Misinterpreting Malcolm

Recently, Al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahri released an audio message criticizing Barack Obama. It is the first message of this nature to be released since the election. In this message, al-Zawahri said that Obama was not like the "honorable" Americans who had come before him, most notably mentioning Malcolm X by name. He then called Obama, Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice "House Negroes", which was a reference to something that Malcolm X had spoken about. Now this is a gigantic can of worms (if you will forgive the cliche) in terms of American politics and what could be criticized about the message but there is one aspect of it that I would like to focus on, and that is Al-Qaida's failure to understand Malcolm X in context.

The "House Negroes" comment by Malcolm X was along these lines: in the time of American slavery there were two kinds of slave. House and Field. The House slave lived with his white master in the house, dressed relatively well, slept in the house and ate the leftovers from the master's meals. The house slave would have nothing but positive things to say about his master, because he was given a life of relative luxury. He would be proud of the master's house, and would be very concerned if the master ever got sick. Malcolm said that the house slave loved the master more than the master loved himself.
The other category of slave was the field slave. They toiled all day in the fields of the master's plantation for no money, barely any food and rags for clothing. They were miserable. They saw slavery for what it really was, and held no delusions about it. Malcolm said that the field slaves (which were the majority) hated their master. He said that when the master got sick they would pray that he died, and that if the master's house caught fire they would pray for a breeze to make it worse.

Malcolm said that there were still House and Field Negroes. He said that the House Negroes would preach that African-Americans and white-Americans could be integrated and could get along as equals. He said that the Field Negroes were once again the realists. He said that the only way for African-Americans to be equal was to have their own independent nation, separate from whites, and from the USA.

This idea of House Negroes is the idea that al-Zawahri was talking about. That any black American who believed that all men could be equal under the United States was a deluded house slave. He credited this theory to Malcolm X. There is a problem with this though. Although Malcolm X was the one who voiced this publicly it was not his theory. He was merely articulating the views of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. This is a problem for Al-Quaida, as a fundamentalist Muslim group, because Elijah Muhammad's version of Islam was discredited by Mecca as false, so even if they credited him properly for this theory they would be crediting a false prophet.

Then there's the problem of Malcolm's conversion. Once he made his pilgrimage to Mecca he converted to Orthodox Islam, it would surely make him a legitimate source for Al-Quaida to quote, right? Wrong. Once he had converted he disregarded Elijah Muhammad's hateful teachings and started talking about achieving equality for African-Americans. He even said that in order to do so, people should keep their religion to themselves. So in essence, he was saying that in order to achieve equality it should be brought about by non-religious means. By Al-Quaida's logic, he had become a "House Negro".

Ayman al-Zawahri has either no real understanding of Malcolm X, or is willingly invoking conflicting elements of him in order to stir hatred. Neither would surprise me. I would like to believe that were Malcolm alive today he would be pleased at the racial barrier that had been broken. I could be wrong (because there is no way of knowing) but I see this audio message as not only an attack on the characters of Obama, Powell and Rice but of Malcolm X.