His Life Was a Series of Changes

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz - Malcolm X

From Malcolm Little to Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz

by Muneeb Baig
Dated: 7 Zul-Hijjah 1423, 9 February 2003

“Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this Ancient Holy Land…..”, so began the letter written by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz, formerly Malcolm X, on his Hajj trip in 1964. He continued, “…There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white. America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem…”

Malcolm X’s life had been a series of changes. He was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925. After his father’s violent murder in 1931, Malcolm’s family was left poor and destitute. They were forced to accept support from the state Welfare people, who kept their pressure on them, especially on Malcolm’s mother, until she suffered a complete breakdown and was institutionalized. The family was torn apart, with children placed in separate households.

Malcolm attended school until the eighth grade. A white teacher’s remark concerning his desire to become a lawyer (“A lawyer – that’s no realistic goal for a nigger.”) hurt him deeply and he became disillusioned with school.

Malcolm left Lansing and moved to live with his half-sister, Ella, in Boston. There he began to explore the streets and quickly caught on the slang and ways of the street. After getting a job on the train, he visited Harlem and became enchanted. He moved there in 1942, at the age of seventeen.

Malcolm became a hustler, dope peddler, and gambler and was nicknamed “Detroit Red.” After becoming involved in a fight with another hustler, he escaped to New York, where he became involved in armed robbery. He was addicted to drugs, which he used as an escape from the worries and strains of the street. In February 1946, he was caught and charged with burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Prison changed Malcolm greatly. He started to reform. A fellow inmate called “Bimbi” made a positive impression on Malcolm and urged him to take prison correspondence courses and use the library. Malcolm, who had lost all of his eighth-grade education on the streets, began to study seriously and his grammar and penmanship improved. He also started to learn Latin.

In 1948, Malcolm’s siblings introduced him to the Nation of Islam and urged him to accept its teachings. Though at first hostile to religion, Malcolm became more interested when his brother Reginald sent a letter saying, “Malcolm, don’t eat any more pork, and don’t smoke cigarettes. I’ll show you how to get out of prison.” Malcolm was interested and gave abstinence a try. His actions made him feel proud, especially when he startled his fellow convicts with his refusal to eat pork.

Malcolm began to learn the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Original man was black, who built great empires and civilizations, while the “devil white man”, was created by a mad scientist, called Mr. Yacub, and had pillaged, murdered, and exploited every race of man not white. This white man had “whitened” history and brainwashed the black man so much so that he did not know his own name, language, culture, religion, or ancestry. Christianity was the white man’s religion, used to subjugate the blacks by promising them heaven after death, while enjoying his heaven right here on earth.

According to the Nation of Islam, a man named Wallace D. Fard had appeared on Earth and was “God in person.” He appointed Elijah Muhammad as his messenger to the “lost-found Nation of Islam here in this wilderness of North America.”

Malcolm was fascinated. He began to read history and read about the horrors that the white race perpetrated on members of other races all over the world throughout history and how this race has always been haughty and proud.

After his release from prison, Malcolm became an active member of the Nation of Islam. He would go out on the streets, “fishing” for more converts. His efforts and dedication pleased Elijah Muhammad and he was appointed minister of Temple Seven in New York City in June 1954.

Publicity came slowly at first and then rapidly increased. In 1957, a police brutality event and its reaction brought the Nation of Islam to the headlines. Then in 1959, the Nation was catapulted to mainstream news. The television program “The Hate that Hate Produced” was aired, producing sudden interest in the Nation of Islam. Newspapers began to run series of stories on the Nation. Magazines increased their coverage. Radio and television people soon began to request Malcolm X to defend the Nation of Islam in panel discussions and debates. Malcolm X’s publicity increased. But, publicity caused jealousy and by 1961, Malcolm began to hear negative remarks from members of the Nation of Islam regarding him.

Rumors concerning Elijah’s extreme immorality surfaced. Elijah and his family considered Malcolm as a man dangerous to Elijah’s authority and began to plot to get rid of him.

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Malcolm commented on it as a case of “chickens coming home to roost.” He was immediately silenced and isolated for ninety days. The machinery for eliminating him was set into place. The event was made to look like Malcolm had rebelled. He started receiving death threats.

Malcolm, though shocked at his expulsion from an organization that he had worked so hard and long to build and strengthen and whose leader he nearly worshiped, kept his determination to continue the struggle for the black man.

In 1964, Malcolm, along with other brothers who broke with the Nation of Islam, founded Muslim Mosque Inc. He decided that this organization was to open to all blacks, regardless of faith. On April 13, 1964, Malcolm left for Hajj, the pilgrimage to Makkah under the name of Malik El-Shabazz. It was at the Hajj when Malcolm was to undergo another radical change.

Until now, Malcolm could be considered a black racist. He attacked whites based on the color of their skin and stated that their race was the devil race, which could never do any good. Now, at the greatest religious gathering on the face of this Earth, he realized that color does not determine character, but deeds do.

He experienced great hospitality and brotherhood in the Holy Land from people of all colors, races, and nationalities. The idea that white man is the devil began to fade as he saw the color-blindness that Islam brought to society. His ideas changed as he saw that the cure to racism was neither white-supremacy nor black-supremacy, but Islam, which united people of all origins under the belief in the Oneness of God and made them cease to measure each other based on the color of the skin.

He himself stated, “I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.”

Malcolm saw that the solution to the racial problem in America lay in the mutual cooperation of both sincere whites and blacks in educating and eliminating racism from their peoples. He called for blacks to reevaluate themselves, to get rid of the “Negro” image, to consider themselves not as Americans but as Africans in America, and to unite in removing the vices rampant in their communities as well as take control of the economies in their communities so the white man does not continue to get rich off the poor black man.

He was against passive nonviolence, saying that it accomplished nothing and was a method of delaying the solution. He did not advocate violence, but said that active self defense was necessary for blacks to attain human rights in America.

Malcolm was faced with many enemies. The Nation of Islam made no secret of its animosity towards him, whom they considered an apostate. White supremacists who were threatened by his calls for awakening in the black communities also kept their pressure on him. By the end of 1964, he realized that his end was close. He considered every day “another borrowed day.”

In January 1965, harassment was reaching its peak. Members of the Nation of Islam kept following Malcolm wherever he went, trying to find an opportunity to kill him. In the early morning of February 14, his house was firebombed. Though his family escaped bodily harm, the home was severely damaged.

The next weekend, on February 21, at the age of 39, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was gunned down as he began to speak at the Audobon Ballroom. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale on February 27, 1965. For millions of people around the world, both black and white, he was a hero who had fought for the rights of his people and was martyred in the process.

This is one amazing Urdu song, “Mere khyalaon mein aaja..” by The Bilz .. I just translated it to english.
So…… Translation, Image & Title “Allure My Heart” is by me. [Click on the image to enlarge]

As one of my friend said: “looks like politicians just creating an issue out of nothing”, with reference to a news corresponding to 30th Nov 2009,
h**p://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8386456.stm .When you are out there to get something, you get it by any means necessary. Aint it…..

Anyways….. following up on it, a statement issued by UUCSA.

By:United Ulama Council of South Africa
Posted: 17 Dhul Hijjah 1430, 4 December 2009

Fifty-seven percent of the 2.67 million Swiss who participated in a referendum voted against the right of Muslims to construct minarets with their mosques. The move was spearheaded by the racist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) whose slogan read: “minarets are symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation.” The SVP campaign posters showed minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman.

The Swiss government to its credit was against the proposal but could not prevail against the provocative and intolerant rhetoric of the extremist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) The vote revealed the extent to which far-right racist groups were winning the battle of ideas on the future of Europe. The results of this referendum have been welcomed by leaders of other radical right-wing groups in Europe, such as Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the radical-right Austrian Freedom Party, and Marine Le Pen, vice-president of France’s National Front, which points to the possibility of religious and political extremism spreading further in Europe Muslims comprise 6 percent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million population.

Many of them are the refugees of the 1990s Serb-Croat ethnic-cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia and former Yugoslavia. There are about 150 mosques in Switzerland, only four have minarets which won’t be affected by the ban. Unlike mosques in Muslim countries, these minarets are not used to call Muslims to prayer.

Compare this action of the so-called ‘civilized and democratic world’ with the religious tolerance which exists in most parts of the Muslim world. There is no restriction on building new churches in the Muslim world with Christian or Jewish minorities – Indonesia, the most populated Muslim country (13 million Christians out total population of 212 million), Pakistan, Egypt, Islamic Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, UAE, Kuwait, etc. The church bells ring every Sunday and Christmas is an official holiday. Most Muslim countries have Sunday as weekly holiday. Christians have held several top positions in both military and government in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq (Saddam Hussein had six Christian cabinet ministers including Vice President Tariq Aziz), Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, and Nigeria.

The minaret unlike the Cross has no ‘divine value.’ People are certainly not attracted to Islam because of tall minarets. They reverted to Islam for its simple teachings and human-brotherhood. Minarets are architectural structures associated with mosques which do not have any political significance.

Farhad Afshar, leader of the Swiss Coordination of Islamic Organisations said: “The most painful thing for us is not the ban on minarets, but the symbol sent by this vote. The idea of putting issues related to religious freedom and human rights to vote is quite unacceptable and unjustifiable. Furthermore, the situation where the majority votes on issues related to the rights of the minority is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of democracy, which cannot be allowed to be used as an open door to incitement, and an excuse to pit citizens against their fellow partners in society.”

Mosques and minarets in European cities are manifestations of the proudly indigenous nature of Islam in Europe. It is tragic that the far right is stripping away at the illustrious heritage of coexistence between different faiths and cultures in Europe and replacing it with their warped and xenophobic political agendas.

{ This statement has been issued by the United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA). The Jamiatul Ulama in a co-founding and active member of UUCSA.
h**p://www.islamsa.org.za/newsletter/online_newsletter_0447.htm }

I was once reading the Equal Pay Act of 1963 which John F. Kennedy signed into law. Which provides (in part): within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs[,]. A thought crossed my mind to research on it thoroughly. So I did and found that up until now (more than four decades) men’s and women’s salaries have yet to reach parity. Also, during the research I came across this well researched & written article by Areeba bint Khalid, which state many facts along with the history.

How Women Were Lured Out of the Home in the USA

By Areeba bint Khalid
Posted: 9 Jamad-ul-Awwal 1424, 27 June 2004

From the 1800s to the present day, family life in the West has remarkably changed. While the West calls this change part of the women freedom movement, a look at history may show otherwise.

America before the 1800s was a farming country and ninety percent of the population lived and worked on private farms. Households were mainly self-sufficient–nearly everything needed was produced in the house. The few things that could not be produced at home were bought from local craftsmen. Some other things, especially imports from Europe, were bought from stores. Males would take care of the fields and females would take care of the home. In addition, they would engage in spinning, knitting, weaving, and taking care of the farm animals.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, which began around the early 1800s, brought a major change to this way of life. In 1807, in the wake of the war between Great Britain and France, President Jefferson signed the Embargo Act, which stopped all trade between Europe and America. The Act meant that European goods would no longer be available in the US and Americans would have to produce them. One major European import to America was cloth, and so merchants used this opportunity to create a cloth industry in America.

In 1814, Francis Cabot Lowell, a man from Boston opened the first modern factory. Work here was to be done way faster than before. Instead of manually making things in houses, things were to be made at higher speeds in a factory and all stages of the work were to be completed under the same roof. Now what Lowell needed were workers. He found out that women, especially unmarried daughters of the farmers, were more economical to use in labor than men. They were also more willing to work as hired people in factories.

But Lowell had to make the working outside of home acceptable in a society which was not used to it. He assured parents that their daughters would be taken care of and kept under discipline. And he built a boarding community where the women workers lived and worked together.

Soon after, more and more factories emerged across America. Factory owners followed Lowell’s example of hiring unmarried women. By 1850 most of the country’s goods were made in factories. As production of goods moved from the country to the city, people too moved from the country to the city.

For money to be earned, people had to leave their homes. When women worked on the farm, it was always possible to combine work and family. When work for women moved outside the home, however, the only women who could follow it were those without family responsibilities or those who had no husband or no income. Likewise, the only women who could take care of their families were the ones that didn’t have work.

This working out of home became a part of life for unmarried women. They would work until their marriage. But as time passed, women found family life interfering with their work life and instead of viewing working out of home as optional, they viewed family life as such. Many women started delaying marriage even more and some decided to stay single.

Married women however stayed home and dedicated their time to their children. Now that there wasn’t any farm work to do, women had even more time to spend with the children. In 1900 less than about 5.6% of married women worked outside. If a married woman were to work, it would be considered that her husband was invalid or that she was poor.

World War I

The first major entry of married women to the workforce came during World War I in 1914. Men went to fight the war and the country needed workers to take over the jobs they left behind. Unmarried women were not sufficient for the labor needs, so employers started to invite married women too, to work. By 1919, 25% of the women in the workforce were married. But this was only the beginning.

Another change World War I brought was the entry of women to the army. About 13,000 women enlisted in the US Navy, mostly doing clerical work–the first women in US history to be admitted to full military rank.

Great Depression

The Great Depression came in the 1930s. The unemployment rate climbed from 3.2% in 1929 to 23.6% in 1932. Jobs became scarce for skilled people and men. Fathers went to search for jobs. Some, under despair, deserted their families. The responsibility of earning fell on mothers in many families.

Most women and children, however, found jobs more easily than men because of the segregation of work categories for men and women. Although 80% of men during the Great Depression opposed their wives entering the workforce under any circumstances, economic factors made it necessary for the women to work. Hours were long and pay was low. Twenty percent of white women were in the workforce.

World War II

World War II came in the early 1940s. Men were drafted to fight, and America needed workers and supplies. Again, the employers looked towards the women for labor. Unmarried and married women were invited to work, as had been done during World War I.

But still, public opinion was generally against the working of married women. The media and the government started a fierce propaganda campaign to change this opinion. The federal government told the women that victory could not be achieved without their entry into the workforce. Working was considered part of being a good citizen, a working wife was a patriotic person.

The government founded the Magazine Bureau in 1942. The Bureau published Magazine War Guide, a guide which told magazines which themes stories they should cover each month to aid war propaganda. For September 1943, the theme was “Women at Work”. The slogan for this was “The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win.” Magazines developed stories that glorified and promoted the placement of women into untraditional jobs where workers were needed. The idea was that if smaller, unexciting jobs were portrayed as attractive and noble more women would join the work force.

The media created Rosie the Riveter, a mythical character to encourage women into the workforce. Rosie was portrayed as a patriotic woman, a hero for all American women. “All the day long, Whether rain or shine, She’s a part of the assembly line. She’s making history, Working for victory, Rosie the Riveter… There’s something true about, Red, white, and blue about, Rosie the Riveter.”

The propaganda efforts worked. More than six million women joined the workforce during the war, the majority of them married women. In 1940, before the war, only 36% of women workers were married. By 1945, after the war, 50% of women workers were married. The middle class taboo against a working wife had been repealed.

Post World War II

The 1950s marked an era of prosperity in the lives of American families. Men returned from war and needed jobs. Once again, the government and media got together to steer the opinion of the public. This time, however, they encouraged women to return home, which shows that the women were brought out not for their freedom but because workers were needed.

But this effort was not as successful and was abandoned quickly. First, women from lower economic ranks had to remain in the workforce because of economic necessity. And second, there came the rise of consumer culture.

The baby boom took place during the 1950s as well. Women who returned home dedicated their lives once again to their children. But around the same time an important change had come in the American life. This was the spread of the television. By 1960, 90% of the population owned at least one set. Families would gather around the screen for entertainment. In the early days, everything including commercials was watched with great interest.

Most middle-class families could not afford the goods the television declared necessary to maintain or enhance quality of life with one paycheck alone. Many women returned to work in order to live according to “the American standard of living,” whatever that meant to them.

The number of American women in the workforce from 1940 to 1950 increased by nine percent. From 1930 to 1940 there had only been a three percent increase.

Effects

As mothers returned to work, the television became the most important caretaker of a child. Children in the 1950s spent most of their non-sleeping hours in front of the television screen.

In 1940, less than 8.6% of mothers with children under eighteen worked. By 1987, 60.2% of women with children under eighteen were working.

As wives assumed larger roles in their family’s financial support, they felt justified in demanding that husbands perform more childcare and housework. Across the years, divorce rates doubled reaching a level where at least 1 out of 2 marriages was expected to end in divorce. Marriage rates and birthrates declined. The number of single parent families rapidly increased. People grew unhappy with their lives, when compared to the lives of people on television.

Women working affected the society in many different ways. The first and most important of these was that children with working mothers were left alone without the care of a mother. As the number of working women increased, the number of children growing up unsupervised increased, and with this increased crime among teens.

Since most women placed their career ahead of family life, family life was greatly affected since unmarried women were generally able to make more money than married ones. For example, according to a study by a Harvard economist, women physicians who were unmarried and had no children earned thirteen percent more per year than those who were married and fifteen percent more than those with children.

Today

The majority of women still work at the lower levels of the economic pyramid. Most are employed in clerical positions, factory work, retail sales, or service jobs. Around 50% of the workforce is female. While about 78% of all cashiers and 99% of all secretaries today are female, only 31% of managers and administrators are female. Equality in the workplace has been a mirage but it has conned millions of women into leaving their homes and destroying the family structure.

It was only when economic or political factors made it necessary to get more workers that women were called to work. The Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and the World Wars, all the major events which increased the proportion of women workers, were times when the capitalists required more workers in order to be successful in their plans and so they used women.

The move of women from home to the public workforce has been gradual. First poor women went. Then unmarried women. Then married women without children. Then married women without young children And then, all women. The same thing can be seen to be happening in developing countries around the world, as the West spreads its propaganda of freedom for women to work. The results of this move will probably be the same too.

Bibliography

• Hawes, Joseph M., ed. American Families: A Research Guide and Historical Handbook. New York: Greenwood Press,- 1990.
• Mintz, Steven. Domestic Revolutions. New York: the Free Press, 1988.
• Gary B. Nash, American Odyssey. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2002.
• Wilson, Margaret Gibbons. The American Woman in Transition. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979.
• Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau. Women in the Force, 1900-2002. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/0/1/0/4/6/7/A0104673.html
• The Library of Congress Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War II http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/rosie-transcript.html

An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.

The chemical – curcumin – has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.

Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.

Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.

Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

‘Natural’ remedy

The cells also began to digest themselves, after the curcumin triggered lethal cell death signals.

Dr McKenna said: “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value.”

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in turmeric could be developed into new treatments for oesophageal cancer.

“Rates of oesophageal cancer rates have gone up by more than a half since the 70s and this is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease so finding ways to prevent this disease is important too.”

Each year around 7,800 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the UK. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death and accounts for around five percent of all UK cancer deaths.

{Ref: BBC News – Health, 28th Oct 2009
h**p://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8328377.stm }

I got this file from one of my friends and I don’t know where did he get from. So please, make dua for those who had spent their time to scan this book and made it available in PDF format.

(right click) Download or read PDF here: Aap kay masaail aur un ka hal (volume 10)

by Mufti Muhammad Yusuf Ludhianvi (رحمة الله عليه)

This is one of the most strange news Ive ever read. Just see how contradictory and far from Truth this is. Not that the crux of the news is false but the ‘way’ it is being shown to the world.

First they say that the victims had been labelled as witches by a local cleric. And then they say, there are certain women in the village who are possessed by holy spirit and can identify those who are witches. These women recently identified five women from the same village as being witches who practised witchcraft and brought miseries to the area.

Now the question is, How can ‘a’ local cleric become ‘certain women’ ?

Secondly, deputy inspector general Murari Lal Meena said no one in mob came forward to help the victims. Whereas in the video, all those who can understand Hindi or Urdu can clearly hear the mob yelling in rage to beat them up, etc. When they themselves are wholly involved in this act, saying such that ‘no one in mob came forward to help’ is just utter nonsense.

How much lies can one stand !! sigh.. I wonder where the so called women rights people in India are !?

Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India’s Jharkhand state.

Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric.

The incident occurred on Sunday in a remote village in Deoghar district.

Correspondents say the abuse of women who are branded as witches is common, but rare footage of the incident has caused outrage across India.

Police went to Pattharghatia village after being informed about the incident by a group of villagers.

‘Possessed’

They have lodged a case against 11 villagers, including six women. Four people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Armed police have since been deployed to the area.

“On Sunday morning the victims were taken to a playground where hundreds had assembled to watch the ghastly incident,” deputy inspector general of police Murari Lal Meena told the BBC.

“No one in the mob came forward to rescue the victims as they were being stripped and beaten up,” he said.

The victims are now under police protection.

Police say that people in Pattharghatia believe that certain women in their village are possessed by a “holy spirit” that can identify those who practise witchcraft.

“These women recently identified five women from the same village as being witches who practised witchcraft and brought miseries to the area,” a police official said.

Soon, an unruly mob broke into their huts, dragged them out and started beating them up.

Footage of the incident has been aired on television channels in India prompting outrage.

Hundreds of people, mostly women, have been killed in India because their neighbours thought they were witches.

Experts say superstitious beliefs are behind some of these attacks, but there are occasions when people – especially widows – are targeted for their land and property.

Ref: { by Salman Ravi – BBC News, Ranchi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8315980.stm }

I wonder..