Malcolm X was an American preacher of African descent who moved from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam after his hajj in 1964, and was assassinated in New York in 1965 1. Tareq al-Suwaidan tells his life in the second episode of his programme "A Story and an Idea" as an example of change, and the dates and judgements below are his 2 3. He was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska; his schooling ended at sixteen, and theft and drug dealing brought him to prison 4 5. There, letters from his siblings told him they had joined the Nation of Islam, and he was freed after seven years 6 7 8. Elijah Muhammad appointed him the movement's official spokesman, and he took the name "X" to reject "Little", which he regarded as a slave name 8 9.
In 1964 he made the hajj and stayed twelve days in Mecca, where he saw a brotherhood of all colours and gave up the idea that the white man is a devil 10 11 12. On his return he renounced the Nation's principles and urged Black Americans to vote and to form a bloc holding candidates to their promises 13 14 15. Al-Suwaidan says he became a symbol of the Black struggle in America 16. After Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son Warith Deen Mohammed succeeded him and dissolved the Nation of Islam, and al-Suwaidan says more than two hundred thousand of its members turned to Sunni Islam 17 18.
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