The Black Muslims have their God, their gospel, their ritual trappings, their approval from official heads of the Islamic faith. As a religion, then, there is little left to do but disagree with them and then leave them alone. This, of course, pains liberals, Negro and white, who want to hear a ringing denunciation of the Black Muslims. Negro leaders are always quick to denounce Elijah, but the Negro masses are strangely silent. There is a reason for this silence, something both the Negro leadership and the white power structure would do well to examine: Deep down in their hearts, as James Baldwin so accurately states, the black masses don’t believe in white people any more. They don’t believe in Malcolm either, except when he articulates their disbelief in white people. In the end--and this is the thing white people will be a long time in grasping--the Negro masses neither join nor denounce the Black Muslims. They just sit at home in the ghetto amid the heat, the roaches, the rats, the vice, the disgrace, and rue the fact that come daylight they must meet the man--the white man--and work at a job that leads only to a dead end. This brings me to the core of the matter, to the final measure of every religion: it is a thing called _compassion_, a concern and caring about the other fellow. It is rooted in the glaring awareness that we all have fallen short of the high mark set for us, and thus we need the honest sympathy and understanding of all men everywhere. For though you may have your God, your holy book, your ritual, and your symbols; though you may give of your wages to build the temple; and though you may have been to Mecca, or Jerusalem, if you have not compassion you are but meanness couched in Scripture, you are but an ancient stink, a reason for men to hold their noses as they crawl on toward a land of human understanding and brotherhood. _The Nation_ Once the convert becomes a Black Muslim he is baptized as a citizen in the Nation of Islam. They have a flag, a symbol, and a cause. From this day forward his life centers around activity at the Muslim restaurant and temple. Who are these Black Muslims? Where do they live, and what do they do for a living?