Hajj & Revolution: The Forgotten Legacy of Malcolm X

Today, we remember the life and legacy of Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik Shabazz, who was taken from us abruptly on February 21, 1965 in New York’s Audubon Ballroom. Malcolm is a hero to Muslims, African Americans, and freedom fighters of all stripes. He taught us how to live a life in uncompromising pursuit of the truth, how to speak that truth fearlessly to power, and, tragically, the all too common consequences of doing so. Moreover, Malcolm is perhaps unique among our Muslim heroes--not because of who he was but because of who we still are. We are a people who have not yet outlived the battles he fought, and we may still stand in the shade of the legacy he left to us. 

Yet inheriting Malcolm’s legacy requires us to revisit it. Many American Muslims hold the commonplace perception of a “post-Hajj” Malcolm who returned from Mecca both an orthodox Muslim and an “orthodox” Civil Rights figure, a Muslim variation of Martin Luther King, Jr.. This perception is due in no small part to Malcolm’s own autobiography, whose editor, Alex Haley, purposefully removed chapters that would contradict Haley’s own integrationist politics. If Muslims today are to truly understand and carry forward the legacy of Malcolm X, we must first understand a fuller picture of the revolutionary politics that he died upon.

Malcolm’s politics were built upon a fundamental recognition that the American government had declared a covert war upon African Americans, their leaders, and their movements for freedom. While he was likely unaware of the exact government agency and program that was targeting him and his movement, both inside and outside the Nation of Islam (NOI), he was acutely aware that the attacks from mainstream media, infiltration of religious spaces, and targeted violence were part of a coherent government effort to subvert and disrupt any efforts to organize and empower African Americans and Muslims in the United States. He correctly recognized the irony of integrating into, and seeking rights within, a system at war with him and his people. Such a “solution” was tantamount to defeat.

Today, we not only know that Malcolm was correct, we also know the name of this war: the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). A decade after Malcolm’s assassination, Senator Frank Church, who led the Congressional investigation into COINTELPRO, came to a similar conclusion:

“So the war [World War 2] was brought home, and the techniques of destruction that had become involved in the fight against Communist intelligence services or Nazi intelligence services overseas were, by the admission of the man who was in charge of these programs, brought home and used against the American citizens. And there is no better example of that than the language and activity used against the so-called Black Nationalist Hate groups, which I remind you again, included such non-violent and gentle movements as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the New Left.”

These investigations, known as the Church Committee Hearings, revealed a comprehensive program to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” black freedom movements. Specifically, the FBI sought to “prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Their own documents note that Malcolm could have been such a figure prior to his assassination, and that they believed Martin Luther King, Jr. to aspire to that position in the wake of his passing. COINTELPRO therefore did not distinguish between pacifists and militants, or integrationists and “separationists,” as Malcolm described himself; it declared war upon the black freedom movement as a whole.

Malcolm X was a revolutionary. He recognized that negotiation with a system seeking his people’s political destruction was futile. The system itself had to be overturned. This political consciousness only intensified within him after he embraced Sunni Islam. In speech on December 20, 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom--months after his return from Hajj--he said, “I go for revolution.... I’m not one who goes for ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I just don’t believe we’re going to overcome singing.... I’m interested in one thing, and one thing alone, and that’s freedom by any means necessary.” This was a clear rebuke of the Civil Rights Movement, with its marches and adherence to a policy of non-violence, as a movement that would not produce freedom for African Americans. Malcolm believed that revolution, perhaps even violent revolution, was the only means of achieving freedom from oppression--and he often pointed to the American Revolution as a successful example of his aspirations.

These were not mere words. Malcolm’s actions toward the end of his life directly reflected these beliefs. His departure from the Nation of Islam was motivated, in part, by his frustration with the relatively meek politics of Elijah Muhammad, who had censured him for his comments about President Kennedy’s assassination, and who refused to give explicit political endorsements. Malcolm also grew increasingly close, during these years, to an emerging cadre of African American Sunni Muslims engaged in revolutionary politics. Around 1964, one year before his assassination, Malcolm joined the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), led by Muhammad Ahmad, telling him that he could do more for his movement outside the NOI.

It is impossible to say what Malcolm could have achieved had he lived to fulfill his alliance with RAM or his intentions in establishing the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Likewise, we cannot say how most American Muslims might remember him differently had he lived to express his full potential. However, we do know of a number of movements and individuals that he directly inspired who carried on his legacy in the years following his death--many of whom carry the endorsement of also being targeted by COINTELPRO.

After Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, a long-time associate named Salahadeen Shakur, an African American Sunni Muslim, and a successful businessman in New York City, began teaching classes on Islam and Malcolm’s revolutionary politics from his home in Queens. Among Salahadeen’s students were his two biological sons, Lumumba and Zayd Malik, along with many others who adopted the Shakur name. This group, known as the Shakur Family, included notable freedom fighters like Sekou Odinga (who recently passed from this life, may God’s mercy be upon him), Assata Shakur, and Afeni Shakur, the mother of Tupac Shakur.

The Shakur Family became central players in the New York City Black Panther Party and, later, the Black Liberation Army. What united the Shakur Family was a commitment to Islam and the revolutionary politics that was handed down to them directly from Malcolm X. They recognized, like Malcolm had before them, and as Senator Frank Church did later, that they were engaged in a war for their freedom that they had not declared, but nonetheless were obligated to fight. Their objective, like Malcolm’s, was freedom by any means necessary.

It is not surprising that Malcolm’s revolutionary legacy has been forgotten by so many American Muslims. Like Malcolm himself, this legacy was violently suppressed. Just a few years after Malcolm’s death, many members of the Shakur Family became targets of the state when they were accused of plotting to bomb a New York City Police Department. Together, twenty-one members of the New York Black Panther Party, known as the “Panther 21” successfully defended themselves against 156 charges leveled against them, including Afeni Shakur who represented herself at trial. However, the two-year ordeal effectively neutralized many members, and sent a clear message to other would-be Black and Muslim revolutionaries of the time. Over the coming decade, many of Malcolm’s revolutionary inheritors were targeted for incarceration and, in some cases, assassination. Yet this legacy has never been fully lost to us, and it remains there for us to reclaim and carry forward.

It is important for American Muslims today to recall and revive this legacy not so that we may blindly replicate the actions of previous generations, but so that our current politics, the failure of which so many are feeling in the wake of October 7th, may be unsettled and recalibrated. In our last article, we noted that many American Muslims were chaffing in their schools and workplaces at efforts to silence them for speaking up against an obvious genocide of the Palestinian people, along with murders, intimidation, and threats leveled against us at home. We must now ask ourselves what our efforts to relieve this condition, for ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Gaza, have amounted to. Have we recognized that we, too, are in a war that we did not declare, and taken appropriate measures to defend ourselves? Or are we still singing “We Shall Overcome” to those who do not care for our songs?

May God grant success to all who strive in His cause. Ameen!