Articles by Malcolm X from LA Herald-Dispatch/August 1, 1957

These are all slave names, names of the very same Slavemaster who has shown characteristics of his beast like nature in his treatment of us (Rev. 15:2). The original names of our forefathers were cut off from them, kept secret from us by the beast, and therefore today we do not know what our real names should be. We have really been robbed.

All other people have their own religion, which teaches them of a God whom they can associate with themselves, a God who at least looks like one of their own kind. But, we so-called Negroes, after 400 years of masterful brainwashing by the Slavemaster, picture “our God” with the same blond hair, pale skin, and cold blue eyes of our murderous Slavemaster.

His Christian religion teaches us that black is a curse, thus we who accept the Slavemaster’s religion find ourselves loving and respecting everything and everyone except black, and can picture God as being anything else except black. In fact, many of us would rather believe that God is an invisible (colorless) “spirit,” than to admit even the possibility of his being black. Yet, Daniel saw Him with kinky hair (like lamb’s wool) in the seventh chapter of Daniel, ninth verse. How grossly deceived and misled we have been.

Messenger Muhammad says that the teachers and religious leaders of our own kind here in America were as blind to the real truth as we, therefore, they themselves were not qualified to lead us beyond what the Slavemaster would allow them. How can the blind lead the blind? Thus we remained in the ditch (the grave of spiritual ignorance, mental bondage) which was dug for us to fall into by our white Christian Slavemaster.

Not only did our own preachers and educators here fail to give us the truth, even our darker Brothers. Brothers who were born in the East, came here from the East and neglected to convert us back to the original (Islam) of our foreparents. Many of our Brothers from the East even failed to recognize us as their long lost Brother who had been kidnapped from the World of Islam 400 years ago, and made to dwell here in this strange land, among these wicked people who are not of our kind or of our own choice (Gen. 15:13).

Our Brothers from the East passed us by, and instead tried to lecture on Islam to our Slavemaster, thinking, so foolishly, that they would be able to turn the Slavemaster into a righteous Muslim . . . knowing all the time that the same Slavemaster was the very one who had kidnapped, robbed, enslaved and lynched (murdered) their long-lost True Brother. Yes, Our Brothers from the East came here and seemed to be apologists of Islam, instead of rightly spreading it, or defending it from the sly insults of the unbelieving Slavemaster.

Messenger Muhammad teaches us that Almighty God Allah is all-powerful and independent. Allah needs no one to apologize for Him. Islam, His true religion, is not a religion of compromise. Islam is truth itself, and this truth has long been kept a secret from us.