Malcolm X & His Conversions

Malcolm X is still an icon today for the impact he had on the world over 25 years ago and in this essay I will provide a brief summary of his life along with an analysis of his character next to that of the convert social type. I will focus mainly on two times in his life. His conversion to Islam from within prison and his reaction to arriving in Mecca - some say his second conversion.

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was born in 1925 in northern USA. While still very young his family was chased from their home by the Klu Klux Klan. The next home they moved to was burned to the ground by another racist group. They were left standing outside their home wearing nothing but the underwear they were sleeping in. Being the child with the lightest coloured skin in the family was, for Malcolm, both a blessing and a curse. His mother was harder on him because he served as a reminder of the white slave owner that raped her mother. His father was easier on him seeing him as comanding more respect for his light skin - a fact that Malcolm would later see as the brainwashing. When Malcolm was six his father was killed - run over by a car. The white-owned insurance company didn't pay out. After using all their savings and credit to support the

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The fact that reinforces this view is that of resocialisation. This gave him the oppertunity to be more convensionally muslim. This is that fact that after conversion all social roles are subordinate to the one - the role of the convert, in Malcolm's case, the role of a Black Muslim. Once in Mecca he was struck by the interracial harmony. Seeing this integrated multitude was probably just the saving grace that he neede to finally giving in to the sovreignty of his religion in his life.

In conclusion, Malcolms 'conversions' were influenced by his political and economic condition. Simply put, this is a resistance to compare ones own religion to that of anyone else. Snow and Machalek (1983) claim that the locus of blame shifts during a conversion from blaming external factors to blaming internal factor or vice versa.

As far as I'm concerned this so called second conversion was in fact the completion of his first conversion. While in prison he was converted to the Nation of Islam, an Islamic sect that views whites as devils. " At first this seems like a sound statement, but in the context of looking back on his conversion it seems the kind of thing that most converts say, believing it themselves, to remove their old lives from the new. He then realised that the colour of skin is completely arbitrary, and that it wasn't the white man who was a devil, but rather the average white American who was the problem. Malcolm would have had to carefully re-examine his interracial interactions and impressions, realising that they were all prejudice. After the resulting threats on his life he thought it best to leave the country and go on his pilgramage to Mecca. He also wanted to be an example of what a Black Muslim was, to try and be an inspiration.

Approximate Word count = 1704
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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