The Sudanese revolution, in the past year, sparked a renewed interest in ideas of African unity among Sudanese youth, as Nubian culture is celebrated and the ideas of revolutionary African leaders reconsidered, such as the leader of the National Movement of Guinea-Bissau Amikal Cabral and the Burkinabe leader Thomas Sankara, nicknamed Che Guevara Africa, according to the Moroccan researcher. Columbia University music critic and academic, Hisham Idi.

In his article on Al Jazeera English, Idi believes that only few people were aware of the extent of Malcolm X's attraction to the Nubian civilization, and his strong influence on Sudan.

Although many were interested in his trips to Africa, its cultural influences, and his interactions with people such as Ghana's anti-colonial leader Kwame Nkrumah, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

But the influence of Sudan on Malcolm X's thinking - and Sudan's subsequent influence on African American culture - remains unexplored, according to Idi.

First trip to Africa

In July 1959, Malcolm X made his first trip to Africa.

The young minister traveled as ambassador to the Nation of Islam using a passport bearing his new name, Malik Al-Shabaz, and visited Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt, and after a few months Ghana, Syria and Saudi Arabia, but Malcolm X's stay in Sudan was so impressive that it left a strong impression on the 34-year-old, until the end His life praised the kindness and solidarity of the Sudanese, and recalled the wonders of Omdurman.

Malcolm X on his journey after the Hajj (social networking sites)

His travel diaries and letters are full of references to the Sudanese.

In one intervention in April 1964, he wrote about the "quiet confidence" of the Sudanese, and in another, he said, "I have never stopped admiring the Sudanese."

On August 22, 1959, Malcolm X wired a letter to the New York Amsterdam newspaper stating that people in Africa seemed to be more concerned about the plight of "brotherhood in America" ​​than their own conditions, and that Africans saw America's treatment of blacks as a "measure" that could During it, it gauges the sincerity of the US offers of assistance to them.

Malcolm has often cited the Sudanese as evidence of Africa's support for the struggle of African Americans in the United States.

Malcolm X's mentor in Sudan was Malik Badri, a 27-year-old psychology student at the time (who died in February 2021), who met the Muslim American leader at the Grand Hotel in Khartoum.

Al-Badri took Malcolm X on a tour of Omdurman, and invited him home for lunch.

Al-Badri recalls in an interview in 2018, “He (Malcolm) read a lot about the ancient Sudanese civilization. What really stirred him most was the way the Sudanese treated him.”

He said Malcolm X was eager to capture everything he saw with his camera.

Al-Badri noted that Malcolm was well-versed in Sudanese history, with a particular interest in the Nubian civilization and the Sudanese leader Muhammad al-Mahdi being a black anti-colonial figure.

After all, Nubia occupied a central role in the narrative of the black American "Nation of Islam" group.

Badri recalls walking with Malcolm X to the Caliph House Museum in Omdurman, located on the other side of the Mahdi's Tomb, where Malcolm spoke enthusiastically about his interest in the Mahdi, the Nubian leader who launched a rebellion against the rulers of Sudan (Egyptians of Turkish origin) and defeated the British to create "the state." Mahdia, "which extended from the Red Sea to Darfur from 1885 to 1899.

In October 1962, Malcolm X wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier African-American newspaper, “In 1959, I visited Khartoum and Omdurman in Sudan, and I also visited Muslims in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Arabia. I was influenced more by the Muslims of Sudan. Their religious piety and their hospitality are unmatched anywhere. I really felt that I was in heaven and in my home there. "

Two years later, he warmly recalled the two Sudanese students they had met in Mecca, and spontaneously told him, "The Sudanese people love American Negroes," according to Idi.

The Sudanese person who played a huge role in Malcolm X's life is Ahmed Othman.

The 22-year-old Othman met Malcolm X by chance in July 1963 when he entered "Mosque No. 7" in Harlem, New York (it was affiliated with the Nation of Islam and is now called the Malcolm X Mosque).

Othman played a decisive role in the life of the black leader, introducing him to Sunni Islam and persuading him to go to Hajj, as stated in a recent documentary in which Othman speaks with affection about the black American leader.

Some researchers, such as the late American historian Manning Marable, considered that the Hajj experience changed Malcolm X's life, as the black American was surrounded by an elite of "white Arabs", and as Othman explains in the documentary, "Afro-Saudis" played an important role in Malcolm X's journey. And especially the Hijazi writer Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, the Saudi poet and politician.

Sabban, described by Malcolm X as "tall, black, on high alert," was appointed by King Faisal bin Abdulaziz as Secretary-General of the Muslim World League in Makkah Al-Mukarramah in 1962, the period during which Malcolm visited the Arab world.

Malcolm X with Sudanese Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun (social networking sites)

Al-Sabban appointed Sudanese Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun, who studied at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, as his spiritual advisor.

Hassoun returned to New York with Malcolm X and took up residence at the Muslim Mosque headquarters.

Elderly people in Harlem, New York, still remember the Sudanese sheikh - with his white cold, white turban and walking stick - walking down 125th Street.

Idi says that a study of the influence of the educated and prolific Sheikh Hassoun on Malcolm X has not yet been completed, but he is still remembered as a good man and full of humor.

He joked that after New York, he was going to spread Islam in Alaska.

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated while speaking at a gathering of the Organization of African-American Unity in Upper Manhattan.

That very night, Othman - who was at the time a student at Dartmouth - took the bus to New York to see Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow, who asked him to arrange a traditional Islamic burial for him.

At Uthman's request, Sheikh Hassoun washed Malcolm X's body and shrouded it on the eve of the burial, but did not attend the funeral for fear of reprisal.

Thus, Sheikh Hisham Jaber - the imam of the New Jersey-based "Adino God" International Association for Arabs - performed the funeral prayer.

Interestingly, Sheikh Jaber also says he is of Sudanese descent, even though he was born in South Carolina.

In the postwar years.

It was not uncommon for converts to Islam to claim a "Moroccan American" or "Sudanese American" identity.

Brooklyn-born accomplished jazz musician Ahmed Abdel-Malek - who in the mid-1950s incorporated Arabic music maqam and division into his jazz compositions - also said he has Sudanese ancestry (even though his parents were from Saint Vincent in the West Indies).

The writer Al-Hijazi Muhammad Surur Al-Sabban, the Saudi poet and politician (social networking sites)

Ahmed Osman was a high school student during the first wave of the African "decolonization" movement. He took to the streets of Khartoum to protest the death of the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, as well as against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

And most recently he was in the Sudanese capital during what was known as the Sudanese revolution, in February 2020, where he celebrated his 78th birthday, and told a gathering of Sudanese youth: “I see Malcolm X as part of the Sudanese revolution. He loved Sudan. He would love to see this Arab-African nation. She rises. And the youth of Sudan - youth everywhere - have a lot to learn from Malcolm. Today’s youth can complete their dream. "

Idi stamped.