Contribution of a revolutionary voice of human rights El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X).
By MOHAMMED KHAKU
Malcolm X, despite living a short life, he left a remarkable legacy not only on Black Americans but on people around the world.
Malcolm X was always interested in Making America Great Again, but he also wanted to put the check on the growth of the racist American empire and Military Industrial Complex.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s shook America to its very foundations. It was a movement that touched every Black family in the U.S. including Malcolm X.
This was a fight that had to be fought, commonly known as “Jim Crow.” The racist establishment created laws to restrict right to vote, organize, or even to assemble.
There were laws created to segregate schools, transportation systems, public toilets, and lynching became an integral part of the Jim Crow system.
Malcolm X was one of the leaders in the civil rights struggle and it was at one of the rallies in Harlem on February 21, 1965, when he was assassinated.
Who was Malcolm X?
Malcolm, born in 1925 into a racist society struggled with his existence while believing in his true heritage as slave son somewhere from Africa. Hence, he took the last name of a variable X. This is how Malcom Little become Malcom X.
As a child, Malcolm X’s family was harassed by white supremacists who burned their home to the ground, killed his father, three of his uncles, and his mother, who had both Black and white origins, was institutionalized for mental illness.
This painful personal past no doubt compelled him to adopt firm a political ideology that left very little room for cooperation.
Inspired by his father Earl little as an activist, he always dreamed to become a lawyer. He electrified the audiences with his eloquent style and inspirational message. He was blessed with marvelous oratorical skills.
Before his death, Malcolm X managed to channel the rage he had over being terrorized by white supremacy, first into crime, then into Black nationalism, and finally into peaceful-minded humanitarianism after his pilgrimage to Mecca.
His life in prison was eye-opening for the young man, and he soon made decisions that altered the course of his life by reading and educating himself regarding Islam.
He eventually converted to Islam, and upon his release, he was a changed man with a new identity.
He did get an opportunity to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. While he was in Makkah, he changes his name to Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and wrote a letter to his loyal supporters in Harlem.
https://islam.uga.edu/malcomx.html
Malcolm X life transition happened through the pilgrimage to Mecca where he acquired the wisdom and reflected in his critical analysis on the Black experience in America
He believed that Islam could help America in its race problem by deconstructing the racial identity that he felt was at the root of social and cultural racism.
He thought that if white Americans could espouse Islam, believe in oneness of God and oneness of Man, it could break their socially constructed identities as white people, which were an impediment to equality.
He believed that if American studied Islam, which is one religion that erases from its society the race problem.
He saw Islam as an asset to his liberation problem as a Black man in America and America’s crises with race.
The pilgrimage to Mecca – that set-in motion a process of reconciliation and moderation (wasatiyyah وسط, وسطية) in how he viewed his erstwhile tormentors.
One has to read, reflect, and contemplate on the landmark book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X:
Malcolm always supported the liberation of Palestinians against Zionism, he compared the ghettos of Harlem under racist segregation to the Casbah in Algiers under French colonial rule, praised Nasser’s stand against Israel, England, and France, he celebrated the Bandung Conference (Afro-Asian) and saw it as a model for unifying Black political culture during the Cold War,
He supported the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya against British colonialism and the Vietnamese against French rule, he met with Fidel Castro, and supported Patrice Lauded Lumumba by saying “he was the greatest Black man to ever walked the African continent”,
Lumumba was a Congolese politician. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. Sadly, he was assassinated in 1961.
Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King differed on the way to achieve liberation; however, Dr. Martin Luther King did talk of revolution towards the end of his life similar to Malcolm X.
Two years after the death of Malcolm X in 1967 MLK said “For the last 2 years we have been a reform movement…But after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill (1965), we moved into a new era which must be an era of revolution.”
“What good does it do a man to have integrated lunch counters if he can’t buy a hamburger?” This was too much for the ruling class.
King started supporting a Revolution-style approach like Malcolm X by the general strike of sanitary workers. He was later gunned down as he prepared to march with refuse workers in Memphis.
In 1995, Obama described the influence that Malcolm X had on his life in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” Obama is the product of what Black Americans have endured in the last 500 years.
All Malcolm X did was to identify and deconstruct the white political thinking that was hegemonic.
If Malcolm X were alive, the likes of Trump wouldn’t show the courage to say racist words at his campaign meetings.
“A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.”—Malcolm X
“Any time I have a religion that won’t let me fight for my people, I say to hell with that religion. That’s why I am a Muslim.” — Malcolm X
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