Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [91]
These sentiments were much in keeping with those of the Nation at large, which were in turn similar to those of orthodox Islam. In the Qurʹanic tradition, the primary objectives of marriage (nikah) are sexual reproduction and the transfer and inheritance of private property from one generation to the next. Nikah also controls the temptation toward promiscuity. Carnal knowledge can easily lead to social chaos, or fitna, if not tightly controlled. To most Muslims, premarital sex, homosexuality, prostitution, and extramarital sexual intercourse are all absolutely forbidden.
Throughout the Islamic world, marriage is perceived as the uniting of two families or kinship lines rather than an act dictated by two individuals. In the negotiations with the relatives of the husband-to-be, a first-time bride is often represented by a wali, or guardian, who is normally a father or elder male relative. Premarital meetings between women and men are strictly supervised. Marriage is perceived as based on mutual respect, friendship, and a joint commitment toward an Islamic lifestyle. These processes, unfortunately, have tended to reinforce Islamic structures of patriarchy and domestic violence against women down through the centuries.
The Holy Qur’an is quite specific regarding Islamic expectations for the duties of women. Surah XXIV, verse 33, instructs “believing women”:
to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husband or fathers or husband’s fathers, or their sons or their husband’s sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves, or male attendants who lack vigour, or children who know naught of women’s nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment.
The Nation attempted to incorporate some of these values within its own catechism. Elijah Muhammad’s views about gender relations would be set out in his 1965 manifesto Message to the Blackman in America. To Muhammad, males and females occupied separate spheres. Black women had been the mothers of civilization, and they would play a central role in the construction of the world to come. Metaphorically, they were the field in which a mighty Nation would grow; thus it was essential for black men to keep the devil, the white man, away from his “field,” because the black woman was far more valuable than any cash crop. There was no question that all women had to be controlled; the question was, who should exercise that control, the white man or the black? He also warned against birth control, a devilish plot to carry out genocide against black babies. It was precisely a woman’s ability to produce children that gave the weaker sex its value. “Who wants a sterile wom[a]n?” he asked rhetorically.
What attracted so many intelligent, independent African-American women to such a patriarchal sect? The sexist and racist world of the 1940s and 1950s provides part of the answer. Many African-American women in the paid labor force were private household workers and routinely experienced sexual harassment by their white employers. The NOI, by contrast, offered them the protections of private patriarchy. Like their middle-class white counterparts, African-American women in the Nation were not expected to hold full-time jobs, and even if Malcolm’s frequent misogynistic statements, especially in his sermons, were extreme even by the sexist standards of the NOI, it offered protection, stability, and a kind of leadership. Malcolm’s emphasis on the sanctity of the black home made an explicit