Beyond Malcolm:
Life and political legacy

"I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control.  I feel what I'm thinking and saying now is for myself.   Before, it was for and by guidance of another, now I think with my own mind."

(Malcolm at leaving the Nation of Islam and entering the True Islam)

A little over thirty years ago, a man's life was cut prematurely short on a stage in a Harlem Ballroom.  A few months short of his fortieth birthday and at a major turning point in his life, this man was killed not so much for who he had been, or even who he was, but for who he might eventually become.  He had barely begun to accomplish any of what terrified so many, but the frightening expectations were too much for the paranoid to bear.  So on a winter's day in February 1965, assassins leapt from the audience and fired a deadly volley into one Malik El Shabazz, a man who had only recently found his Lord and the Truth that had eluded him through a storied past which had seen him rise to national and international prominence.

Malik the man died that day, but Malik's memory and the true significance of his legacy continue to be assassinated daily with distortions of the import of his life's work.  For various reasons and motivations, Malik is remembered more for his words and actions as Malcolm X, a period in his life where he combined brilliant and incisive analyses on the state of race relations and social justice in America with an off-setting bizarre cult belief in black racial superiority and racist dogmas.  Though inflammatory and controversial, Malcolm X was allowed a national spotlight over 12 years.  As Malik El Shabazz, the recent convert to Islam, he was granted less than a year of life.  The "why" is the most intriguing part of Malik's legacy.

"There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world.  They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans.  But we were all participating in the same ritual displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experience in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white...

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem... I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color."

(It was during the Hajj in Mecca that Malcolm completed his transformation and conversion to Al-Islam.  In April, 1964, Malcolm X died.  Al Hajj Malik El Shabazz was born.)

Quickly scan the present day Muslim landscape and find one leader who embodies the qualities cited above and who also commands an international spotlight and a worldwide forum to disseminate his ideas.  No one but Allah could say with absolute certainty what kind of leader Malik would have made.  But those who had him killed were not waiting around to find out.  In a world of endless diluting compromise and lackluster leadership, Malik had the potential to stand out for saying what others feared to say and for using the same candor in articulating injustices on an international scale that he used to indict the American system of racial oppression and inequality. 

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