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"From thing to thing, this is Podhoretz's horizontal movement. But Malcolm moves and develops in a completely different way."

By Author Abdel Wahab El Messiri,

In a society whose reasons all colluded against him and his family - just because their skin is darker than other citizens, and in an environment that has all contributed to the revitalization of its deviation, the American "Malcolm X" grew up with three transformations between deviation and faith [1], and in nearly two decades - from his years 40. In his intellectual journeys, Malcolm passed through articulated positions in which he traveled quickly and clearly.

"Here is the little black train coming, and it is better for you to be ready for it." [2] This is the words of his father, who was murdered by white extremists. To Malcolm X, and did not leave him until he took him to the station, "Haj Malik Shabaz" to know the salvation that he was looking for, "the train of salvation is inevitably come and there is nothing wrong with a little waiting to be ready for him when he arrives.

If we consider compulsory imprisonment, Malcolm has been transformed from a reckless, criminal-minded boy into an adult man who fights for his own black American population. Nation of Islam itself. Following disagreements between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the group, the first decided to leave America and go on a religious journey to practice the ritual of Hajj. Malcolm then discovered that his Islam was not the one he was going to. ]. How did Malcolm learn about the pilgrimage, and what happened to him when he moved to him?

Pilgrimage?! What pilgrimage?

In his memoirs, Malcolm mentions his first experience with the Islam of the world - not the Islam of the black man - when Arab students - and others - came after his lectures in America to tell him that his condemnation of the white race was incompatible with his good Islam, and that if he could know the true Islam, he would be convinced. . However, he commented, he was alienated from these words because he contradicted his beliefs sown by Elijah Muhammad in his mind about his adopted Islam.

Is that long? The answer seems quick in the next sentence of X's story, when this objection is repeated a lot. "I started to review myself and say, 'If one's faith in his religion is really true, why not expand his knowledge of that religion?'" This led him to meet with Dr. "Mahmoud Yousef Shawarbi" - after the recommendation of one of his students - a Muslim scholar who graduated from Cairo University and received a doctorate from the University of London and lectures on Islam in America.

Malcolm went to Dr. Shawarby, who gave him a letter of recommendation to enter the Hijaz lands. The ambassador told him that America's Muslims needed to recommend Shawarby, who in turn gave him the telephone of King Faisal's advisor at the time, Abdul Rahman Azzam, and gave him a book he had written. He sent a copy to Malcolm in particular.

Hence, Malcolm knew the pilgrimage, in conjunction with his crisis with the Organization of the Nation of Islam, and tells during his trip many of the positions that surprised him at times, and admired at other times. From New York to Frankfurt, and then to Cairo, Jeddah, the brown man was exposed to many Muslims of all cultures to have a new vision, and surprised by the warmth he received from the king's adviser immediately after contact with him - after a crisis at the airport in Jeddah - the most important things that was absent from him is that Islam "Elijah Muhammad" does not reflect the Islam he now sees.

"Thousands of pilgrims were leaving Cairo airport and they are in such a state where the rich and the poor cannot be distinguished."

On the way from Cairo to Saudi Arabia, Malcolm talks about the pilot and his assistant who greeted him in the cockpit and had the same skin color. In Jeddah, where he was briefly detained for coming from America, Malcolm learned to pray for the first time, surprising himself: "Imagine! I was a Muslim cleric and leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, and I didn't know how to pray!"

This personal interaction with Muslims enabled him to understand the revolutionary meanings of the Islamic concept of the oneness of God [5]. The eggs who stand before the one God are not white-skinned people, but whole human beings. The Afro-American "Malcolm" stood before the "Creator of all and felt that he was a perfect human being. He was able to sense this human integration because the oneness of God means acceptance and equality of all human beings before Him."

In Mecca, where he finally settled, the American fighter - who conducts his true Islam - searched for the world of innocence he lacks, and there he found what he did not know about his imperfect religion. Islam was not only the religion of blacks, as Elijah and his group claimed, but it was the religion of all human beings. In Hajj, Malcolm found black and white. He spent 12 days in Makkah, halo of what he saw as white and black Muslims, all at the heart of one man. Equality and love "[7].

The world of innocence .. God Beck Beck!

"In my life, I have never seen this fraternity among people of all colors and races. America needs to understand Islam because it is the only religion that has the solution to the problem of racism."

[Malcom X]

Malcolm was greatly influenced by the scene of the Ka'bah, the voices of meeting and the simplicity and brotherhood of Muslims. "He saw the true Islam closely and knew what it was, and he realized the misguided racism that he was embracing and calling for, as you know there is the correct prayer which he was completely ignorant of." [8] With Islamic and political flags in the Arab region, Malcolm, or pilgrim Malik Shabaz, as he called himself after his trip, concluded that "condemning all whites is equal to condemning all blacks" [9].

In the Arab / Muslim world, Malcolm found the dream of innocence he sought, and he knew what Islam was revealed, but the Arab world was not the paradise that Malcolm sought, because "every country has its dark sides, like any other spot." But Malcolm was dealing with this Arab world from his perspective, like a black American, suffering the scourge of apartheid. ”[10]

For this reason, Malcolm was able to find in the Arab-Muslim world a partial realization of his dream of innocence and a world free of apartheid, as well as “building the whole biography as an embodiment of Malcolm's evolution from being a materialistic, unscrupulous human being to a person capable of discovering "Ideal tendencies" in himself "[10]. It is a journey - as described by the "Messiri" - generated by the revolutionary idealism of the "Malcolm", was always fueled nostalgia for a world of justice and equality that Malcolm did not see but listened to his heart and conscience that innate nostalgia that he carries towards a world of innocence and freedom, and this is what he found in Mecca .

"During the twelve days I spent in the Muslim world I ate from one vessel, drank from one cup and grew on one carpet," said Malcolm. "I worship one Lord with Muslims, their eyes are blue, their skin is white, their skin is white. I found him among black Muslims from Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. I remember the night we slept in Muzdalifah under the sky and discovered that pilgrims belonging to every land, color, class, and rank, high officials and bad beggars, were all covered with one roll. ”[11]

In a letter he sent from his seat of argument to his family and peers in America, he said: "I may be surprised by what I will say, but what I saw and lived in this argument was the heart of my thoughts and made me easily get rid of some of my previous conclusions." [12] Exe "of all his ideas.

If the dream of innocence and the ideal of ancient literature and philosophies is, as the "Messiri" is an intellectual format devoid of any conflicts or tensions, because it is an historical dream, mythical and just theoretical possibility, the dream of innocence of the "Malcolm" revolutionary completely different, as it is “It is rooted in reality and is gaining its strength and effectiveness from the fact that it stems from reality and returns to it and that it is ultimately achievable” [13], and this is what Hajj Malik Shabaz sought to activate on the ground.

From Mecca to Islam

Malcolm welcomed the inevitable result of his new Islamic vision, to begin his new rejection of the false myth promoted by the group "Elijah Mohammed" black Muslims, which says that the white man is the devil! "Any attainment of tolerance and freedom from ethnicity that he rejected racism and inverted, and felt that there is no credit for the Arab on Ajami nor white on black except piety and virtuous human mind" [14].

On his return trip, or Malik Shabaz, as he called himself, Malcolm passed through Lebanon to deliver some of his lectures there, to an unprecedented welcome even from black Americans, from Beirut to Cairo, and then Nigeria to meet with a large number of personalities - Citizens - Muslims, and open to his nation a lot after spending twelve years calculated that the Nation of Islam is the only nation.

Walking among the Afro-American masses, he discovered that this group could have been an effective force if it had contributed more effectively to the mass struggle of the masses, but when his efforts failed to adapt the group to the requirements of the social movement, he decided, after his return from Hijaz, to build His own organization, which carries out what the Black Muslim community advocates without practicing, "Malcolm was so passionate about his Islam that he made him more than a priest." [15]

"The pilgrimage expanded my thinking and opened my eyes, and I saw in two weeks what I did not see in thirty-nine years."

The doctrinal American preacher 's doctrine was corrected after twelve years of deviation associated only with Islam, only because of the pilgrimage to which he emanated from his unilateral vision of humans (poor white demon and poor black). Malcolm, who suffered white racism, had practiced - after joining His group - an inverse kind of racism towards white people made him refuse even to help his sympathizers in his call.

That man is the same Malcolm who sent his wife from the Holy Land to tell her [16] that all of America's racial problems can be solved only by the teachings of the great Islam, where he prays next to a white man behind a black man, and eats in his back the same dish that eats From him a man with blue eyes and drinks from the cup of which an Arab sheik drinks with light skin.

Malcolm felt his spiritual salvation from the weight of hostility that had dominated his life for 39 years. Although the names and reasons differed, his revolutionary ideology for the rights of black people in his country was ignited, but this time without absolute hatred towards the white race. The pilgrimage taught him that human beings have no apparent preference for one over the other.

This is "Malcolm - Malik Shabaz" as his biography explains: a series of radical transformations and difficult questions that he did not find much hesitation in answering, from the life of criminality to faith, and from deviant faith to the right faith, "Shabaz" was able to move decisively between the three stages , Which lasted only a year. But this year he seemed courageous, devoted to the love of what he was doing, declaring with full faith: "I have come to this conviction after an arduous experience but I have reached it".

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Footnotes

For more details see the previous Malcolm X biography report