The thing that you have to understand about those of us in the Black Muslim movement was that all of us believed 100 percent in the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actually believed that God, in Detroit by the way, that God had taught him and all of that. I always believed that he believed in himself. And I was shocked when I found out that he himself didn't believe it.
Malcolm XThe law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.
Malcolm XAnd when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.
Malcolm XOne of the main things that I read about it that appealed to me was in Islam a man is honored as a human being and not measured by the color of his skin.
Malcolm XIt gives [a man] the incentive to develop his dormant potential so that when he becomes a part of the brotherhood of Islam, and is identified collectively in the brotherhood of Islam with the brothers in Islam, at the same time this also gives him the, it has the psychological effect of giving him the incentive as an individual to develop all of his dormant potential to its fullest extent.
Malcolm X