Spike Lee and Malcolm X: Some disagreements

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2001)

I heard Malcolm X speak at Berkeley in 1963, the year of Kennedy's assassination, albeit before that terrible event. I remember that tall, intense, lean man striding to the microphone and beginning with, "Brothers, friends...enemies." This film is a fine but flawed work which creates a confusing and often confused picture of a very complex man. The Black Moslem movement is a significant political event in our nation's history. Lee's portrayal of Malcolm X, however, is much more Lee than Malcolm X. This film is long, repetitious and often tedious. The coda is distracting, unnecessary and borders on the maudlin. However, Lee presents but misunderstands the turning point in the life of the late Malcolm X, i.e., the change from a political icon, mouthing the half-baked, jingoistic half-truths of Elijah Mohammud into a man who underwent a profound religious experience. Many Black Moslems are an anathema to mainstream Moslems; this distinctive African-American movement is willing to lay all the ills of the African-American's treatment at the door of the "whites." This is not religion; it is politics and has little to do with the religious tenets of Islam. The accusation of Elijah Mohammud that Christianity is a "white man's religion" and Judaism is practiced by Jews who "exploit Black people," is pure nonsense. The origins of Christianity, Islam and Judaism have common roots among the Semitic peoples, Arabs and Jews, and it should be remembered that it was Islamic Arabs who ran the Slave trade that sold many of the West African ancestors of African-Americans into bondage in the Americas. In fact, the international slave trade feeding slaves into the productive leg of the old Trade Triangle was created by the Portuguese colonization of Africa. But, facts rarely enter into consideration where idealogy is concerned. Islam is a religion where the "law (sunni)" is part and parcel of everyday living, as it is in Judaism, (i.e., no division of 'church' and 'state') bespeaks of its desert origins based on a system of tribal ownership of wells. My point is, the Black Moslem movement was a political movement (and largely, still is) where the religious component has been greatly misrepresented. The misconception and misrepresentation of Islam as a Jihadic or militant religion persists today in the anti-Arab attitude reflected daily in our public news media. Unfortunately, Malcom X's diatribes during that his political period did precious little to remedy the situation. Sadly, only after Malcolm X had made his hajj, did he come to realize that people are people and the real monster is the hatred people create for other people. Spike Lee is a fine film maker. In spite of its flaws, this is a fine presentation of the life of one of the most interesting men of our past century.