Malcolm X
United States
1964
Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black who isn’t an extremist, and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention.
—Malcolm X
After a throwaway youth as a ghetto hustler, after seven years in jail for theft and another twelve preaching the dogma of a race-based cult, Malcolm X came into his own. His public adoption of mainstream Islam, a year before his death, was central to this process. He considered the Hajj a turning point. He went to Mecca twice in his last months.
Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His father Earl Little, an itinerant Baptist preacher, was an ardent follower of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and president of its local chapter. Malcolm’s mother, Louise—half-Scottish, half-Grenadan—followed Garvey, too. A self-educated Jamaican, Garvey led the largest organization in the history of the African diaspora, with two million members by 1924. His success disturbed a young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover, the newly appointed FBI director, and Garvey was falsely indicted on charges of mail fraud.
Malcolm was born the year Garvey went to prison. Three months later, fifty thousand Klansmen marched through Washington D. C. For blacks, it was a frightening and apocalyptic period. The fourth of eight children, Malcolm grew up in a poor household permeated by liberation theology. Black pride, racial separatism, the Negro nation were Garveyite watchwords. His half-sister Ella Collins later remarked that “progressive programs and ideas were in Malcolm’s natural makeup. He inherited it.”
Malcolm’s adult attraction to the Nation of Islam, starting in 1948, was a logical outcome of this early background. The group’s leader, Elijah Muhammad Poole, promised to help his followers escape injustice and racial exploitation by bringing their community under genuine black control. A weapon of protest, a means of self-definition, the Nation specialized in rebuilding wasted lives. This vision of racial oppression as a condition to be combatted inspired Malcolm X, and he labored tirelessly in Elijah’s cause throughout the 1950s. Spurred by his eloquence as a speaker, enrollment grew from a few hundred to forty thousand blacks in a few years. Thirty-eight NOI “temples” were founded by 1959, from New York to Los Angeles and Atlanta, and Malcolm had a hand in almost all of them. There were schools and small businesses, too, a national newspaper, real estate holdings, and thirty radio stations.
Malcolm’s much-publicized break with Elijah Muhammad in 1963 removed a final barrier to the freedom of self-expression he had lived for. Now he came to understand the Nation’s shortcomings. Despite an extensive infrastructure, the NOI was not much of a religion. As the novelist James Baldwin pointed out, its homespun “Islam” built up black pride by demonizing whites as a race of devils. It mixed powerful insights with harebrained myths, and it deified its founder, a heretical transgression for believing Muslims. The NOI wrapped itself in Islamic symbols but ignored or reconfigured traditional practices. Members did not fast during Ramadan or go to Mecca. Their liturgy only vaguely resembled Muslim prayer. More damaging for a black-power group in the early 1960s, Elijah withheld from his membership the concept of jihad, of the fight fought in defense of rights and freedom. This idea, so misconstrued by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, has played a key role in traditional Islam. After his Sunni conversion in 1964, Malcolm gravitated to it quickly. In jihad, and in the Hajj as well, he found the framework for a global liberation movement. It reached him like an echo of Marcus Garvey.
The following excerpts are drawn from the final chapters of Malcolm X’s bestselling autobiography, written with Alex Haley. They convey the transformation at work in the last year of his life. An honored guest on the flight from Cairo, he is invited into the cockpit by the captain. Hours later, in a major reversal, Saudi officials detain him at the Jidda airport, where he is regarded as an oddity by all and issued a court summons. The next day, however, we find him released into the custody of a Saudi architect—coincidentally, the man in charge of renovating the Great Mosque. These passages are followed by an extract from a letter Malcolm wrote from Mecca after the Hajj. It testifies to significant changes in his thoughts about race in the United States. Malcolm’s subsequent political networking in Mecca shows us the Hajj as an annual Muslim version of a UN General Assembly. In the last selection, Faysal ibn Abd al-Aziz makes his third appearance in these records, this time not as Viceroy or Prince but as King.
By orthodox standards, Malcolm X barely qualified as a Muslim when he first went to Mecca. His Hajj deepened his religious practice. It also helped legitimize him as a leader. Indeed, events suggest that this was part of the purpose for his journey. Weeks before leaving for Mecca, Malcolm founded a new organization in Harlem named Muslim Mosque, Incorporated. It is at this point in the autobiography, a paragraph after describing the new mosque, that he mentions the Hajj for the first time. “There was one further major preparation that I knew I needed. I’d had it in mind for a long time—as a servant of Allah.” It is worth pointing out here that only a real Muslim may found a mosque and that the surest way to be recognized as one by other Muslims is to make the Hajj. Viewed in its proper sequence, Malcolm’s first trip to Mecca was more than a personal quest in pursuit of vision. It was also a quest for wider validation, for what his recent biographer, Lewis DeCaro, Jr., has called “religious authenticity in the Muslim world.” It is a theme we have seen at work in these accounts since the Middle Ages.
Pilgrims bring to Mecca what they find there. Malcolm brought a lifelong hunger for racial equity. A few nights among the tents in Mina Valley led him to announce that “it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and Human Society complete.” Set against life in Harlem, Malcolm’s Hajj was a brief stroll through a social paradise. Its heightened spirit, sacred laws, and democratic dress enabled him to experience equality on a scale unimaginable before. He enjoyed a few days of the racial ease he had dreamed of, and he came home buoyant, prepared to improvise. “Malcolm was free,” his friend the entertainer, Ossie Davis, later recalled. “No one who knew him before and after his trip to Mecca could doubt that he had completely abandoned racism, separatism, and hatred.” Most photographs from this period show him smiling, an expression rarely caught in prior years. He had shed what he called his “old hate and violence image.” Enthusiasm overflows these pages. He displayed new detachment, too, and was able to joke about himself. “I used to parrot Elijah’s views,” he quipped in a speech at Harvard University. “Now the parrot has jumped out of the cage.”
Our first author, Naser-e Khosraw, much like Malcolm X, transformed a dissolute and restrictive past into a powerful role as a reformer while on the pilgrimage. Both men went to Cairo, and then to Mecca, to study for the Muslim ministry. Returning home, Khosraw survived an attempted assassination for his new beliefs and escaped to the mountains. Malcolm, by contrast, died in a hail of bullets on February 21, 1965, while addressing a few hundred followers in Harlem. The Nation is widely blamed for his death, and most of Malcolm’s last statements concur with this. He knew that NOI factions in Chicago and New York were determined to end his influence, and he understood their vindictive mentality; he had helped shape it. Malcolm bore no illusions about his position. “If I’m alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle,” he told Haley. He died a few weeks before its publication.
Malcolm X has been called the man who almost changed America. In the years after his death, he became a small industry. He has been purveyed in hip-hop culture as a militant icon, a charismatic leader, and the angriest man in the United States. Spike Lee’s 1992 Hollywood film reestablished Malcolm’s charismatic image around the world. Meanwhile, academic scholars with new agendas have variously psychoanalyzed him, placed his development in a Trotskyite or pan-African frame, lionized his heroism, exposed his apparent sexism, and generally reread his inner life as a set of choices. For them, and for non-Muslims in general, the determining factors in Malcolm’s life were historical, political, and racial forces. His profoundly religious nature, his almost mystical combination of militancy and submission, is largely ignored. Yet when Malcolm came to dictate his own story, he told the tale in religious terms. Others have felt obliged to explain him socially or psychologically, but in Malcolm’s eyes his fate was the work of God. He experienced life as a drama of salvation, and by and large that is how he told it. Popular culture has enshrined him as a secular figure because that is an easy way to deal with him. Unfortunately, it omits from the picture the forces that guided him. Returning from Mecca, he changed his name to al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, the name continued by his wife and children. On his death certificate, in the box marked “business or industry,” someone correctly inscribed the word Islam.
from The Autobiography of Malcolm X
CAIRO AIRPORT. APRIL 1964 The literal meaning of Hajj in Arabic is to set out toward a definite objective. In Islamic law, it means to set out for [the] Kaʿba, the Sacred House, and to fulfill the pilgrimage rites. The Cairo airport was where scores of Hajj groups were becoming muhrim, pilgrims, upon entering the state of ihram, the assumption of a spiritual and physical state of consecration. Upon advice, I arranged to leave in Cairo all of my luggage and four cameras, one a movie camera. I had bought in Cairo a small valise, just big enough to carry one suit, shirt, a pair of underwear sets, and a pair of shoes into Arabia. Driving to the airport with our Hajj group, I began to get nervous, knowing that from there in, it was going to be watching others who knew what they were doing, and trying to do what they did.
Entering the state of ihram, we took off our clothes and put on two white towels. One, the izar, was folded around the loins. The other, the rida, was thrown over the neck and shoulders, leaving the right shoulder and arm bare. A pair of simple sandals, the na’l, left the anklebones bare. Over the izar waistwrapper, a money belt was worn, and a bag, something like a woman’s big handbag, with a long strap, was for carrying the passport and other valuable papers, such as the letter I had from Dr. Shawarbi.270
Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jidda, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant, and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out “Labayk! Labayk!” (“Here I come, O Lord!”) The airport sounded with the din of muhrim expressing their intention to perform the journey of the Hajj.
Planeloads of pilgrims were taking off every few minutes, but the airport was jammed with more, and their friends and relatives waiting to see them off. Those not going were asking others to pray for them at Mecca. We were on our plane, in the air, when I learned for the first time that with the crush, there was not supposed to have been space for me, but strings had been pulled, and someone had been put off because they didn’t want to disappoint an American Muslim. I felt mingled emotions of regret that I had inconvenienced and discomfited whoever was bumped off the plane for me and, with that, an utter humility and gratefulness that I had been paid such an honor and respect.
Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair—all together, brothers! All honoring the same God Allah, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.
From some in our group, the word was spreading from seat to seat that I was a Muslim from America. Faces turned, smiling toward me in greeting. A box lunch was passed out, and as we ate that, the word that a Muslim from America was aboard got up into the cockpit.
The captain of the plane came back to meet me. He was an Egyptian; his complexion was darker than mine; he could have walked in Harlem, and no one would have given him a second glance. He was delighted to meet an American Muslim. When he invited me to visit the cockpit, I jumped at the chance. . . .
JIDDA The Jidda airport seemed even more crowded than Cairo’s had been. Our party became another shuffling unit in the shifting mass with every race on Earth represented. Each party was making its way toward the long line waiting to go through customs. Before reaching customs, each Hajj party was assigned a mutawwif, who would be responsible for transferring that party from Jidda to Mecca. Some pilgrims cried, “Labayk!” Others, sometimes large groups, were chanting in unison a prayer that I will translate: “I submit to no one but thee, O Allah. I submit to no one but thee. I submit to thee because thou hast no partner. All praise and blessings come from thee, and thou art alone in thy kingdom.” The essence of the prayer is the oneness of God.
Only officials were not wearing the ihram garb, or the white skullcaps, long, white, nightshirt-looking gown, and the little slippers of the mutawwif, those who guided each pilgrim party, and their helpers. In Arabic, an mmmm sound before a verb makes a verbal noun, so mutawwif meant “the one who guides” the pilgrims on the tawaf, which is the circumambulation of the Kaʿba in Mecca.
I was nervous, shuffling in the center of our group in the line waiting to have our passports inspected. I had an apprehensive feeling. Look what I’m handing them. I’m in the Muslim world, right at the fountain. I’m handing them the American passport which signifies the exact opposite of what Islam stands for.
The judge in our group sensed my strain. He patted my shoulder. Love, humility, and true brotherhood was almost a physical feeling wherever I turned. Then our group reached the clerks who examined each passport and suitcase carefully and nodded to the pilgrim to move on.
I was so nervous that when I turned the key in my bag, and it didn’t work, I broke open the bag, fearing that they might think I had something in the bag that I shouldn’t have. Then the clerk saw that I was handing him an American passport. He held it, he looked at me and said something in Arabic. My friends around me began speaking rapid Arabic, gesturing and pointing, trying to intercede for me. The judge asked me in English for my letter from Dr. Shawarbi, and he thrust it at the clerk, who read it. He gave the letter back, protesting—I could tell that. An argument was going on, about me. I felt like a stupid fool, unable to say a word, I couldn’t even understand what was being said. But, finally, sadly, the judge turned to me.
I had to go before the Mahgama Sharia, he explained. It was the Muslim high court which examined all possibly nonauthentic converts to the Islamic religion seeking to enter Mecca. It was absolute that no non-Muslim could enter Mecca. . . . No courts were held on Friday. I would have to wait until Saturday, at least.
An official beckoned a young Arab mutawwif ‘s aide. In broken English, the official explained that I would be taken to a place right at the airport. My passport was kept at customs. I wanted to object, because it is a traveler’s first law never to get separated from his passport, but I didn’t. In my wrapped towels and sandals, I followed the aide in his skullcap, long white gown, and slippers. I guess we were quite a sight. People passing us were speaking all kinds of languages. I couldn’t speak anybody’s language. I was in bad shape.
Right outside the airport was a mosque, and above the airport was a huge, dormitory-like building, four tiers high. It was semidark, not long before dawn, and planes were regularly taking off and landing, their landing lights sweeping the runways or their wing and taillights blinking in the sky. Pilgrims from Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia, to mention some, were moving to and from the dormitory where I was being taken. I don’t believe that motion picture cameras ever have filmed a human spectacle more colorful than my eyes took in. We reached the dormitory and began climbing, up to the fourth, top tier, passing members of every race on earth. Chinese, Indonesians, Afghanis. Many, not yet changed into the ihram garb, still wore their national dress. It was like pages out of the National Geographic magazine.
My guide, on the fourth tier, gestured me into a compartment that contained about fifteen people. Most lay curled up on their rugs asleep. I could tell that some were women, covered head and foot. An old Russian Muslim and his wife were not asleep. They stared frankly at me. Two Egyptian Muslims and a Persian roused and also stared as my guide moved us over into a corner. With gestures, he indicated that he would demonstrate to me the proper prayer ritual postures. Imagine, being a Muslim minister, a leader in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, and not knowing the prayer ritual.
I tried to do what he did. I knew I wasn’t doing it right. I could feel the other Muslims’ eyes on me. Western ankles won’t do what Muslim ankles have done for a lifetime. Asians squat when they sit; Westerners sit upright in chairs. When my guide was down in a posture, I tried everything I could to get down as he was, but there I was, sticking up. After about an hour, my guide left, indicating that he would return later.
I never even thought about sleeping. Watched by the Muslims, I kept practicing prayer postures. I refused to let myself think how ridiculous I must have looked to them. After a while, though, I learned a little trick that would let me get down closer to the floor. But after two or three days, my ankle was going to swell.
As the sleeping Muslims woke up, when dawn had broken, they almost instantly became aware of me, and we watched each other while they went about their business. I began to see what an important role the rug played in the overall cultural life of the Muslims. Each individual had a small prayer rug, and each man and wife or large group had a larger communal rug. These Muslims prayed on their rugs there in the compartment. Then they spread a tablecloth over the rug and ate, so the rug became the dining room. Removing the dishes and cloth, they sat on the rug—a living room. Then they curl up and sleep on the rug—a bedroom. In that compartment, before I was to leave it, it dawned on me for the first time why the fence had paid such a high price for Oriental rugs when I had been a burglar in Boston. It was because so much intricate care was taken to weave fine rugs in countries where rugs were so culturally versatile. Later, in Mecca, I would see yet another use of the rug. When any kind of a dispute arose, someone who was respected highly and who was not involved would sit on a rug with the disputers around him, which made the rug a courtroom. In other instances it was a classroom.
One of the Egyptian Muslims, particularly, kept watching me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at him. He got up and came over to me. “Hello—” he said. It sounded like the Gettysburg Address. I beamed at him, “Hello!” I asked his name. “Name? Name?” He was trying hard, but he didn’t get it. We tried some words on each other. I’d guess his English vocabulary spanned maybe twenty words. Just enough to frustrate me. I was trying to get him to comprehend anything. “Sky.” I’d point. He’d smile. “Sky,” I’d say again, gesturing for him to repeat it after me. He would. “Airplane . . . rug . . . foot . . . sandal . . . eyes . . .” Like that. Then an amazing thing happened. I was so glad I had some communication with a human being, I was just saying whatever came to mind. I said “Muhammad Ali Clay—” All of the Muslims listening lighted up like a Christmas tree. “You? You?” My friend was pointing at me. I shook my head, “No, no. Muhammad Ali Clay my friend—friend!” They half-understood me. Some of them didn’t understand, and that’s how it began to get around that I was Cassius Clay, world heavyweight champion. I was later to learn that apparently every man, woman, and child in the Muslim world had heard how Sonny Liston (who in the Muslim world had the image of a man-eating ogre) had been beaten in Goliath-David fashion by Cassius Clay, who then had told the world that his name was Muhammad Ali and his religion was Islam and Allah had given him his victory.
Establishing the rapport was the best thing that could have happened in the compartment. My being an American Muslim changed the attitudes from merely watching me to wanting to look out for me. Now, the others began smiling steadily. They came closer; they were frankly looking me up and down. Inspecting me. Very friendly. I was like a man from Mars.
The mutawwif ‘s aide returned, indicating that I should go with him. He pointed from our tier down at the mosque, and I knew that he had come to take me to make the morning prayer, always before sunrise. I followed him down, and we passed pilgrims by the thousands, babbling languages, everything but English. I was angry with myself for not having taken the time to learn more of the orthodox prayer rituals before leaving America. In Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, we hadn’t prayed in Arabic. About a dozen or more years before, when I was in prison, a member of the orthodox Muslim movement in Boston, named Abdul Hamid, had visited me and had later sent me prayers in Arabic. At that time, I had learned those prayers phonetically. But I hadn’t used them since.
I made up my mind to let the guide do everything first and I would watch him. It wasn’t hard to get him to do things first. He wanted to anyway. Just outside the mosque there was a long trough with rows of faucets. Ablutions had to precede praying. I knew that. Even watching the mutawwif ‘s helper, I didn’t get it right. There’s an exact way that an orthodox Muslim washes, and the exact way is very important.
I followed him into the mosque, just a step behind, watching. He did his prostration, his head to the ground. I did mine. “Bismillah ar-Rahman, al-Rahim—” (“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful—”) All Muslim prayers began that way. After that, I may not have been mumbling the right thing, but I was mumbling.
I don’t mean to have any of this sound joking. It was far from a joke with me. No one who happened to be watching could tell that I wasn’t saying what the others said. . . .
LATER THE SAME DAY I kept standing at the tier railing observing the courtyard below, and I decided to explore a bit on my own. I went down to the first tier. I thought, then, that maybe I shouldn’t get too far; someone might come for me. So I went back up to our compartment. In about forty-five minutes, I went back down. I went further this time, feeling my way. I saw a little restaurant in the courtyard. I went straight in there. It was jammed, and babbling with languages. Using gestures, I bought a whole roasted chicken and something like thick potato chips. I got back out in the courtyard, and I tore up that chicken, using my hands. Muslims were doing the same thing all around me. I saw men at least seventy years old bringing both legs up under them, until they made a human knot of themselves, eating with as much aplomb and satisfaction as though they had been in a fine restaurant with waiters all over the place. All ate as One, and slept as One. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. . . .
I had just said my Sunset Prayer; I was lying on my cot in the fourth-tier compartment, feeling blue and alone when out of the darkness came a sudden light!
It was actually a sudden thought. On one of my venturings in the yard full of activity below, I had noticed four men, officials, seated at a table with a telephone. Now, I thought about seeing them there, and with telephone, my mind flashed to the connection that Dr. Shawarbi in New York had given me the telephone number of the son of the author of the book which had been given to me [in New York]. Omar Azzam lived right there in Jidda!
In a matter of a few minutes, I was downstairs and rushing to where I had seen the four officials. One of them spoke functional English. I excitedly showed him the letter from Dr. Shawarbi. He read it. Then he read it aloud to the other three officials. “A Muslim from America!” I could almost see it capture their imaginations and curiosity. They were very impressed. I asked the English-speaking one if he would please do me the favor of telephoning Dr. Omar Azzam at the number I had. He was glad to do it. He got someone on the phone and conversed in Arabic.
Dr. Omar Azzam came straight to the airport. With the four officials beaming, he wrung my hand in welcome, a young, tall, powerfully built man. I’d say he was six foot three. He had an extremely polished manner. In America, he would have been called a white man, but—it struck me, hard and instantly—from the way he acted, I had no feeling of him being a white man. “Why didn’t you call before?” he demanded of me. He showed some identification to the four officials, and he used their phone. Speaking in Arabic, he was talking with some airport officials. “Come!” he said.
In something less than half an hour, he had gotten me released, my suitcase and passport had been retrieved from customs, and we were in Dr. Azzam’s car, driving through the city of Jidda, with me dressed in the ihram towels and sandals. I was speechless at the man’s attitude, and at my own physical feeling of no difference between us as human beings. I had heard for years of Muslim hospitality, but one couldn’t quite imagine such warmth. I asked questions. Dr. Azzam was a Swiss-trained engineer. His field was city planning. The Saudi Arabian government had borrowed him from the United Nations to direct all of the reconstruction work being done on [the] Arabian holy places. And Dr. Azzam’s sister was the wife of Prince Faysal’s son. I was in a car with the brother-in-law of the son of the ruler of Arabia. Nor was that all that Allah had done. “My father will be so happy to meet you,” said Dr. Azzam. The author who had sent me the book!
I asked questions about his father. Abd al-Rahman Azzam was known as Azzam Pasha, or Lord Azzam, until the Egyptian revolution, when President Nasser271 eliminated all “Lord” and “Noble” titles. “He should be at my home when we get there,” Dr. Azzam said. “He spends much time in New York with his United Nations work, and he has followed you with great interest.”
I was speechless. . . .
THE HIGH COURT I learned during dinner that the Hajj Committee Court had been notified about my case, and that in the morning I should be there. And I was.
The Judge was Shaykh Muhammad Harkon. The court was empty except for me and a sister from India, formerly a Protestant, who had converted to Islam and was, like me, trying to make the Hajj. She was brown skinned, with a small face that was mostly covered. Judge Harkon was a kind, impressive man. We talked. He asked me some questions having to do with my sincerity. I answered him as truly as I could. He not only recognized me as a true Muslim, but he gave me two books, one in English, the other in Arabic. He recorded my name in the Holy Register of true Muslims, and we were ready to part. He told me, “I hope you will become a great preacher of Islam in America.” I said that I shared that hope, and I would try to fulfill it.
The Azzam family were very elated that I was qualified and accepted to go to Mecca. I had lunch at the Jidda Palace [Hotel]. Then I slept again for several hours, until the telephone awakened me.
It was Muhammad Abd al-Azziz Magid, the Deputy Chief of Protocol for Prince Faysal. “A special car will be waiting to take you to Mecca, right after your dinner,” he told me. He advised me to eat heartily, as the Hajj rituals require plenty of strength.
I was beyond astonishment by then.
Two young Arabs accompanied me to Mecca. A well-lighted, modern turnpike highway made the trip easy. Guards at intervals along the way took one look at the car, and the driver made a sign, and we were passed through, never even having to slow down. I was, all at once, thrilled, important, humble, and thankful.
Mecca, when we entered, seemed as ancient as time itself. Our car slowed through the winding streets, lined by shops on both sides and with buses, cars, and trucks, and tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the earth were everywhere.
The car halted briefly at a place where a mutawwif was waiting for me. He wore the white skullcap and long nightshirt garb that I had seen at the airport. He was a short, dark-skinned Arab, named Muhammad. He spoke no English whatever.
We parked near the Great Mosque. We performed our ablution and entered. Pilgrims seemed to be on top of each other, there were so many, lying, sitting, sleeping, praying, walking.
My vocabulary cannot describe the new mosque that was being built around the Kaʿba. I was thrilled to realize that it was only one of the tremendous rebuilding tasks under the direction of young Dr. Azzam, who had just been my host. The Great Mosque of Mecca, when it is finished, will surpass the architectural beauty of India’s Taj Mahal.
Carrying my sandals, I followed the mutawwif. Then I saw the Kaʿba, a huge black stone house in the middle of the Great Mosque. It was being circumambulated by thousands upon thousands of praying pilgrims, both sexes, and every size, shape, color, and race in the world. I knew the prayer to be uttered when the pilgrim’s eyes first perceive the Kaʿba. Translated, it is “O God, you are peace, and peace derives from you. So greet us, O Lord, with peace.” . . .
My feeling there in the House of God was a numbness. My mutawwif led me in the crowd of praying, chanting pilgrims, moving seven times around the Kaʿba. Some were bent and wizened with age; it was a sight that stamped itself on the brain. I saw incapacitated pilgrims being carried by others. Faces were enraptured in their faith. The seventh time around, I prayed two rakats, prostrating myself, my head on the floor. The first prostration, I prayed the Quran verse “Say he is God, the one and only”; the second prostration, “Say O you who are unbelievers, I worship not that which you worship. . . .”
As I prostrated, the mutawwif fended pilgrims off to keep me from being trampled.
The mutawwif and I next drank water from the Well of Zamzam. Then we ran between the two hills, Safa and Marwa, where Hagar wandered over the same earth searching for water for her child, Ishmael.
THE PROCESSION TO ARAFAT Three separate times after that, I visited the Great Mosque and circumambulated the Kaʿba. The next day we set out after sunrise toward Mount Arafat, thousands of us, crying in unison: “Labayk! Labayk!” and “Allah Akbar!” Mecca is surrounded by the crudest-looking mountains I have ever seen; they seem to be made of the slag from a blast furnace. No vegetation is on them at all. Arriving about noon, we prayed and chanted from noon until sunset, and the asr (afternoon) and maghrib (sunset) special prayers were performed.
Finally, we lifted our hands in prayer and thanksgiving, repeating Allah’s words: “There is no God but Allah. He has no partner. His are authority and praise. Good emanates from him, and he has power over all things.”
Standing on Mount Arafat had concluded the essential rites of being a pilgrim to Mecca. No one who missed it could consider himself a pilgrim.
The ihram had ended. We cast the traditional seven stones at the devil. Some had their hair and beards cut. I decided that I was going to let my beard remain. I wondered what my wife, Betty, and our little daughters, were going to say when they saw me with a beard, when I got back to New York. New York seemed a million miles away. I hadn’t seen a newspaper that I could read since I left New York. I had no idea what was happening there. A Negro rifle club that had been in existence for over twelve years in Harlem had been “discovered” by the police; it was being trumpeted that I was “behind it.” Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam had a lawsuit going against me, to force me and my family to vacate the house in which we lived on Long Island.
The major press, radio, and television media in America had representatives in Cairo hunting all over, trying to locate me, to interview me about the furor in New York that I had allegedly caused—when I knew nothing about any of it. . . .
LETTERS FROM MECCA I wrote to Dr. Shawarbi, whose belief in my sincerity had enabled me to get a passport to Mecca.
All through the night, I copied similar long letters for others who were very close to me. Among them was Elijah Muhammad’s son Wallace Muhammad, who had expressed to me his conviction that the only possible salvation for the Nation of Islam would be its accepting and projecting a better understanding of orthodox Islam.
And I wrote to my loyal assistants at my newly formed Muslim Mosque, Inc., in Harlem, with a note appended, asking that my letter be duplicated and distributed to the press.
I knew that when my letter became public knowledge back in America, many would be astounded—loved ones, friends, and enemies alike. And no less astounded would be millions whom I did not know—who had gained during my twelve years with Elijah Muhammad a “hate” image of Malcolm X.
Even I was myself astounded. But there was precedent in my life for this letter. My whole life had been a chronology of—changes.
Here is what I wrote . . . from my heart:
“Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.
“I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca. I have made my seven circuits around the Kaʿba, led by a young mutawwif named Muhammad. I drank water from the Well of Zamzam. I ran seven times back and forth between the hills of Mount Safa and Marwa. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mount Arafat.
“There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the nonwhite.
“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered ‘white’—but the ‘white’ attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.
“You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
“During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God—with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.
“We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one God had removed the ‘white’ from their minds, the ‘white’ from their behavior, and the ‘white’ from their attitude. . . .”
THE MUSLIM FROM AMERICA Prince Faysal, the absolute ruler of Arabia, had made me a guest of the state. Among the courtesies and privileges which this brought to me, especially—shamelessly—I relished the chauffeured car which toured me around in Mecca with the chauffeur-guide pointing out sights of particular significance. Some of the Holy City looked as ancient as time itself. Other parts of it resembled a modern Miami suburb. I cannot describe with what feelings I actually pressed my hands against the earth where the great prophets had trod four thousand years before.
“The Muslim from America” excited everywhere the most intense curiosity and interest. I was mistaken time and again for Cassius Clay. A local newspaper had printed a photograph of Cassius and me together at the United Nations. Through my chauffeur-guide-interpreter I was asked scores of questions about Cassius. Even children knew of him, and loved him there in the Muslim world. By popular demand, the cinemas throughout Africa and Asia had shown his fight. At that moment in young Cassius’s career, he had captured the imagination and the support of the entire dark world.
My car took me to participate in special prayers at Mount Arafat, and at Mina. The roads offered the wildest drives that I had ever known: nightmare traffic, brakes squealing, skidding cars, and horns blowing. (I believe that all of the driving in the Holy Land is done in the name of Allah.) I had begun to learn the prayers in Arabic; now, my biggest prayer difficulty was physical. The unaccustomed prayer posture had caused my big toe to swell, and it pained me.
But the Muslim world’s customs no longer seemed strange to me. My hands now readily plucked up food from a common dish shared with brother Muslims; I was drinking without hesitation from the same glass as others; I was washing from the same little pitcher of water; and sleeping with eight or ten others on a mat in the open. I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land—every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike—all snored in the same language. . . .
It was the largest Hajj in history, I was later told. Kasem Gulek, of the Turkish parliament, beaming with pride, informed me that from Turkey alone over six hundred buses—over fifty thousand Muslims—had made the pilgrimage. I told him that I dreamed to see the day when shiploads and planeloads of American Muslims would come to Mecca for the Hajj.
There was a color pattern in the huge crowds. Once I happened to notice this, I closely observed it thereafter. Being from America made me intensely sensitive to matters of color. I saw that people who looked alike drew together and most of the time stayed together. This was entirely voluntary; there being no other reason for it. But Africans were with Africans. Pakistanis were with Pakistanis. And so on. I tucked it into my mind that when I returned home I would tell Americans this observation; that where true brotherhood existed among all colors, where no one felt segregated, where there was no “superiority” complex, no “inferiority” complex—then voluntarily, naturally, people of the same kind felt drawn together by that which they had in common. . . .
Constantly, wherever I went, I was asked questions about America’s racial discrimination. Even with my background, I was astonished at the degree to which the major single image of America seemed to be discrimination.
In a hundred different conversations in the Holy Land with Muslims high and low, and from around the world—and, later, when I got to black Africa—I don’t have to tell you never once did I bite my tongue or miss a single opportunity to tell the truth about the crimes, the evils, and the indignities that are suffered by the black man in America. Through my interpreter, I lost no opportunity to advertise the American black man’s real plight. I preached it on the mountain at Arafat, I preached it in the busy lobby of the Jidda Palace Hotel. I would point at one after another—to bring it closer to home; “You . . . you . . . you—because of your dark skin, in America you, too, would be called ‘Negro.’ You could be bombed and shot and cattle-prodded and fire-hosed and beaten because of your complexions.”
As some of the poorest pilgrims heard me preach, so did some of the Holy World’s most important personages. I talked at length with the blue-eyed, blond-haired Husayn Amini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. We were introduced on Mount Arafat by Kasem Gulek of the Turkish parliament. Both were learned men; both were especially well read on America. Kasem Gulek asked me why I had broken with Elijah Muhammad. I said that I preferred not to elaborate upon our differences, in the interests of preserving the American black man’s unity. They both understood and accepted that.
I talked with the Mayor of Mecca, Shaykh Abdullah Eraif, who when he was a journalist had criticized the methods of the Mecca municipality— and Prince Faysal made him the Mayor, to see if he could do any better. Everyone generally acknowledged that Shaykh Eraif was doing fine. A filmed feature The Muslim from America was made by Ahmed Horyallah and his partner, Essid Muhammad, of Tunis’s television station. In America once, in Chicago, Ahmed Horyallah had interviewed Elijah Muhammad.
The lobby of the Jidda Palace Hotel offered me frequent sizable informal audiences of important men from many different countries who were curious to hear the “American Muslim.” I met many Africans who had either spent some time in America or who had heard other Africans’ testimony about America’s treatment of the black man. I remember how before one large audience, one cabinet minister from black Africa (he knew more about worldwide current events than anyone else I’ve ever met) told of his occasionally traveling in the United States, North and South, deliberately not wearing his national dress. Just recalling the indignities he had met as a black man seemed to expose some raw nerve in this highly educated, dignified official. His eyes blazed in his passionate anger, his hands hacked the air: “Why is the American black man so complacent about being trampled upon? Why doesn’t the American black man fight to be a human being?” . . .
Two American authors, best-sellers in the Holy Land, had helped to spread and intensify the concern for the American black man. James Baldwin’s books, translated, had made a tremendous impact, as had the book Black Like Me, by John Griffin. If you’re unfamiliar with that book, it tells how the white man Griffin blackened his skin and spent two months traveling as a Negro about America; then Griffin wrote of the experiences that he met. “A frightening experience!” I heard exclaimed many times by people in the Holy World who had read the popular book. But I never heard it without opening their thinking further: “Well, if it was a frightening experience for him as nothing but a make-believe Negro for sixty days—then you think about what real Negroes in America have gone through for four hundred years.”
INTERVIEW WITH FAYSAL One honor that came to me, I had prayed for: His Eminence, Prince Faysal, invited me to a personal audience with him.
As I entered the room, tall, handsome Prince Faysal came from behind his desk. I never will forget the reflection I had at that instant, that here was one of the world’s most important men, and yet with his dignity one saw clearly his sincere humility. He indicated for me a chair opposite from his. Our interpreter was the Deputy Chief of Protocol, Muhammad Abdal-Azziz Magid, an Egyptian-born Arab who looked like a Harlem Negro.
Prince Faysal impatiently gestured when I began stumbling for words trying to express my gratitude for the great honor he had paid me in making me a guest of the state. It was only Muslim hospitality to another Muslim, he explained, and I was an unusual Muslim from America. He asked me to understand above all that whatever he had done had been his pleasure, with no other motives whatever.
A gliding servant served a choice of two kinds of tea as Prince Faysal talked. His son, Muhammad Faysal, had “met” me on American television while attending a northern California university. Prince Faysal had read Egyptian writers’ articles about the American “Black Muslims.” “If what these writers say is true, the Black Muslims have the wrong Islam,” he said. I explained my role of the previous twelve years, of helping to organize and to build the Nation of Islam. I said that my purpose for making the Hajj was to get an understanding of true Islam. “That is good,” Prince Faysal said, pointing out that there was an abundance of English-translation literature about Islam—so that there was no excuse for ignorance, and no reason for sincere people to allow themselves to be misled.