America was indeed built as a melting pot of different cultures. That said, throughout our history there have become some universally accepted cultural practices. There is a famous and often misunderstood hadith (narration) which I would like to discuss as it has been understood by various scholars.

This hadith is found in the authentic collection of Abu Dawood. “Whoever imitates or resembles a people is one of them.” Coming from a background of an Islamic state where the Muslims were the dominant majority, many scholars said that this means that Muslims must completely look and act different than disbelievers in every facet of life. In that context it makes sense. In our context here in the west in 2009 it is a mistaken interpretation. This is due to the well-known reality that the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) was an Arab and had many cultural norms including his dress and eating style that were known for Arabs in his time whether they were Polytheist, Jew, Christian or Muslim. So the hadith is true that the Prophet ﷺ imitated and resembled the Arabs of his time so indeed he was one of them. So general non-religious culture is definitely not what is prohibited by the hadith.

According to the commentary of many scholars, past and present, the hadith is warning Muslims from imitating the non-Muslims in practices which indicate their religious beliefs like wearing something with a cross on it or celebrating Christmas. Similarly we must not follow culture in matters which are prohibited in our religion like men wearing gold or women plucking their eyebrows.

So to be crystal clear I will make an analogy. What is the difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim doctor? They both wear similar clothes – maybe with a stethoscope around their necks. What makes them different is that the non-Muslim man may be wearing a cross or gold necklace whereas the Muslim will not be. The female Muslim doctor will be covering her hair while the non-Muslim won’t. The Muslim will take breaks for his or her obligatory prayers whereas the non-Muslim will not.

So let’s make a list of clothes, eating habits, and actions that are deemed permissible in the west by many scholars:

Wearing pants and shirts for men and women which do not reveal the `awrah (nakedness) as defined by our scholars. A dress might be best in concealing the beauty of a woman, but that doesn’t mean she cannot conceal her beauty with loose pants and a blouse. Men are not expected to wear hats whether in public or in the prayer. If a man is accustomed to wearing a hat and sees it as completion of common dress, then according to some scholars it would be makrooh (inadvisable) to come in the mosque without wearing it. Men may wear their pant leg below their ankles since this is not a sign of arrogance here.

There is nothing wrong with eating at a table with a spoon or fork. According to many scholars there is nothing wrong with eating the meat slaughtered by the people of the book. Others prohibited it based upon different principles. You may follow whichever you are convinced with, but you should not rebuke others for what they follow. Holidays and celebrations which do not represent religions and are not a gathering with worship overtones or un-Islamic activities are permissible. These are acceptable celebrations according to many great scholars: personal birthdays, marriage anniversaries, Independence Day, Mother’s or Father’s day on condition that we observe special love and respect for them every day, and Thanksgiving.

Things which would be forbidden are:

Wearing clothes which have a cross, Star of David, or other religious symbols of other faiths; wearing clothes which do not cover the `awrah; wearing clothes which represent immorality (i.e. Budweiser ad); wearing clothes with detailed pictures of living beings; women uncovering their hair or plucking their eyebrows; men wearing gold or silk; eating pork or foods fried or grilled without being cleaned after frying or grilling pork; eating or drinking with the left hand intentionally; shaking hands with a non-mahram (unrelated person of the opposite gender) in general (although with the condition of safety from desire some have allowed it); and celebrating Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s day, April Fool’s day or Halloween.

For anyone thinking that Halloween is just a harmless secular tradition for kids to have fun, please keep in mind the following:

The consensus of our scholars have prohibited taking part in the activities or selling the items specifically related to celebrating holidays representing religions other than Islam. This is due to the hadith we mentioned, “Whoever imitates or resembles a people is one of them,” (Bukhari).

Among these is Halloween which is an ancient polytheist pagan tradition of Europe that was switched to All Souls Day once Roman Catholicism had spread throughout Europe. It gained back its pagan roots with the capitalist venture of profit in those polytheist rituals. The current practices are almost identical to those done by the Polytheist originators of this holiday. If you are truly a follower of the Qur’an and Sunnah – not someone who follows their desires, or someone who simply wishes to fit in even when it compromises their religion – then read this thoroughly.

We must not take part in this celebration. Instead, we should try to organize mosque activities on this night, or try and go somewhere that doesn’t celebrate it, or at least just keep your lights off outside of your house.

The number one (if not the only) leading factor to deviation from good, whether in the religious sense or not, is Shaytan (Satan). Shaytan comes at a person from every angle and sugar coats the evil so he or she may fall, sometimes unknowingly. One of my favorite examples of such wicked and subtle ways in which Shaytan will get to a person is from my own past experience. I used to tell myself (in my early years in college), “Well, there is nothing else to do on a Friday night, plus I am not drinking!” Sound familiar? Do we use this line to tell ourselves it is ok to hang out at the bar or the dance club? Or do our friends use the famous line, “Dude, since you don’t drink, do you mind being the designated driver?” How about telling yourself, “Well, we need a quite place to study” while sitting alone with someone from the opposite gender him in a room with the door closed. How long are you going to talk about calculus, chemistry, or psychology before you drift off talking about this, that, and the other? Have you not heard the story of Barsisa, the worshipper who Shaytan destroyed methodically and brought from the high of worshipping Allah to the low of prostrating to Shaytan himself?

Shaytan is relentless brothers and sisters, and we must open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the strategies and the whispers of the Shayateen (devils) of both ins (humans) and jinn that cause us to fall into sin. Shaytan has vowed to lead us astray as Allah says,

“For he had said, “I will surely take from among Your servants a specific portion. And I will mislead them, and I will arouse in them [sinful] desires, and I will command them so they will slit the ears of cattle, and I will command them so they will change the creation of Allah.” (Qur’an, 4:118-119)

And do not think that Shaytan will leave a person alone after he or she sins. He will keep one in that cycle and make it seem unbreakable. The familiar line “I have done so much I will never be forgiven” is fed to us every time we think about breaking free form sin. This is one of the most vicious ways in which Shaytan keeps us in his grasp; he makes us doubt the mercy and forgiveness of Allah. Shaytan will also make our repentance seem exceptionally monumental by using the poisonous line,“There is just way too much to know and it is so hard to keep up with it all.” Another tactic that Shaytan uses to discourage us and lead us astray is the false assumption that the only ones who enter paradise are the scholars. Brothers and sisters, being a good Muslim is easy to achieve. Abbas related that a man asked the Prophet ﷺ, “Tell me what should I do to be admitted to Paradise?” The Prophet answered, “Worship Allah associating nothing with Him, observe Salat, pay Zakah (Alms) and strengthen the ties of kinship.” (Bukhari, Muslim)

Let us look at a prime example of a young person who stayed on the right path, fueled by his belief in Allah. Yusuf (peace be upon him) is known for his beauty and as a young and virile man he was a servant in the house of the Aziz (royalty) of Egypt. He lived in the same house as the wife of the Aziz, a woman who was taken by the beauty of Yusuf and became overpowered by her desires for him:

“And she, in whose house he was, sought to seduce him. She closed the doors and said, “Come, you.” (Qur’an, 12:23)

Imagine this brothers and sisters. This young man, full of vigor and hormones, was not only being approached but rather aggressively sought after by a woman who would let him have his way with her. Yusuf could have justified this in so many ways and the people would have probably excused him saying “He is young” or “He is a servant” and would not know any better. He could have, but he did not and he said:

“He said, ‘[I seek] the refuge of Allah. Indeed, he is my master, who has made good my residence. Indeed, wrongdoers will not succeed.'” (Qur’an, 12:23)

Instead of all the excuses to do wrong, he had all the excuses to do what is right. He sought refuge in Allah and asked for His support in this ordeal and then he used the logic, decency, and faithfulness to his master to prevail for, surely, wrong-doers will never succeed.

So let us treat this issue at the root and let us follow what Allah tells us:

“And if there comes to you from Satan an evil suggestion, then seek refuge in Allah . Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Knowing” (Qur’an, 41:36).

Also in the last few chapters of the Qur’an is a beautiful surah we can recite:

“Say, ‘I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind, The Sovereign of mankind, The God of mankind, From the evil of the retreating whisperer – Who whispers [evil] into the breasts of mankind – From among the jinn and mankind”‘ (Qur’an, 114).

Muslims Making a Difference: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII  IX | X | XI | XII

By Sarah Jawaid

Every walk through nature has the potential to inspire a deeper connection with our Creator. Our hearts, sometimes unconsciously, are at heightened peace when surrounded by green. The perfected order and ever-obedient cycles of nature  show humankind a point of reference to the beauty of God’s creation, and guides our aspirational selves. The natural world has the potential to exist in harmony with us as we both emanate from One Source, with one purpose, to serve the divine will.

“We shall show them our signs within the furthest horizons and inside their own souls until it becomes clear to them that God is Truth.” [41:53]

God identifies nature as a sign, just as the verses (ayah) of the Quran and souls of humanity are signs guiding us to His path. From the diligent bee producing its sweet treat to the plunging waters of Zambia cleansing the gorges of Victoria Falls, the Earth is filled with reminders of His creation and bounty. Studying nature is an important way of studying the wisdom of God.

“Indeed, we offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, and they declined to bear it and feared it; but man [undertook to] bear it…” [33:72]

Not only are we asked to contemplate the universe, God made us vicegerents  on Earth, entrusting humanity with the duty to protect and restore balance in the environment. When God offered the trust to all of creation, man was the only one who was willing to accept it.

Furthermore, Allah  enabled human beings to serve the Earth. Man has the capacity to understand the ethical values needed to feel empathy for all that ails the Earth. Counter to this, we are the only ones capable of negatively impacting the existing natural order,  making us responsible for protecting the environment.

As we move forward, we are beginning to understand the severity of environmental degradation, but we have been slower to recognize the direct link between the ecological crisis and our inner spiritual crisis. Our values are skewed. Consumption is the driving force in society and we are failing to see how this adds to the dissonance in our internal beings.  Our trusteeship has been compromised. Global warming  proves the destructive consequences of forgoing this responsibility.  But it’s not over yet! There is so much we can do to help our ailing Earth.

What can you do to be a better environmental steward?

1. Start conversations with like-minded individuals. Support is important. Make this a group cause with your friends and family.  Gather like-minded individuals to start discussing and taking actions on these issues. For example, Washington DC Muslims are doing just that:

The origins of DC Green Muslims (DCGM) started with a ‘green iftar,’ a group of approximately 15 people who celebrated the end of a fast during the holy month of Ramadan, by breaking bread with an environmental twist. The first conversations centered on big questions of purpose, and the intersection between Islam and the environment. We applied these big picture concepts to understand how we can lessen our carbon footprint and make our communities more eco-friendly. Since then, we have put on networking dinners centered on an environmental theme, park-clean ups and most recently, DCGM participated in Huffington Post’s No Impact Week, in collaboration with No Impact Project – a national effort to collectively reduce our carbon footprint.

When we heard about this project, we began thinking up ways to mobilize the Muslim community around the event and ended up creating an addendum to No Impact Project’s guide. Our addendum guides participants to a more eco-conscious journey during the week, which we hoped would  turn into a stepping-stone for a life-long journey of incorporating the eco-spiritual ethics in Islam. Each day of the week, we paid special attention to a given topic in hopes of reducing our carbon footprint, such as Consumption, Water, Food, Community Gathering and Transportation. The addendum can be found at our blog or by emailing us. We hope to take this event to MSAs across the country.

DC Green Muslims are trying to  recognize the trusteeship (khilafat) towards creation by creating a space for Muslims to be green in the community, with a foundation in Islamic teachings. In providing responsible caretaking and sharing, we are assuring that future generations will be able to see the signs of God in their environment and within themselves.

2. Reflect on your spaces. Walk more. When you are walking around in your environment, step outside of your mind, be present and recognize the purpose behind creation. When we see the deliberate structure and order inherent in nature, we can start reflecting on existence in tandem with other life forms, from a place of wholeness.

3. Take inventory on your level of consumption: food, water, electricity, transportation, trash. Are you eating sustainable foods? How much water are you using  during wudu’, showering, or washing dishes? Do you turn off the lights when you leave a room? Start getting a clear picture of where you can make changes.

4. Be conscious of the products you buy. Buy sweatshop free goods and organic cotton. Try to buy locally grown food. Do research on where your goods are coming from, and if people and animals were harmed in the process, refrain from buying them.

5. Start small. Make small improvements around the house, like switching your light bulbs to energy efficient CFLs. Patch up leaky faucets. Make a recycling station in your kitchen. Turn off the TV and enjoy the presence of loved ones. Get the whole family involved!

This list is not complete by any means. The point is, apathy is no longer an option – nor should it ever have been.  Reflecting on the world around us is the first important step to caring and taking action.  We will be better positioned to be protectors of the Earth when we recognize the responsibility of the trusteeship. This process of self-reflection will hopefully motivate us to individual action. Collectively, individual action means more than any list on how to live more greenly. Upon reflecting and recognizing the spiritual connection that exists between man and nature, individual action will come from a genuine place, sustaining itself over a lifetime. When we reflect on our spaces, we can be empowered to take ownership of our surroundings and live up to the trust we are entrusted with. The Earth demands no less of us.

We are reminded in the Qur’an:

“…God has cited the example of the good word as a good tree whose root is a firmly fixed, and its branches are high in the sky. [14:24]

Let’s look to the tree for the lessons it manifests. May we provide shade for those around us, starting small and growing with purpose, renewing and replenishing, and always reaching to the heavens while being rooted deeply in Earth.

Sarah is a budding urban planner and environmentalist residing in Washington, DC. She works as a Research Associate at Urban Land Institute, researching national transportation and infrastructure policy. She also helps to organize events with DC Green Muslims, a group of eco-conscious Muslims working to understand the connections between the environment, faith and holistic living.  Sarah is originally from Southern California where she received a B.S. from the University of Southern California in Public Policy and an MA in Urban Planning from the University of California, Irvine.

Over the last few days I received a number of emails and messages expressing great disillusion with what has happened at Fort Hood. This is your chance to vent, offer your thoughts and share in the healing process. One of the positive, out of many, things I’ve noticed is the idea of taking responsibility as a community and addressing the sources and wells for which unhealthy thoughts and illegal ideas come from. This is your chance to share and offer your message to many who will be reading this post. I will start by saying that my prayers are with the families of the victims.

Suhaib

————

Here are some nice points from normative Islamic texts which may answer a good number of your questions and refute a lot of evil that’s being spread:

Al Mughirah ibn Shu’ba used to be mushrik and had friends that were kuffar in the past before he embraced Islam, he killed them and took their money and then went to the Prophet (s) to embrace Islam (also expecting to have his sins forgiven), he said: “I have killed my close friends, and I want to embrace Islam.” The Prophet (s) said: “Islam, we accept from you, as far as the wealth, if it is the wealth of the ghaddar (betrayal) we do not need it from you.”

Imam Sirkhasi said: “It is not allowed for someone, who is under covenant to betray… (if he does betray) he will be on the day of judgement with a banner showing his betrayal, if he betrays and takes money from kuffar and then comes to embrace Islam, his wealth will never be accepted because it was earned in a khabith way.”

Imam Shafi’i said: “If the enemy captures a Muslim and imprisons him, and after that they release him and give him security, and they allow him to live among them, the covenant they give to him is a covenant from him to them (i.e. it is binding on him), it is not allowed for him to assassinate them or betray them, and we do not know any scholar that has mentioned otherwise.” [Kitab ul Umm vol. 4, pg. 292]

On this Imam Al Maqdisi said: “Whenever there is a covenant given to a Muslim in Dar ul-Harb, it is forbidden to harm them or to kill them or take their wealth.” [vol. 10, pg. 555]

Ibn Hamman (Hanbali) said: “If a Muslim enters Dar ul-Harb, as a businessman, or student, it is not allowed for him to touch their life or wealth, because by the covenant he is guarantor that he will never touch them, if he does that, it becomes ghadr, and ghadr is haram by ijma`.” [Al Tahrir, vol. 6, pg. 17]

Furthermore ibn Abideen said, “If a Muslim enters Dar ul-Harb, it becomes forbidden on him to harm their life or wealth or honour, because a Muslim adheres to the covenant… if the money he earns, he earns it in haram, it is not allowed to benefit from it, he should donate it, but if he stole it, he must return it.” [vol. 4, pg. 166]

Imam Sirkhasee said, “If a Muslim enters Dar ul-Harb, and he says to them “I am going to look for a wife” or “to study” or “for trading” or just to pass through the land to go somewhere else, it is agreed that it is a form of customary covenant.” [Al Maqsud]

Note: I don’t consider my home country Dar al-Harb. I left the words there to honor the translation. Thanks to Br. J for hooking me up with this.

Think about the type of reading we practice on a daily basis. If Facebook messages, Twitter updates, instant messages, text messages, etc. top the list of what our brains process the most every day, we’re doing ourselves, our society and our Ummah a great injustice. Undoubtedly, modern technology and the numerous online social networks can be used for beneficial purposes (although many people do waste valuable time following random people’s posts, blogs, messages and pictures—which are often not too useful or even Islamically kosher). Even if we’re utilizing these outlets to network and advertise various events, campaigns, and noble causes, we’re putting ourself at a disadvantage if we’re not increasing our knowledge base through extensive, frequent and avid reading—first of the Qur’an and Hadith, and then of other quality literature and publications.

The Qur’an urges us to make the du`aa’ (supplication) rabbi zidny `ilma: “Oh my Lord, increase me in knowledge” (20:114). We are also encouraged from the Sunnah to say: “Oh Allah, I ask you for beneficial knowledge, and good, pure sustenance, and accepted deeds” [Ibn As-Sunni, Ibn Majah].³ Islamic knowledge is crucial, and we ‘re motivated to seek it when we hear or read the Prophetic saying, “Whoever Allah wills him good, He gives him (sound) understanding of the deen (religion: Islam)” [Bukhari]. For us to become integrative, cultured, and contributive members of society, though—and intellectually equip ourselves to  defeat the enemies of Islam (Qur’an, 8:60)—we need to branch out and diversify our palate, especially if we are tullab al-`ilm (seekers of [Islamic] knowledge).

Social media has revolutionized our main modes of communication, and it has also made information and knowledge very accessible and very easily shared within social networks.  According to Socialnomics stats, more than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared daily on Facebook alone! And if we also subscribe to different blogs and websites, or various community and organizational mailing lists, we get tons of emails that we sift through and read quite frequently. We definitely need to be in touch with society’s affairs, current events and actively partake in affecting change in the world around us. However, when we are bombarded with so much information (willingly and unwillingly), there is a chance that we fail to practice selective reading and just read everything our eyes fall upon. Naturally, that consumes a lot of time, and as Henry David Thoreau states, “It is not sufficient that we keep ourselves busy. The question is: What is keeping us busy?”

Another effect of this influx is that we may become satisfied with the tidbits of information we receive, and consequently not bother to proactively seek deeper and more comprehensive knowledge.  So, how do we transform our reception of information and knowledge from passive and scattered to proactively selective and productive?

1. Focus but diversify. Choose a topic of interest (preferably within your field of work, if applicable), and read quality publications you can find on it. Develop your knowledge of that subject to become an expert in the field. At the same time, branch out into different genres and topics. Read magazines, novels, poetry and non-fiction; complement Youtube videos and lectures with reading articles and research studies; read about conservation and administration, history and sociology, geography and astronomy; read about economics and politics, counseling and teaching, fitness and medicine; read traditional books and contemporary works; read from authors you agree with and writers you don’t share common ground with.
2. Select and Assess. Within the field you’re reading about, choose wisely before you commit yourself to a text. Especially if you read longer works, review critiques or ask trusted sources for feedback. If applicable, peruse each work’s table of contents, intro and conclusion, and skim through the pages to gain a general overview of the topic, style and organization. The worst thing is to get stuck reading a tediously boring, horribly written or poorly structured text.
3. Aim and Plan. Specify a purpose for why you’re reading whatever you read. Is it for enjoyment? Or are you reading to gain wisdom and benefit? Are you reading to apply the knowledge? What do you know about the subject before you begin reading? What knowledge are you hoping to gain from this reading?
4. Skim or Delve. Decide the text’s level of importance and difficulty, and pace your reading accordingly. If you’re reading a light piece for enjoyment or general knowledge, speed read and consider only reading the first line from each paragraph. If you’re studying the text and want to absorb the most, slow down and make sure you’re processing and differentiating between facts and assertions, generalities and particulars, specific meanings and overarching themes.
5. Interact and Engage. Underline and highlight important points, and jot down main ideas or summaries of what you read. Ask questions and critically analyze the text. Compile the most important points and review your notes. About 80% of what we read is forgotten within two weeks of reading, but only 20% is forgotten if we review immediately after reading, through recall and recitation. ⁴ Also, try transforming the text into diagrams or mind maps to help preserve visually the meanings in your mind.
6. Practice and Apply. Put the acquired knowledge to good use, and utilize the information for constructive purposes in our communities. Apply it to yourself—whether intellectually through paradigm shifts and broadening your ideological perspectives, or practically through changing behaviors, attitudes or correcting previously disseminated false assertions and statements. Share the knowledge with others through verbal or written communication! Besides benefiting others, teaching and explaining is one of the best ways to help retain newly gained knowledge.

Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala has favored our father Adam (`alayhi assalam) over the angels with the knowledge He bestowed on him (Qur’an, 2:31-34).  We are also the Ummah of “Iqra’” (read/recite), and Allah has taught us with the pen; He taught us that which we didn’t know before (Qur’an, 96:1-5). Let us honor that privilege and responsibility by utilizing our minds to seek the useful and productive `ilm Allah has made so easily available in our times. And if we plan to serve our Ummah, and liberate the Holy Land from the Zionists—along with other Muslim countries from oppression, imperialist aspirations and military occupation-–it’s imperative that we sharpen our weapons of the mind, tongue and pen to collectively speak out against injustice, and actually act upon it.

Sure Islam leaves a certain level of leeway for various cultural expressions, however, the sunnah establishes a sort of SUPER-CULTURE through its teachings in regards to manners and etiquette that should be followed and established first and foremost, then wherever there can be an allowable sub-cultural expression within that framework, fine.

In dealing with a “discussion” (disciplined conversation) or “discourse” (ideological systematic discussion) on culture we need clarity on a number of matters. Of these matters that we need clarity on and understanding of are the following:

1. A clear definition of “culture,” “custom,” “localized norms” and “practices” as understood in the “‘fiqh literature” and as a topic treated in the discourse of “usul al-fiqh.”
2. The “significance” and “role” of the notions of Ummah, ethnicity, culture and cultural diversity in Shar’iah.
3. The problem of “cultural relativity” (the school of thought which professes that all things are relative to cultural context) and globalization in the culture debate.
4. The Authority of Shar’iah in the life of the Muslim community and Muslim practice,  over custom and culture
5. A working definition for Islamic civilization.
6. A comprehensive fiqh of media and its impact on forming practice and opinions.

Setting A Foundation: The Knowledge Imperative

Further, in keeping with and in light of the fiqh of priorities (understanding priorities as determined by Shar’iah) we must be certain that any discourse on a “cultural imperative” is preceded by a “knowledge imperative.” If we look to the Prophetic Seerah we learn that the foundational moment from which this Ummah was born was a moment grounded on a knowledge imperative. In other words, the Prophet (s) sought the assistance of Allah (swt) during his retreat into the Cave of Hira. During his retreat he sought not only clarity about the reality of the human experience but for a solution to the problems he encountered in his social and cultural mileux. In Divine response to the Prophet Muhammad (s) was a command to knowledge.

Allah (swt) led the Prophet (s) and his people out of ignorance as a way of life (jahiliyyah) and into the light of Islam by way of the command to read. In response the Prophet (s)  admitted that he was in a state of illiteracy, divested of knowledge. “Iqra!,” the Prophet Muhammad (s) was commanded emphatically to read, to follow the Qur’an’s recitation and imitate it.

The command to read, was received by the Prophet (s) in a state of powerless-ness but it was preceded by an intense desire to address the human condition. Then the Prophet (s) was possessed of a desire to find resolution to the problems of man. The command to literacy which came from on high (revealed) was coupled with a confession to ignorance of not just how to read but how to tread the path of learning and living. Allah (swt) did not abandon the Prophet (s) rather he bestowed upon him a revelation which gave him  understanding and wisdom. So Islam came to return humanity to a state of purity and integrity to a culture vested which affirm the reality of humanity and guided humanity.

The Reality of Prophethood In Regard To Culture

The problem of custom and culture is a matter that was addressed early on by revelation. Since the inception of the Prophetic mission of Muhammad (s) the problem of custom and culture was addressed whether it pertained to the practice of the Arab burying their daughters alive or the practice of drinking alcohol and partying. What took place in the  Hijaz with the revelation of the Qur’an, was a spiritual as well as a cultural transformation.

The problem of culture, in fact, is a matter addressed routinely by the Prophets (a). If we look closely to the lives of Ibrahim (a) and Ismail (a), their sojourn from Iraq we see that in that event they struggled with custom and culture. Their hijra from Iraq was in defense of a culture (way of life) predicted on “tawhid.” The Prophet Ibrahim and Ismail (a) abadoned the customs and way of their tribe to uphold al-Islam as a way of life.

Ismail (a) for the sake of Islam integrated with Arabs, took on a new tongue and lived in a new land for the sake of upholding the principles of Islam. The task Prophethood (Nubuwwa) over the ages has been to re-introduce humanity to a culture which safeguards happiness in this world and the next while promoting the most holistic ways of living in the world.

The Companions of the Prophet (r) too struggled with culture and custom. In fact, the debate over custom and culture was the principle cause the tribe of Quraish waged war against the Prophet (s) and his Companions, the Muslims. The Prophet (s) was said to be deviating from the way of his fathers.

Islam The Culture of the Muslim: Islam A Way of Life

Engaging a grounded discussion over the legitimacy of cultural practice requries that we clear on a foundational principle of which we must admit its soundness and that is that “revelation stands supreme over localized cultures.” As Muslims, we need to recover our identity that is grounded in the Qur’an and identity guided by the understanding that we are a people of intellect and learning. The arch-axioms which ought guide our action and thought is that:

1. “Knowledge precedes action”;
2. “Understanding precedes practice.”

So before an advanced discussion on a “cultural imperative” we are in great need to understand Islam to be admit that Islam is a way of life. Once we are clear that Islam is a way of life then we can acknowledge that a discussion on a cultural imperative is essentially, a discussion on Islamic civilization on the cultural imperative of Islam. Upon being clear that Islam is a way of life then we can begin to see and discuss custom (urf) and culture in the shade of Shar’iah and Islamic sciences and then move on to open up a discussion of being Muslim in the West. Without an understanding of the authority of revelation over practice a discussion on the cultural imperative is none other than given precedence to custom over Shari`ah.

The Missing Malcolm: An Interview with Manning Marable

IN YOUR new biography of Malcolm, Malcolm X: A Life of the Invention, you discuss three missing chapters from Alex Haley’s collaboration with Malcolm, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. What’s happened to them? And what’s their importance to understanding Malcolm’s life?

THEY’RE IN the safe of an attorney named Gregory Reed. He’s in Detroit, Michigan. They’re in his safe. And, he has them and doesn’t show them to people. Now why does he have them? How did that happen? Well, in late 1992, I believe October, there was an auction of the Alex Haley estate and for $100,000, he bought these chapters that were discarded from the autobiography.

Alex Haley was the ghostwriter and co-author of the book. You have to remember that Haley went on to great fame as the author of Roots, one of the largest-selling books in American history and a docudrama on television that had a profound impact on race relations in the late 1970s. Haley was deeply hostile to Malcolm X’s politics. He was a Republican, he was opposed to Black nationalism, and he was an integrationist. He had been in the Coast Guard for twenty years. But, he also knew a good thing when he saw it.

A charismatic, handsome, articulate Black leader who had a controversial past as a hustler, a pimp, a drug addict, a numbers runner, “Detroit Red,” “Little Gangster,” “Little Bugsy Siegel,” who supposedly terrorized the Harlem community in the 1940s and went to jail and was given ten years in prison. He goes through a metamorphosis, he becomes a Black Muslim, he comes out, he explodes onto the scene. He creates seventy to eighty new mosques in less than ten years, turns a small sect of 400 people into fifty- to one hundred thousand by 1960–62. Then, he turns more overtly to politics, he breaks from the Nation of Islam (NOI), he builds two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated in March 1964 and the Organization of Afro-American Unity in May 1964. He goes to Africa and the Mideast. He is treated as the head of state. He is welcomed at the Fateh by the Saudi royal household. He sits down with Gamal, eats breakfast with Anwar Sadat in Egypt. He caucuses and meets and gets to know Che Guevara while he’s in Africa, as he alludes to in a talk in 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom. So Malcolm is this extraordinary figure, dies at the age of thirty-nine. It’s a hell of a story. Haley understood that. And so, it was on those terms he agreed to work with Malcolm to write the book. But, what Malcolm didn’t know was that Haley already was compromised and had basically been a purveyor of information—a kind of, not informant, but a client of the FBI in this disinformation campaign against the NOI. Haley had collaborated with the FBI. Malcolm never knew that. In the summer of sixty-four when Malcolm was in Egypt, Haley was taking the book manuscript and giving it to an attorney, William O’Dwyer, rewriting passages of the book trying to get it passed as Malcolm’s survey. Malcolm’s on the run, people are trying to kill him, they’re trying to poison him in Egypt. He’s not going to have time to look at the book carefully. Then, he dies.

Haley adds a seventy-nine-page appendix to the book where he has his own integrationist and liberal Republican interpretation. And then, they have M.S. Handler of the New York Times writing in the front of the book. I mean, you know Malcolm respected Handler. But this is not who you want to lead in to a Black revolutionary’s text. So Haley did a variety of things to reframe the book. And, toward the end of the book, there’s a lot of language in it that simply doesn’t sound like Malcolm. It doesn’t sound like him. There’s a lot of information that is just wrong in the book. They misspelled “As-Salamu Alaykum” several times. They give the story of Johnson Hinton. They have Hinton Johnson. They put the date of this very tragic beating of this brother who’s in the Nation, Brother Johnson, in 1959, rather than the year it actually occurred, which was April 1957. So there are simple mistakes in dates, of names, events that clearly show Malcolm did not have access to the final manuscript. He didn’t see it. And it was published nine months after Malcolm’s death. Betty Shabazz was in no shape to check and recheck facts. So all that says to me is you have to read the autobiography very, very carefully, very suspiciously. It’s a wonderful book. It is a great work of literature. But it is a work of literature. It is not an autobiography. It’s a memoir. And it’s gone through the prism of Haley who was a Republican, integrationist, and a defender of U.S. power. You should read the anticommunist articles he wrote for the Reader’s Guide in the mid-fifties on Hungary. This is the man you’re dealing with. So we must be very careful. I learned I had to deconstruct the autobiography to write the biography. If you go to www.malcolmxproject.net, you will see my biography, the architecture of that, and how I had to deconstruct the autobiography. That’s why we put up the Web site.

WHAT DO you suspect is contained in these missing three chapters?

WELL, I’VE seen them for about fifteen minutes. I met with Gregory. I’ve written about this in my book, Living Black History, which came out last year. Living Black History has a whole chapter on this. I couldn’t use it in the autobiography, but I had to tell the story to somebody. I talked with Gregory on the phone. He’s an attorney. He bought it for $100,000. He wanted to make money off of the material. So I phone him up, we talk. He says, “Fly out to Detroit. Meet with me. Come to my law office. There, I’ll show you the chapters.” As honesty suggests, I get to Detroit. He said, “Don’t come to my office. Are you downtown?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Meet me at this restaurant in an hour.” I go there. He’s about a half hour late. He eventually shows up. And he’s carrying a briefcase. And then he said, “I’ll let you see these for fifteen minutes.” I’ve flown from New York and I have fifteen minutes to read the text. “I’ll let you sit here and read them and I’ll leave and I’ll come back.”

I’m sitting here frantically reading these pages. But it only takes me a few minutes to recognize what they are. They were obviously written sometime between August 1963 to December 1963. There’s a presumption in the text that Malcolm is still in the Nation of Islam. So he hasn’t broken with the Nation yet. What they call for is the construction of an unprecedented Black united front, uniting all Black organizations, led by, get this, the Nation of Islam. So Malcolm is envisioning the Nation actively participating in antiracist struggles and building various types of capacities: economic strategies, housing strategies, health-care strategies with the NAACP, with the Urban League, with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). So he wanted to push this religious kind of semi-Islamic organization into Black civil society in an aggressive way. He wanted to open up the Nation. And, I strongly suspect that Malcolm’s drive and push to reach out to the civil rights community and SNCC and CORE is what got him into trouble inside of the NOI, because the bulk of the NOI had been thoroughly against Malcolm’s proselytization efforts that brought in tens of thousands of new members. The old guard felt threatened by that. Then on top of that, since April 1962, the turning point in Malcolm’s career was the murder of Ronald Stokes in the Nation of Islam’s mosque in Los Angeles. Malcolm flies out to LA and spends over a week there and he calls for a grand coalition, very much like the coalition he talked about in the deleted chapters, with CORE, the NAACP, with SNCC that would be anti-police violence against Black people. And, he was talking about the Nation of Islam participating in that coalition. Elijah Muhammad said “time out,” called Malcolm down and said “you better chill that out and get the hell out of Los Angeles.” Malcolm was deeply embarrassed and humiliated that they had to end the mobilization after they had a member murdered by the LAPD. Other men in the Nation in the mosque were dragged outside, strip-searched naked to humiliate them. And Malcolm had mobilized people and he had to back down.

Malcolm came back to New York and by July 1962 is speaking at a Local 1199 union protest. I have a photo of him speaking at a protest rally in July for the labor union, King’s favorite union, 1199, the largest union today in New York City. In Christmas time in 1962, two members of the Nation, who were selling Muhammad Speaks in Times Square, get arrested by the police. How does Malcolm respond? He puts 140 to 150 Fruit of Islam members—the paramilitary organization, the men in the NOI—demonstrating in Times Square on New Year’s Day. Elijah Muhammad called for no demonstrations, no overt political activity. That’s not what Malcolm’s doing. That’s exactly what he’s doing. And he starts doing that a year and a half before the silencing, before the break.

So you know what happens? The Nation of Islam’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks in late 1962 stops covering Malcolm X. If you go through methodically the last year from December 1962 through December 1963, guess what? You see Malcolm once in his own newspaper. And he’s the national spokesman. You see him more often in the New York Times. And this is like a year before the break. So you can already see where he’s going. It doesn’t take a mind reader to see that Elijah Muhammad only used the “chickens coming home to roost” statement [by Malcolm X, in response to John F. Kennedy’s November 1963 assassination] as an excuse to do what they wanted to do, which was to eliminate Malcolm’s influence, curb his politics. I think that they believed he would submit. Most of Malcolm’s closest followers within the Nation thought he would also submit. They weren’t prepared for a break. Malcolm contemplated a break. I think maybe he wasn’t prepared either. But he did anticipate a possibility of it.

He began, in early 1964, talking with a number of people outside of the Nation of Islam to develop the OAAU, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. When he left the Nation, very few members of the NOI went with him, perhaps maybe 100. The mosque in Harlem had as many as 7,000 members. Only 100–150 left. They became the Muslim Mosque Incorporated (MMI), and Sunni Muslims. But the OAAU was the secular organization with largely working-class and middle-class Blacks and many professionals, writers like Huey and Mayfield, historians like John Henrik Clark. The key organizer was Lynn Shifflet of NBC News, a producer, a young Black woman in her late twenties. There were real tensions between the OAAU and the MMI over ideology and their relationship to Malcolm, because Malcolm increasingly was moving toward the politics of the OAAU, away from the MMI, even though these were people who had put their lives on the line to leave the NOI out of personal loyalty to him. So there were tremendous tensions between these two groups, which I will document in the biography.

SO THE Organization of Afro-American Unity really is the culmination of, or the product of, the development of Malcolm’s thought that was written about by Haley in these last three chapters?

THE CHAPTERS that are missing are written prior to the split. Haley says that Malcolm changed his mind after he went to Mecca and decided to deep-six the chapters. Maybe that’s true. We’ll never know. What is true is that it would be nice to print the things that were deleted, put an addendum and appendix on the autobiography. It would be nice to see it. Well I’m not sure. Don’t hold your breath. I saw it for fifteen minutes. Maybe I’m the lucky one. But eventually they will appear. We will see them.

There has been an active suppression of Malcolm’s work and his intellectual legacy for more than forty years. And the suppression has been deliberate and for various reasons. First, many of the key people in his entourage in the Nation and in the OAAU had to go underground. I just interviewed this week James 67X Shabazz (Abdullah Razzaq) who went underground and lived in Guyana for nineteen years, because he was threatened with murder and also threatened by the FBI. So it’s only now in his mid-seventies that he’s returned to the United States several months a year. He lives in Brooklyn with his son. James 67X was Malcolm’s chief-of-staff and his secretary for many years. The others who were closest to Malcolm are now dead. There is Herman Ferguson who is the best eyewitness to the murder. I’ve interviewed him several times and I’m interviewing him once more next week, which will be fun. His eyewitness to the murder, his recount to me, which has partially been published in my journal Souls, is absolutely stunning and it raises many questions about the assassination.

We have, over the last seven years, worked very hard to develop a forensic accounting of the murder. And, we believe we have figured out how the murder took place. That is, the forensics of it. We think we know how that happened. We don’t know who gave the order. But I can tell you what our theory is. The murder took place on February 21, 1965, as a result of the culmination of three separate groups. There was no classic conspiracy, no direct collusion, but, rather, a convergence. Three things had to happen for the murder to take place, and they all did. Law enforcement, the FBI and the NYPD, and its Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), which was its red squad, actively wanted to do surveillance disruption of Malcolm X and possibly eliminate him; certainly the FBI, because their nightmare was seeing King and Malcolm embrace. That was their nightmare. And they realized much to their horror that they were far better off with Malcolm in the Nation of Islam than outside of it, because then he was being treated like a head of state in Africa. They had never anticipated that he would be a houseguest of a Saudi royal family, or that he would be speaking to parliaments from Kenya to Ghana to French Guinea. Malcolm goes to Alabama, three weeks before he’s murdered and reaches out to Dr. King. King is in prison after leading demonstrations. Malcolm goes to Coretta Scott King and he says, “I want you to convey to your husband my deepest respect for him and that I am not trying to undermine Dr. King’s work. My goal is to be to the left of Dr. King, to challenge institutional racism so that those in power can negotiate with King. That’s my role.” So Malcolm understood what his role was. This was the FBI’s nightmare. And so they actively wanted to curtail his influence, if not silence him permanently.

Then you have the Nation of Islam. But what people need to understand is that there were different points of view in the NOI about Malcolm. Some of the leadership, especially in Chicago, the national secretary John Ali, the national head of the Fruit of Islam Raymond Shareef, Elijah Muhammad’s son-in-law Herbert Muhammad, the sons of Elijah Muhammad, Jr., and several others wanted to silence Malcolm permanently. Joseph X, who was a captain of the Fruit of Islam and the Northeast regional security director at Mosque No. 7, formerly Malcolm’s associate and friend, as was John Ali—they actively sought to eliminate him, to blow him up with bombs, to kill him, or firebomb his home or whatever. But other members of the Nation of Islam were against the murder and it is questionable if Elijah Muhammad ever gave the order. It could have been a situation very much like Henry II and Thomas Becket where somebody’s ridding him of his priest. So he doesn’t have to give the order, but the deed is done. It’s understood what needs to be done. But he doesn’t technically give the order.

Then there’s a third group and that’s Malcolm’s own entourage. There were police informants in the group. Gene Roberts who tries to resuscitate Malcolm after he’s shot is an NYPD police officer. He’s a police officer who walks right directly out of the line of fire only seconds before the fuselage goes off—maybe by accident, maybe by design. What is true is that whenever Malcolm spoke, there were at least two dozen cops. There were only two police officers in the Audubon that day and they were assigned as far away in the distance as possible in the building. They were in the rows, in very small-rows in a ballroom adjacent to the large grand ballroom, but separated by a wall and then a vestibule. It was impossible for them to protect Malcolm. There was one police officer in a small park directly across the street from the entrance of the Audubon. No other police officers. They’d been pulled back to the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital four blocks away. No captain, and the guard is usually sitting in the second floor in a booth where they collect money that directly faces the ballroom. You have to walk right past it to get out of the building. No police in the building. Why?

Malcolm gets shot. The hospital, they try to get the ambulance. They can’t get an ambulance. It’s only four blocks away. So men run to the hospital’s emergency room, grab a gurney, and carry his body in a gurney in the street. Seems odd, doesn’t it? His own men, no one checks for weapons at the door. None of the guards are armed. I’ve gone through New York’s Municipal Archives, the police reports of all the guards that day, of every guard. We’ve gone through all that. We know who they were and their names and the changes of the guards. There were three changes of the guards. One around 2:00, one around 2:30, and one about 2:55. We know that several people who were guarding Malcolm that day were not generally part of the OAAU and were assigned to sensitive positions. Guards like William George, who normally guarded Malcolm on the roster were assigned to be as far away from him as possible that day at the front of the building, not next to Malcolm on the rush. The guards who were there rolled out of the way. And Malcolm was naked and alone on the stage.

There’s only one man who could have placed the guards there that way and that was Malcolm’s head of security, Reuben Francis. Francis is the one who does shoot Hayer, who did indeed shoot Malcolm. But Hayer is interviewed very briefly by the NYPD, he’s arrested briefly. They let him go on bond. Then he disappears off planet Earth. And the FBI said, “We can’t find him. We believe he’s in Mexico.” But prior to his disappearance, he’s not even called to the grand jury, even though he’s the only one who shot anybody who was an assassin.

The NYPD doesn’t even interview Capt. Joseph, the head of the Fruit of Islam, at Mosque No. 7, even though, to a room of over 120 people, he cold orders Malcolm’s death. There are witnesses to this. And the FBI doesn’t interview him? We found a folder that said Joseph X and it was empty. There were six men who killed Malcolm, not three. Two of the men who were incarcerated and given life sentences were innocent, Norman Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. They were innocent. They were sent to prison for life. Why? They weren’t even physically there. Johnson used to be Malcolm’s chauffeur. He used to stand out in the rain in front of Mosque No. 7 or in the snow, holding and reserving a parking space for Malcolm when he drove up. He used to phone him and tell him that he was coming before he arrived. Once a month, he went to go grocery shopping for Betty, Malcolm’s wife. You would know this guy if he came to kill you. Everybody would’ve known him if he had walked into the Audubon that day. He wasn’t there that day. Butler was an enforcer for Capt. Joseph. He was a notorious thug in the Nation. They would have known if they walked into the Audubon that day. The two men weren’t there that day and yet they were convicted of murdering Malcolm X. Why?

I believe the district attorney was protecting informants within Malcolm’s group and within the NOI. And perhaps some of those informants were collaborators and committed the crime. So they convicted the wrong people to cover and protect the anonymity of their own agents. That’s a theory. I can’t prove it, but I think we ought to explore it and we should reopen this case. And, hopefully my book will help reopen it. William Kunstler tried to reopen it back in 1977–78 and he failed because he didn’t have the evidence I have. Hopefully, we can reopen it again.

THE DOMINANT understanding of Malcolm’s life and meaning in mainstream American popular culture really comes from two sources: Haley and Spike Lee’s film. Spike Lee’s interpretation of the assassination shows a Malcolm, who seems to be prepared for his own martyrdom and orders his guards not to be armed on that day, in a way that King with his mountaintop speech also appears to be prepared for what he seems to think is his inevitable fate. Is that a damaging interpretation?

NO, IT’S not and it may be true. Malcolm clearly knew he was going to die. He didn’t know when and I strongly suspect that Malcolm was not going to run away from death and he had the courage to face death. Not that he wanted to die, he didn’t have a death wish. But he had the courage to face death. There is a story, a very influential legend within Shia Islam, about Ali and his son Husayn, both of whom perished in a kind of murder in the cathedral, in the case of Ali in the mosque, and in his son’s case at Karbala where he was killed in, I believe, 682 in common era. About four years later, women came to Karbala, in today’s Iraq, and began to beat themselves and lament that they had not protected the son of Ali. In Shia, Ali is the Shia that we have today. They still gather every year at Karbala. Now hundreds of thousands and maybe a million people lament the events of Karbala. There is nothing greater in Shia Islam than martyrdom, the embrace of death for a higher belief. And to some extent, I think that Malcolm embodied that at that moment. Not that he sought death, but that he did not fear it. That he saw in his martyrdom a way to transcend death that there would be a life after death. I’m sure he was familiar with the legend. Who knows? Perhaps that influenced his actions.

WHAT WILL your biography broadly do to assert a new Malcolm X, itself a reinvention of Malcolm X, as your book is titled, because he reinvented himself many times? What will it do to displace Haley and Spike Lee as the dominant understanding of Malcolm X’s life and meaning?

THERE ARE three core things in the book. The first is what I call a kind of a life of reinvention. Malcolm’s tale is a hero’s tale that’s not unlike Odysseus—a story of travel, of learning, of experience, of ordeals and tests, a classic kind of hero story. It’s a classic Greek story, which frequently or usually ends in death. But at the end, there’s a broader, richer, deeper, critical consciousness that’s achieved. The thing about that story is that Malcolm’s growth comes through a series of artful creative reinventions. He reinvents himself even to the point these reinventions have different names. He was “Jack Carlton” in the summer of 1944. When he was nineteen years old, he wanted to break into show biz and he was at Lobster Pond bar on Forty-Second Street in Midtown Manhattan working as a drummer and professional dancer for about three or four months. He doesn’t write about that in the autobiography. You just have to find out about that. He worked in a bar and grill in Harlem, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, alongside of the funniest dishwasher and server in Harlem, a guy who had red hair. Malcolm had red hair. So they called Malcolm “Detroit Red” cause nobody had ever heard of Lansing, Michigan, and they called the brother from Chicago “Chicago Red.” His last name was Sanford. We know him today better as Red Foxx, the comedian. So Malcolm and Red Foxx worked in the same restaurant in 1943 and early 1944. He does mention something of this in the autobiography. Malcolm in prison called himself at times Malachi Shabazz. He was Malcolm X. He was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He had many, many different names: “Detroit Red,” “Homeboy,” “Mascot,” “Satan” when he was in prison. Yet, through these transformations, he was able to navigate brilliantly a life of reinvention.

What makes Malcolm different from every signature Black figure in American history is that he combines the two central characters of Black folk culture. He is both the trickster and the minister. He’s both. That’s “Detroit Red”—the hustler, the gambler, the outlaw. And, he is also the minister who saves souls, who redeems lives, who heals the sick, who raises the dead. He’s both. King is one. Jesse Jackson is one. Malcolm’s both and he understood the streets and the lumpen proletariat. I hate that phrase, but it comes from Marx. As well as, he saw himself as a minister and an Amun, a cleric. He was always this. And he embodied the cultural spirit of Black folk better than anyone else. When I asked one student about a decade ago, “What was the fundamental difference between Malcolm and Martin?” He said, “Dr. Marable, that’s easy. Martin Luther King, Jr., belongs to the entire world. Malcolm X belongs to us.” There is a tremendous degree of identification on the part of people of African descent, and globally on the part of Muslims, invested in the figure of Malcolm. The very first postage stamp honoring Malcolm X was issued not by the United States but by the Ayatollah Khomeini government of Iran, in 1982, by the Shia Muslims. Perhaps they knew something that everybody else didn’t know.
The second theme in the book is a spiritual journey and Malcolm’s growth in a spiritual sojourn from the periphery of Islam represented by the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam. There was a price in the journey because he also had to embrace Nasser’s definition of what Islam was in the Pan Arab world. So we have some excellent very interesting articles and speeches Malcolm gave in Cairo. The writings that he did, very critical of the state of Israel in the summer and September 1964, cast Malcolm in a very interesting kind of light as it relates to the Arab struggle and the Palestinian struggle, that heretofore, in the United States, we have rarely seen.

The third theme is betrayal. Malcolm had a capacity ethnographically to read an audience better than any public speaker of his generation. He knew people. He could walk into an audience, read it and give a brilliant address. He could debate at Harvard and Oxford, as well as on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue/Seventh Avenue. He was just a remarkable public speaker. But where his failure came was his consistent inability to make critical accurate judgments of the people closest to him who would betray him. And those included his two brothers Philbert and Wilfred Little who sided with Elijah Muhammad against Malcolm; his chief protégé Louis X/Louis Farrakhan who proclaimed Malcolm to be a man worthy of death, who led the jackal’s course leading to his murder. How do we explain Farrakhan? I sat down with Louis for nine hours in an interview a year and a half ago. We had a fascinating conversation about it. The question I ruminate over is, how much of it is true? Then we have Joseph X, the leader of the Fruit of Islam at Mosque No. 7, who Malcolm had promoted, pulled out of the gutter in Detroit in 1952–53, raised him up to be his chief right-hand person, who then would be betray and try to murder him. John Ali, who had been Malcolm’s secretary at Mosque No. 7, who he promoted to the national leadership, who then conspired to murder him. A variety of people. His closest personal friend Charles Kenyatta had been turned out by the police and was probably a police agent, Malcolm’s best friend, which I’ve only just discovered last week because I just got the file. We have some interesting info. So I think between this data and the other things, a big chunk of the book is about the forensic discussion of the murder and our theory of the murder. I think people will have more than enough information.

LET’S BRING this full circle. We’re now sitting in your office in 2007 in Bloom?berg’s New York. We’ve gone through a period of social cleansing that was Giuliani’s New York, characterized by police brutality, intense gentrification, privatization of public housing. And I was today at Friday Juma at the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem and the message today was one about homosexuality, as an abnormal and immoral practice. The other message was about self-help and the idea of the community needing to raise itself up and take care of its own problems. What does the Malcolm X of your book say to this current political economic conjuncture?

WELL, AN honest representation of Malcolm should show the whole person and his trajectory and his evolution. The trajectory of Malcolm was increasingly anti-corporate capitalist. He talked about the need not to appeal to the United States to redress grievances, but to take the criminal to court, that is, the court of world opinion at the United Nations. He called for what is today known as a South-South dialogue, that is, between the Caribbean, Blacks in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia that would span across continents that would be in part Arab and Muslim, and part Black and Brown. And, he envisioned a global kind of jihad of worlds against Western imperialism and a need for people who had experienced colonialism to take back the power through international bodies that built broad-based unity transnationally. That was what Malcolm’s politics were. It was not bootstrap capitalism, nor was it gentrification. Nevertheless, once you’re dead, your image is up for grabs. By 1972, Richard Nixon had invited, and Betty Shabazz had agreed to be on the dais of the re-elect Richard M. Nixon for president dinner party in Washington, D.C. This was only six or seven years after Malcolm X’s assassination. So once you’re murdered, you can’t control what people who had some sort of relationship to you—whether they’re married to you, or they’re political affiliates or associates—what choices they make. Sad but true. It is particularly sad that from the masjid or mosque, one hears a kind of message that’s more appropriate to Booker T. Washington than Malcolm X. But, nevertheless, the struggle continues.

MANNING MARABLE is a professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York City, and the founder of the Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH) at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous works, including How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1983), Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), and Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006). His current works in progress include a new comprehensive biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2009).

Simon J. Black, a freelance writer and PhD student at York University in Toronto, interviewed Dr. Marable in New York City. You can find his writing at www.simonjblack.com.

Originally published here