and shall speak unto them all that I command him.” This is an answer or a prophecy that compares with the prayer of Abraham—that God raised up a messenger from among them and taught him the wisdom and the book, because his people would not have knowledge of the book and were only guessing at its meaning. This book is referring to the Bible—that they were guessing at its meaning. This is true! Thousands of preachers here are preaching the Bible and do not understand the true meaning of it. They only guess at its meaning.

You can never trust hypocrites. They are liars. They are worse than disbelievers, because a disbeliever has not lied, saying that he believed and then turned back. This makes hypocrites the most hated of all people.

During his hajj, Malcolm [Malcolm X] fell into a new Islam with the same blind faith that he had given to Elijah. Since he lived just a year after his hajj, Mecca became the neatly presented and cinema-friendly conclusion to his lifelong thread of transformations: but he finally found the Truth and then Allah took him home. But if he lived longer, I think he would have called out the Arabs.

Elijah Muhammad himself has now been carrrying the same message for more than thirty years; he is not an overnight sensation, and we owe his ministry, I am told, to the fact that when he was a child of six or so, his father was lynched before his eyes. (So much for states' rights.)

There are several reasons why niggers should oppose it. One reason is that the Qur-an forbids Muslims to drink intoxicating drinks, whereas most niggers like to get drunk. It says also that thieves should have their hands cut off. How many niggers would be left with hands? Christianity, the one and only true religion,

very different. Black people have a heart of gold, love and mercy. Such a heart, nature did not give to the white race. This is where the so-called Negroes are deceived in this devil race. They think they have the same kind of heart; but the white race knows better. They have kept it as a secret among themselves, that they may be able to deceive the black people. They have been, and still are, successful in deceiving the black man, under the disguise of being the ones who want peace, love and friendship with the world, and with God - at the same time making war with the world, to destroy peace, love and friendship of the black nation.

To be American is to be part of a dialogical and democratic operation that grapples with the challenge of being human in an open-ended and experimental manner. Although America is a romantic project in which a paradise, a land of dreams, is fanned and fueled with a religion of vast possibility, it is, more fundamentally, a fragile experiment-precious yet precarious-of dialogical and democratic human endeavor that yields forms of modern self-making and self-creating unprecedented in human history. From Thomas Jefferson to Elijah Muhammad, Geronimo to Dorothy Day, Jane Adams to Nathaniel West, it holds out the possibility of self-transformation and self-reliance to New World dwellers willing to start anew and recast themselves for the purpose of deliverance and betterment. This purpose requires only a restlessness, energy and boldness that galvanizes people to organize and mobilize themselves in a way that makes new opportunities and possibilities credible and worth the

Every black man under the sun are brothers. I don't care if he lives in America, or in Asia or Africa, or in the Isles of the Pacific or the Gulf.

The

Though they had a chance. God forgives them if they would leave the devil and come to Him and go back to the people. They are not guilty of the devil's sins and He has declared them to be free of the devil's sins.

Elijah Muhammad announced that Cassius Clay had renounced his name and taken another. From now on he would be known as Muhammad Ali. Mohammad means ‘worthy of all praise’. Ali means ‘the greatest.’ To journalists who refused to use his new name he declared ‘I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

The word for “revolution” in German is Umwälzung. What it means is a complete overturn—a complete change. The overthrow of King Farouk in Egypt and the succession of President Nasser is an example of a true revolution. It means the destroying of an old system, and its replacement with a new system. Another example is the Algerian revolution, led by Ben Bella; they threw out the French who had been there over 100 years. So how does anybody sound talking about the Negro in America waging some “revolution”? Yes, he is condemning a system—but he’s not trying to overturn the system, or to destroy it. The Negro’s so-called “revolt” is merely an asking to be accepted into the existing system! A true Negro revolt might entail, for instance, fighting for separate black states within this country—which several groups and individuals have advocated, long before Elijah Muhammad came along.

The so-called Negroes should not be this type of people, since they have the Bible, which is full of prophecies concerning the fate of those who rejected and opposed God’s prophets. Allah’s warning in the Holy Qur-an is very plain against the disobedient and opposers to His Last Apostle.

Negroes were brought here in chains long before the Irish ever thought of leaving Ireland; what manner of consolation is it to be told that emigrants arriving here—voluntarily—long after you did have risen far above you? In the hall, as I was waiting for the elevator, someone shook my hand and said, “Goodbye, Mr. James Baldwin. We’ll soon be addressing you as Mr. James X.” And I thought, for an awful moment, My God, if this goes on much longer, you probably will. Elijah Muhammad had seen this show, I think, or another one, and he had been told about me. Therefore, late on a hot Sunday

Malcolm had often proudly boasted that a sure sign of NOI conversion was a black man’s ability to look a white man dead in the eyes without flinching. He had tested the faith of acolytes in Harlem by challenging them to attempt it on the job. Many were surprised and ashamed by their reflexive diverting of their eyes in the presence of white supervisors. “The Messenger had told me if you trust in Allah, the devil can do nothing to you,” said Jeremiah. “He will take the fear [off] of you. I never was afraid of those crackers.” Long before encountering Elijah Muhammad—as a child, in fact—Malcolm had been conditioned by his parents with a fearless sense of racial pride, combined with an assured equanimity.

Beyta, they weren’t following Hazrat Isa. They stopped following him a long time before. They turned Jesus into a god, and so they dishonored Hazrat Isa and blasphemed Allah! That is why Allah sent Muhammad and Islam as the final message for all of mankind. It embodies all the messages that Allah sent through the prophets: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, David, Elijah . . . all of them brought messages from Allah to their people, and although the people accepted their messages at first, later generations corrupted them all. Light gets dimmer the farther it gets from its source! That is why we cannot trust the Bible today; it is corrupted. Only the Quran is perfect. Only Islam is incorruptible. Allah will guard it until the message spreads and the world becomes Muslim. That is when the day of judgment will come. That is the day Islam will be victorious.

The liberal element of Whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro, getting the sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, getting the mind of the Negro, and then the Negro sides with the White liberal and the White liberal uses the Negro against the White conservative so that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the White liberal. The worst enemy the Negro has is this White man who runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negroes and calling himself a liberal and it is following these White liberals that has perpetuated the problems that Negroes in America have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, trapped, tricked, deceived by the White liberal then Negroes would get together and solve our own problems. It was the White liberals that come up with the Civil War, supposedly they say, to solve the Negro, the slave question. Lincoln was supposedly a White liberal. When you read the true history of Lincoln, he wasn’t trying to free any slaves, he was trying to save the union. He was trying to save his own party. He was trying to conserve his own power and it was only after he found he couldn’t do it without freeing the slaves that he came up with the Emancipation Proclamation. So, right there you have deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Civil War was fought to free them, you have the deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Emancipation Proclamation actually freed the Negroes and then when the Negroes got the Civil War and found out they weren’t free, got the Emancipation Proclamation and they found out they still weren’t free, they begin to get dissatisfied and unrest, they come up with the...the same White liberal came up with the 14th Amendment supposedly to solve the problem. This came about, the problem still wasn’t solved, ‘cause to the White liberal it’s only a political trick. Civil War, political trick, Emancipation Proclamation, political trick, 14th Amendment to this raggedy Constitution, a political trick. Then when Negroes begin to develop intellectually again, and realize that their problem still wasn’t solved, and unrest began to increase, the Supreme Court...another so-called political trick...came up with what they call a Supreme Court Desegregation Decision, and they purposely put it in a language...now you know, sir, that these men on the Supreme Court are masters of the King’s English, masters of legal phraseology, and if they wanted a decision that no one could get around, they would have given one but they gave their Supreme Court Desegregation Decision in 1954 purposely in a language, phraseology that enabled all of the crooks in this country to find loopholes in it that would keep them from having to enforce the Supreme Court Desegregation Decision. So that even after the decision was handed down, our problem has still not been solved. And I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the White liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negroes think that the White liberals was going to solve our problem and it is only now that the honorable Elijah Muhammad has come on the scene and is beginning to teach the Black man that our problem will never be solved by the White man that the only way our problem will be solved is when the Black man wakes up, cleans himself up, stands on his own feet, stops begging the White man and takes immediate steps to try and do for ourselves the things that we’ve been waiting for the White man to do for us. Once we do them for ourselves, once we think for ourselves, once we see for ourselves then we’ll be able to solve our own problems and we’ll be recognized as human beings all over this earth.

This is an enormous claim, but there is a certain logic to it. One of the most recent people to note this logic is Bono, the lead singer of U2, in a conversation with Michka Assayas: Assayas: Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that far-fetched? Bono: No, it’s not far-fetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: ‘I’m the Messiah.’ I’m saying: ‘I am God incarnate.’ And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the ‘M’ word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no, I know you’re expecting me to come back with an army and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he’s gonna keep saying this. So what you’re left with is either Christ was who He said He was – the Messiah – or a complete nutcase. I mean, we’re talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. . . . I’m not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilisation for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that’s far-fetched . . . Bono is describing how Jesus’ statements about himself force us all into an all-or-nothing choice.

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,  All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds,  The Beneficent, the Merciful,  Master of this Day of Judgment in which we now live,  Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for thine aid.  Guide us on the right path,  The path upon which Thou hast bestowed favors,  Not the path upon which Thy wrath is brought down  Nor of those who go astray after they have heard Thy teaching  Say : He Allah is one God  Allah is He upon whom nothing is independent but  Upon whom we all depend  He neither begets nor is He begotten and none is like Him.  I bear witness there is none to be served but Allah,  And I bear witness that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is  His True Servant and Last Apostle...Amen

Black Muslim cooperation with Rockwell and the Ku Klux Klan went beyond ideology and rhetoric. There were practical implications. Like his white racist counterparts, Elijah Muhammad believed that interracial sexual relations were morally depraved and genetically destructive, for interracial sex "ruins and destroys a people." Rhetoric aside, he wanted to establish a truce between racists and his Southern mosques. To this end he sent Malcolm X to Atlanta to accompany Jeremiah X, the local Muslim minister of Atlanta, to a secret meeting with members of the Klan. Both sides discussed race relations. Malcolm described the integration movement as a Jewish conspiracy carried out by black stooges. The parties eventually hammered out the main issue: a nonaggression pact. If the Muslims did not aid the civil rights movement in the South, the mosques would be undisturbed.

The Bible says that He will give us more life abundantly, but He demands strict obedience to His Will. There is no way of prolonging the life of human beings or any other life unless it begins with restrictions of the foods which sustain life, the right kinds of food and the proper time when it should be taken into our bodies. Jehovah

Ghana was a thoroughly triumphal visit for Malcolm X, with exception of one sour event: As Malcolm was departing from his hotel on the way to the airport, he bumped into Muhammad Ali, who was touring West Africa, and Ali snubbed him. Later Ali eagerly expressed his unconditional loyalty to Elijah Muhammad, ridiculing Malcolm to a New York Times correspondent and laughing at the “funny white robe” his onetime friend wore and his newly grown beard. “Man, he’s gone. He’s gone so far out he’s out completely.” With words he would later regret, the boxer added, “Nobody listens to that Malcolm anymore.

I was to learn later that Elijah Muhammad’s tales, like this one of “Yacub,” infuriated the Muslims of the East. While at Mecca, I reminded them that it was their fault, since they themselves hadn’t done enough to make real Islam known in the West. Their silence left a vacuum into which any religious faker could step and mislead our people.

There is no good in most of their secret counsels except (in) him who enjoins charity or goodness or reconciliation between

Chapter 104 of the Holy Qur-an is entitled the Slanderer. Please read it and the footnote (#2794), which fits very well with the slander I am now receiving from the chief hypocrites.

Therefore, it is obvious that we Christians should work hard to preserve the great white race. Not only will we benefit; but by keeping the white race alive we will be able to do more missionary work and be instrumental in saving the individual souls of millions of colored people in spite of their racial weakness and racial inferiority.

GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING THE HOLY QURAN The Holy Qur-an referred to unless otherwise noted is the Arabic Text, translation and commentary (Revised Edition) BY Maulana Muhammad Ali. 3rd or 4th Edition.

But we just cannot overlook the prophecy of Ezekiel wherein he prophesies that God said, “Even I will go and search for them,

ON WHITES AS “DEVILS” “It’s what He revealed, and what He revealed is what I am teaching and believe in, and this term “devil,” or name “devil,” is applied to wicked people, people who are by nature wicked. “They were made white, or different color, because they had been grafted out of the darker people, and, therefore, they have that color.” ON FRUIT OF ISLAM “The Fruit of Islam means the first converts

In 1943, I was sent to the Federal Penitentiary in Milan, Michigan, for nothing other than to be kept out of the public and from teaching my people the truth during the war between America, Germany, and Japan. This war came to a halt in 1945 when America dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. And the following year, in August, 1946, I was released on what the institution called “good time” for being a model prisoner who was obedient to the prison rules and laws. In the year 1942-43, according to reports,

When I was admitted into Cook County jail in Chicago, I wanted the Holy Qur-an, too, but I was denied having it, though it is not a “sect’s Bible.” It is the religious scriptures and guide for the Muslim world, recognized universally as the last revelation given to the world. And the Holy Qur-an has been the Holy book and scripture for all Muslims for the past 1,381 years.

Within the Nation, he [Malcolm] explained that his purpose was to present the views of Elijah Muhammad and to challenge distortions about their religion. In fact, his objectives were to turn upside down the standard racial dialectic of black subordination and white supremacy, and to show off his rhetorical skill at the expense of white authorities and Negro integrationists.

But the proud, wicked man of sin refuses to submit and goes about teaching ignorant people not to believe in Allah and His religion, Islam. The true religion of Allah (God) is Islam (Holy Qur-an 3:18). The emblem of Islam represents the sun, moon and stars; the meaning is Freedom (Sun), Justice (Star), and Equality (Moon). No other nation’s religion has the sun, moon, and stars as its emblem. No religion is worthwhile if its roots are not found in the universal order of things. No nation can use the sun, moon, and stars to represent their government or religion but the nation that owns it (the nation of Islam). We

As David said in his Psalms (37:32): “The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him.” Also, Psalms (37:30): “The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment.” And in another place (Psa. 94:16): “Who will rise up for me against the workers of iniquity?” I have answered Him and said, “Here I am, take me.” For the evil done against my people (the so-called Negroes) I will not keep silent until He executes judgment and defends my cause. Fear not my life, for He is well able to defend it. Know that God is a man and not a spook!

that Darkness Created an atom of Life, and the Color to be the Color had to be Black, as there was no light; therefore, it had to be the Color of the thing that Created it!

Buddha wasn’t the man everybody made him out to be. He wasn’t the type of man who poured out the belief of there’s no one higher than him. He just wanted to teach his people the importance of knowledge. Kind of like Elijah Muhammad.

Many people aren’t aware of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad who taught some of our most significant conscious, black thinkers of our times. “He

They think their worldly learning and high positions with the enemies of God will protect them against following the Divine Messenger of God. Wait and see.

THIS IS the time the Bible and Holy Qur-an refer to as the “resurrection of the dead” (mentally dead or ignorant people) whom God wishes to make wise and set over the nations by His guidance and His infinite wisdom. After listening to what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was taught by Allah, there is nothing left for another Messenger to teach us of self, God and the devil. Messenger Elijah Muhammad’s message to us fulfills the Bible and Holy Qur-an for the last Messenger’s message is to bring us face to face with the knowledge of God and the devils, that we may make our choice as to whom we shall serve.

The person who leaves the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad makes himself a fool. The advice to all our people is Get On To Your Own Kind, this world is at hand!

The more idle our stomachs are, the longer they will last. The more we tax our stomach, the sooner it wears out.

Elijah Muhammad spoke of how the black man was Original Man, who had been kidnapped from his homeland and stripped of his language, his culture, his family structure, his family name, until the black man in America did not even realize who he was.

You are still called by your slave-masters’ names. By rights, by international rights, you belong to the white man of America. He knows that. You have never gotten out of the shackles of slavery. You are still in them.

We must not be confused, I repeat, with the various advice offered to us from the modern-day food and medical scientists. If you take their advice and try to eat all of the different kinds of food, cooked in their many different ways, at all different times of the day, and their many different suggestions on how much you should eat, you will most certainly die. Brother and sisters, I repeat: it will most certainly kill you -- with the exception of the Orthodox Jews’ food, which is good.

The Christians have made holidays which are used mostly for commercialization. They buy wine, whiskey and beer and fatten up pigs and hogs for the kill and roast this divinely-prohibited flesh to celebrate what the Christians call the birthday of the Son of Mary. Jesus condemned such things as drunkenness and the eating of swine flesh.

As I said previously do not eat the scavengers of the sea such as oysters, crabs, clams, snails, shrimp, eels, or catfish.

The catfish is a very filthy fish. He loves filth and is the pig of the water. Some people write in, complaining about the fish that swim on their sides, but these fish can be eaten.

Do not eat field peas, black-eyed peas, speckled peas, red peas or brown peas. Do not eat lima beans, or baby limas. Do not eat any bean but the small navy bean -- the little brown pink ones, and the white ones.

Eat whole wheat bread, but not the whole grain. The whole grain is too hard to digest. Never eat freshly cooked bread. It rises and buckles in the stomach. Eating freshly cooked bread will shorten your life.

Mothers should feed their babies from their breast milk if they possibly can, as this is the best. When you are able to start feeding them on solid food, give them weak bean soup -- not the highly seasoned, strong soup that you eat. You also can start them out with orange juice and mashed apples.

has

The scientist should not advocate the use of such poisonous chemicals as fluoride, chloride, and sodium, which may have a bad effect on our brains and our human reproductive organs.

D.D.T., which is sprayed on food while it is growing up from the earth, is also a poison that should not be put into the human body, regardless of the desire to kill insects, that loves to dine on the same food on which we dine.

The Pig The hog takes away the beautiful appearance of people and takes away their shyness. The people who eat the hog have no shyness because they eat the hog. Nature did not give the hog any shyness. God, in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, taught me that the scientists have found that the hog carries 999 poisonous germs in it and they are not 100 percent poison, but nearly 1000 per cent poison. The swine takes away our life gradually and creates worms in our bodies.

Allah (God), in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praise is due forever,

as the hog is a scavenger of the earth. Shrimp, crabs, oysters, catfish, eels (water snakes), and many other species of the water; all types of beans, peas, and nuts were not produced by nature for us to try to use as a diet for our delicate stomachs to digest -- not to mention the pig.

The main meat that our people like to eat is what they have been taught not to eat -- the cheap and filthily-raised hog. This is a divinely-prohibited flesh. This truth has been before our eyes ever since we have had permission from the white man to read the Bible. Nothing good is said about it in the Bible in Leviticus.

but the pain he felt when his own family totally rejected him for Elijah Muhammad, and this hurt made Reginald turn insanely upon Elijah Muhammad.

The fast destroys the accumulation of food poison.

Remember, life is what we make of it. Stay away from hog (the swine), the stinking tobacco weed, the hot fiery alcohol, wine, beer, drugs, foolishness, ignorance, madness, drunkenness, gambling, murdering, robbery, deceitfulness, lying, mockery and seeking to take advantage of your brother and your sister, and believe in the presence of God

And when, prior to going into the Muslim world, I didn't have any -- Elijah Muhammad had taught us that the white man could not enter into Makkah in Arabia, and all of us who followed him, we believed it. And he said the reason he couldn't enter was because he's white and inherently evil, it's impossible to change him. And the only thing that would change him is Islam, and he can't accept Islam because by nature he's evil. And therefore by not being able to accept Islam and become a Muslim, he could never enter Makkah. This is how he taught us, you know. So when I got over there and went to Makkah and saw these people who were blond and blue-eyed and pale-skinned and all those things, I said, "Well!" But I watched them closely. And I noticed that though they were white, and they would call themselves white, there was a difference between them and the white one over here. And that basic difference was this: in Asia or the Arab world or in Africa, where the Muslims are, if you find one who says he's white, all he's doing is using an adjective to describe something that's incidental about him, one of his incidental characteristics; so there's nothing else to it, he's just white.

I guess it would be impossible for anyone ever to realize fully how complete was my belief in Elijah Muhammad. I believed in him not only as a leader in the ordinary human sense, but also I believed in him as a divine leader, I believed he had no human weaknesses or faults, and that, therefore, he could make no mistakes and that he could do no wrong. There on a Holy World hilltop, I realized how very dangerous it is for people to hold any human being in such esteem, especially to consider anyone some sort of “divinely guided” and “protected” person.

On September 22, 1964, Malcolm made no mistake about his conversion. “I totally reject Elijah Muhammad’s racist philosophy, which he has labeled ‘Islam’ only to fool and misuse gullible people, as he fooled and misused me,” he wrote. “But I blame only myself, and no one else for the fool that I was, and the harm that my evangelic foolishness in his behalf has done to others.

And when, prior to going into the Muslim world, I didn't have any -- Elijah Muhammad had taught us that the white man could not enter into Makkah in Arabia, and all of us who followed him, we believed it. And he said the reason he couldn't enter was because he's white and inherently evil, it's impossible to change him. And the only thing that would change him is Islam, and he can't accept Islam because by nature he's evil. And therefore by not being able to accept Islam and become a Muslim, he could never enter Makkah. This is how he taught us, you know. So when I got over there and went to Makkah and saw these people who were blond and blue-eyed and pale-skinned and all those things, I said, "Well!" But I watched them closely. And I noticed that though they were white, and they would call themselves white, there was a difference between them and the white one over here. And that basic difference was this: in Asia or the Arab world or in Africa, where the Muslims are, if you find one who says he's white, all he's doing is using an adjective to describe something that's incidental about him, one of his incidental characteristics; so there's nothing else to it, he's just white. But when you get the white man over here in America and he says he's white, he means something else. You can listen to the sound of his voice -- when he says he's white, he means he's a boss.

I knew how Elijah Muhammad's followers thought; I had taught so many of them to think. I knew that no one would kill you quicker than a Muslim if he felt that's what Allah wanted him to do.