From slave narratives and autobiographies to modern plays, religion has played a major role as the primary underpinning of much of the African-American literature. Detailing the role of Divine Providence throughout his life, Malcolm X dictated to Alex Haley in the Autobiography of Malcolm X his continual growth and conversion to the will of Allah. Christened Malcolm Little in the Baptist denomination of Christianity, the future most influential Black Muslim in American history would come to despise the religion of his birth as the white oppressor’s greatest tool against the African American community and go on a spiritual journey to seek and submit to the will of Allah, first, in the Nation of Islam and, finally, in Islam. Many retain to this day a fearful misconception not only of Islam, but also of Malcolm X; however, his story is as much about violence as it is about faith as the hagiography of St. Paul the Apostle is. Analyzing his hajj--not merely his pilgrimage to Mecca but, moreover, his ultimate journey to Allah--in his rejection of Christianity, he, himself, would take on …show more content…
Unaware of whom he would become, Malcolm Little is influenced even in these early years and, like St. Paul, reflects on these years as moments of mercy and Divine Providence. Born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcom X, then Malcolm Little, was the son of a Baptist minister, who was dedicated to Marcus Garvey’s U.N.I.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association), preaching the ideology of the “Back-to-Africa” movement. It is interesting to note at this point that despite abandoning the Christian faith of his father Malcolm X maintained a similar view of African American potential in a