Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [51]
Although Malcolm did not realize it, by becoming members of the Nation of Islam, his brothers and sisters had entered into the richly heterodox community of global Islam. Extremely sectarian by the standards of orthodox Islam, the Nation of Islam nevertheless became the starting point for a spiritual journey that would consume Malcolm’s life.
Islam was established in what is today Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century CE by a man known as the Prophet Muhammad. Over the course of more than two decades, from roughly 610 CE to 632 CE, hundreds of beautiful verses were revealed to Muhammad and passed on by poetic recitations, just like Homerʹs stories or the love songs of the troubadours. These verses became known as the Qur’an, and Islam’s enduring power as a religion rests, in part, on its elegance and simplicity. At its core is the metaphor of the five pillars. The first pillar is the profession of faith, or shahada : “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.” The other four are acts a devout Muslim must perform: daily prayers (salat); tithing, or alms to those less fortunate (zakat); fasting during the month of Ramadan; and making a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). Many Muslims characterize jihad, meaning “striving” or “struggle,” as a sixth pillar, separating it into two types: the “greater jihad” that refers to a believer’s internal struggle to adhere to Islam’s creed, and the “lesser jihad,” the struggle against those who oppose Muhammad’s message.
In the Prophet’s day, Islam was an embracing, not excluding, religion that drew on the practices of other contemporaries. Muhammad had taught that both Jews and Christians were ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book), and that the Torah, the Gospels, and the Holy Qurʹan were all a single divine scripture. Early Islamic rituals drew directly upon Jewish traditions. At first, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, not Mecca. The Prophet’s mandatory fast was initiated each year on the tenth day (Ashura) of the first month of the Jewish calendar, the day more commonly known as Yom Kippur. Muhammad also adopted many Jewish dietary laws and purity requirements, and encouraged his followers to marry Jews, as he himself did. Second only to the Qurʹan, and also central to Islam, is the Sunna, the collective traditions associated with Muhammad, which include thousands of stories, or hadith, all roughly based on the actions or words of the Prophet or those of his closest disciples.
What was truly revolutionary about the Islamic concept was its transethnic, nonracial character. Islam is primarily defined by a series of actions and obligations that all believers follow. In theory, differences in native language, race, ethnicity, geography, and social class become irrelevant. Indeed, from the beginning, individuals of African descent have become Muslims (literally, “those who submit” to God). Muhammad had encouraged the emancipation of African slaves held by Arabs; his first muezzin (the individual who calls believers to prayer) was an Ethiopian former slave named Bilal.
Over time, the religious pluralism of the ummah—the transnational Islamic community—gave way to an exclusive monotheism. After the Prophet’s death, Jews and Christians were perceived to be excluded from the community; centuries later, Islamic legal scholars would divide the entire world into two, the dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and the dar al-Harb (House of War), or those who oppose the believers.
By the eighth century, Islam dominated northern Africa, soon penetrating the Sudan and, in West Africa, the sub-Saharan regions. The Arab elite within this growing Muslim world had a long tradition of slavery, and over the centuries millions of black Africans were subjugated and transported to what today is the Middle East, northern Africa, and the Iberian peninsula. There were, however, many prominent