His introduction to Islam couldn’t have happened at a more prime time in his life, and the cards were played in precisely the right manner to win him over. While in prison, his brother Reginald, whom he trusted more than anyone else, planted the seed by dangling a carrot – “don’t smoke or eat pork and I’ll show you how to get out of prison”. Malcolm was intrigued, almost obsessed with wanting to know more about how no smokes and no pork would get him out of prison; so much so in fact that when Reginald started telling him about the religion he was willing to listen.
What Reginald told him was that god was a man, he was in America, and he was black. He told him that the power held by whites would soon pass to blacks. And he told him that whites were the devil. This is exactly what Malcolm wanted to hear. All his troubles and emotional pain had to be blamed on someone and it was easy to hate those who had what he always wanted and never believed possible.
The Nation of Islam offered a means to shift the blame, avoid dealing with his painful past, and aggressively assert power over the only people he could, other blacks. But from Malcolm’s point of view, Islam was the answer. Everything they told him made sense. And he was receptive to it not because he was looking for enlightenment or salvation, but because it simply restated his prejudice. It allowed him to be angry, rather than aimlessly destroying himself because he couldn’t understand his feelings; with the Nation of Islam he had a reason, a purpose, to be raged. He even said “The very enormity of my previous life’s guilt prepared me to accept the truth”, or what he thought was the truth.
It's quite humorous how, as intelligent and perceptive he was, he could see it in others but not himself. He said, "Whites have always hidden or justified all of the guilts they could by ridiculing or blaming Negroes." Yet that was exactly the same thing he was doing.