Islam part 2 and Malcolm X and a response to the Prison blog

Okay, on the outset I just have a few things that I wanted to take back and/or make clearer from my earlier blog about 'Malcolm X and Islam.' I take back what I had to say about Malcolm X because once he went on the Haaj, he truly learned the difference between the Islam that he had been practicing and that of the Islam of the East. I also need to address Professor Sugano's comment, I know that Malcolm X knew that Christianity was not literally a white man's religion, he himself went to many christian services when he was younger. I know that he just doesn't like the blond haired blue eyed version that christianity had turned into. My problem was just that he was doing the same thing that the white people had done to christianity. If white people had co-opted the Chritian religion than he was co-opting Islam. He kept claiming that Islam is for the black man when Islam, at least the Islam of the East, does not stop at race lines but extends to everybody. To turn the religion into a race thing is to limit its capacity to reach the masses that it was intended for. I also need to take back what I had said about the differences between the two different forms of Islam portrayed in the book. I interviewed my friend who is a black muslim. (Not like the book, he is just black the race and muslim the religion) He believed that although there are fundamental differences between the two versions, he said that Malcolm x at least, seemed to really be practicing the religion of Islam. I had been critical of the Nation of Islam in the book because it seemed like a farce to just get their political/social goals to the masses but I was wrong. I defer to my friends greater knowledge on this subject and humbly take it back. I do however wish that they had two different names for their two divisions so that people do not assume that they represent the same thing but maybe they do by now, I dont know. First of all, I wanted to thank Emily Brown for speaking her thoughts upon the prison system and her critiques on said system based upon what Malcolm X said. I would just like to respond by giving her a little more information based on what I know. My brother is in prison so I have visited various prisons and city jails over the years. I think that Malcolm X is hugely right in what he says when he speaks of not putting people behind bars if you have any feelings at all for other human beings. However I do not think that the bars are the problem. It is the institution itself. Malcolm X was only one of very few exceptions who turned his life around in jail. Statistics state that most people who go to jail or prison will go again before they die. This is because in my opinion prisons do not rehabilitate their prisoners; instead they just sit, watch, and wait for the prisoners to get into even more trouble so they can put a stop to it. In my experience you will never find a more segregated place in America than in a prison. They have separate groups for everything. The blacks stay with the blacks, the whites with the whites, and the indians and hispanics stick with each other. If you stray across those lines than you will get in a fight. This is not something that the prison enforces, this is something that the prisoners do themselves. My brother was telling me one time how in the Walla Walla state prison the different ethnic groups had what you might call a war over the faucets in the showers. The black people wanted more so the white people had to defend theirs. They could not share. After much blood, the white people ended up with four faucets which was not really enough because their were over twenty white people in their block. In a place where people are locked together and live in such a racist society, how can they be expected to change? They will only get worse because they build resentments towards not only the other races but also against the gaurds and their authority. They get tired of being known only by a number (like Malcolm X said). They build tattoo guns out of anything that they have on hand and make their own alcolohol in trash cans etc. I believe that prisons or something of that nature is still necessary, however I think that the way that it is structured needs to change vastly if we really want a high percentage of people to rehabilitate like Malcolm X. I do not know how this would be done, I just do not like the system as it stands now.