Lessons For Leaders:
The Martyrdom of Hajj Malik El Shabazz

Death is the miserable fate of a humble people who accept scorn in order to remain alive.
Death chooses those who are not brave enough to choose martyrdom.

On February 21, 1965, Hajj Malik El Shabazz was killed and now stands among the ranks of all those martyrs in the cause of Islam.  Much has been written and much more said, about Hajj Malik since that time, with many seeking to define the role he played in the history of the African-American's struggle for freedom.  The proponents or survivors of the African diaspora explain him one way, while our pseudo (innovation oriented) intellectuals explain him another.  Recently, I have come to realize that we cannot explain Hajj Malik without understanding the Islamic concept of martyrdom.

He chose martyrdom not because of imitation, but because of an enlightened mind which understood that ignorance and poverty were not the glorification of Allah and that Allah does not reveal Himself through cowards.

Hajj Malik reminded America that it was the unwillingness to understand about the total self (by encouraging the lopsided development of the human personality) that spawned the conflicts between the sacred and the secular and between the spiritual and the mundane.   This, in my estimation, is the basis for the prevalent double standards, hypocrisy, racial discrimination, exploitation and imperialism.

Above are the excerpts from the article that appeared in 
The Message, October, 1996.