“Yes.”
“We respect authority, but we are ready to fight and die in defense of our lives.”
“All praises due to Allah!”
Broadsides at Christianity delivered by Malcolm X and other ministers seem to make the strongest impression on the audience. The minister explains that the Negro was introduced to Christianity while a slave, a bondsman to the man who taught him about Jesus. Employing any history text, he reads at length, using “the white man’s own writings to show that Christianity is a white man’s religion.” This strikes home, because the average Negro has read enough to know that there is a good deal of historical soundness in what the minister says. Then the minister goes on to point out that the Christian church (and they quote Adam Clayton Powell on this) “is the most segregated institution in America.” And the Negro does not need a history book to know that this statement has total validity.
Then the minister goes on to attack Christianity on the grounds that its practitioners are immoral. He calls the roll of criminals and public failures, making much of the fact that they are “all Christians.” The minister uses clippings from the newspapers showing white clergymen and church-goers either sanctioning segregation or being neutral about it. During the Birmingham crisis I attended the Black Muslim service and saw Minister James X deliver a devastating indictment of Christianity simply by showing pictures of Birmingham Negroes being turned away from white churches. One picture showed the rebuffed Negroes praying on the church steps while white bullies, their fists balled up, stood near-by.
Black Christians are also indicted for immorality; the minister points out that “All of us were once in the church and we did everything evil.” I have watched this argument at work and come away amazed at the way the Black Muslims take the Christian ethic as a measuring stick; they then arouse the guilt complex of the wayward Christians in the audience and then go on to blame Christianity for the individual’s moral failure. This, to be sure, is a contorted argument. But it works. Christians sit in the temple audience and confess their Christian failing, then they repent themselves right out of the Christian church.
After the sermon the visitors are asked to raise any questions that may trouble them. The ministers deal with each question in detail, but the Black Muslim ushers (The Fruit of Islam) make certain the questioner is not an “agitator,” someone who has come into the temple just to start a philosophical or theological argument.
“You are in here to be taught, Brother,” I heard one Black Muslim say to a visitor, “not to argue.” And when the visitor frankly says he does not understand what the Black Muslims are up to, or that, after honestly trying, he is unable to agree, the minister explains that this is not to be held against the visitor. “You are among the deaf, dumb, and blind,” the minister explains kindly. Then he assures the visitor that further study and estrangement from “the teaching of the devil” will open his eyes and ears.
The climax of each temple service comes when visitors are invited to join the movement. There is great rejoicing when converts come forth. Eric Lincoln, who has attended more of these services than I have, says that the larger temples average a dozen or so converts at each meeting.
Once the visitor decides to join the temple, he is given a letter he must copy by hand: