our individual sorrows. As Judith Butler pointed out in her Time article (April 21, 2021, https://time.com/5953396/ judith-butler-safe-world-individuality/), “However differently we register this pandemic we understand it as global; it brings home the fact that we are implicated in a shared world. The capacity of living human creatures to affect one another can be a matter of life or death. Because so many resources are not equitably shared, and so many have only a small or vanished share of the world, we cannot recognize the pandemic as global without facing those inequalities.” Unfortunately, not all pundits and politicians agree with her, for some would rather spend their time manufacturing their own truths and worrying about the next election. Over the last year up until today, it grieves me to watch such divisive pandering while people are dying. One hopes that this country’s leadership will soon understand that we Americans are as bruised and battered by the twin pandemics of Covid-19 and our raw, sustained racial reckoning as the British people were by the devastation brought about by World War II. As a consequence, in 1948, Britain’s political leadership stepped up by creating a more just, inclusive single payer national healthcare system that today outperforms the U.S. healthcare by every important metric, including cost (See the recent PBS Special “Health Care: America vs. the World,” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BytzrjEfyfA). One waits for our politicians to stop their self-serving partisan fighting long enough to face the raw truth that Covid19 has revealed — our much too expensive health care “system” provides subpar care. This is a golden opportunity to find our humanity and fix it now! As Malcolm X famously said in a letter written during his hajj: “I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda. … I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole” (“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”). ih James (Jimmy) Jones, DMin, is professor emeritus, Manhattanville College, and board vice chair, executive vice president, The Islamic Seminary of America.
Malcolm X and Blackamerican Islamic Liberation Theology Hajj and the path of self-transformation BY EMIN POLJAREVIC
H
ave you ever wondered why Malcolm X has a beard in some of his TV interviews and photos, while in most video recordings he does not? His beard is a cultural and religious symbol for his last major transformation — from Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik el-Shabbaz — initiated by his hajj. In the last year of his life, his religious and political understanding takes another radical turn marked in part by his immersion into Islamic teachings and his travel experiences, including numerous meetings with Muslim activists, dignitaries, scholars and students overseas. This year is also perhaps the least studied period of his life. And yet it contains some of his most lasting messages and insights — ones that continue to impact the ethical and moral trajectory of some contemporary Muslim youth’s struggle against anti-Black racism and Islamophobia particularly in North America and Europe. From his official break with the Nation of Islam (NOI) and Elijah Muhammad (March 1964) to his assassination (Feb.
21, 1965), Malcolm underwent a radical shift in his theology and activist thought. During these tempestuous 11 months, he performed the hajj; made two tours of the Middle East and various newly independent North, East and West African states; and briefly stopped over in Europe. He met with no less than 33 African and Arab heads of states and numerous anticolonial leaders, students and activists, all of whom heard him deliver a damning analysis of his country’s systemic racism. During the same period, he took an intensive course in Sunni Islamic teachings at Egypt’s al-Azhar University. This training was an extension of Malcolm’s initial interactions with Elijah Muhammad’s sons, the young Warith Deen [upon announcing his distancing from his father’s ideology, he changed his last name’s spelling to Mohammed] and Akbar Muhammad, both of whom were well versed in and later embraced Sunni Islam. His older sister, Ella Collins, herself a Sunni Muslim since 1959, was a key supporter of this educational process and religious transformation. Equally
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