The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

We were having a hard time, and I wasn’t helping. But we could have made it, we could have stayed together. As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

Stated another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

Allah always gives you signs, when you are with Him, that He is with you.

“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. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.

“I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man—and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences’ in color.

The smoking evil wasn’t invented in Prophet Muhammad’s days—if it had been, I believe he would have banned it.

I saw that the Arabs are poor at understanding the psychology of non-Arabs and the importance of public relations. The Arabs said “insha Allah” (“God willing”)—then they waited for converts. Even by this means, Islam was on the march, but I knew that with improved public relations methods the number of new converts turning to Allah could be turned into millions.

I said, “All of Africa unites in opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, and to the oppression in the Portuguese territories. But you waste your time if you don’t realize that Verwoerd and Salazar, and Britain and France, never could last a day if it were not for United States support. So until you expose the man in Washington, D.C., you haven’t accomplished anything.”

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

I said to Harlem street audiences that only when mankind would submit to the One God who created all—only then would mankind even approach the “peace” of which so much talk could be heard…but toward which so little action was seen.

And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.