Malcolm X’s Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Facchine

 

Surprising Malcolm X: Berkeley 1963 Interview (UNCENSORED!!!)

 

This is an interview of Malcolm X in 1963 in Berkeley. In this interview, Malcolm X spoke the raw truths about America’s racial inequalities in a clear and well-spoken manner. The profound courage it took to speak so unapologetically in 1963 is worth acknowledging. Malcolm wasn’t just a voice of his time, but a visionary and exemplary leader who was dissecting a system of oppression that persists till today.  

When Malcolm exposes the hypocrisy of America’s democratic system, it became clear to every eye. How can a nation declare itself the land of the free while intentionally denying freedom to an entire race?

That's Pathetical Hypocrisy at its Peak!

This isn’t just about laws or policies, it’s an ideology that has eaten deep into their minds and falsely redefined Blacks as violent and less than human. From the beginning of the country, the white power structure was built on the backs of Black people, which made them vulnerable to exploitation and we're enshrined in every institution. 

MALCOLM X - RETURNS FROM MECCA (HAJJ) Complete Press Conference (ENGLISH)

Reporter: Malcolm, on your trip abroad, you said you sensed a feeling a great brotherhood and that conceivably you would be working toward integration in this country now, at least this is what you're reported to have said, do you have any comment on it?

Malcolm X: I don't think that I ever mentioned anything about working toward integration. If I recall I pointed out that while I was at Mecca making the pilgrimage, I spoke about the brotherhood that existed at all levels and among all people who were there on that hajj who had accepted the religion of Islam and I pointed out that for what it had done what the religion of Islam had done for those people over there despite their complexion differences that it would probably do America well to study the religion of Islam and perhaps it could drive some of the racism from this society as it has driven racism from the Muslim society.

Reporter: Do you think the current integration drive is aiming for this goal?

Malcolm X: Well I can't say that the current integration drive is aiming for that goal because it hasn't realized the goal in any state if they haven't even got integration right here in New York City you have worse integration problems in the North than they have in the South so if it doesn't work in...if you can't bring about integration in New York City, as international, cosmopolitan, up-to-date as it's supposed to be you'll never get integration anywhere else in the country.

Reporter: Malcolm, have your experiences with white skinned Muslims in Africa and the Middle East made you feel that relations between Negroes and whites who are not Muslims is any more possible?

Malcolm X: When I was on the pilgrimage I had close contact with Muslims whose skin within America be classified as white, and with Muslims who are themselves would be classified as white in America but these particular Muslims didn't call themselves white. They looked upon themselves as human beings, as part of the human family and therefore they looked upon all other segments of the human family as part of that same family. Now, they had a different look or different air or different attitude than that which is reflected in the attitude of the man in America who calls himself white. So I said that if Islam had done that for them perhaps if the white man in America would study Islam perhaps it could do the same thing for him.

Reporter: Malcolm, one of your more controversial remarks was a call for black people to get rifles and form rifle clubs sometime back, do you still favor that for self defense?

Malcolm X: I don't see why that should be controversial. I think that if white people found themselves the victim of the same kind of brutality that black people in this country face, and they saw that the government was either unwilling or unable to protect them that the intelligence on the part of the whites would make them get some rifles and shotguns and protect themselves. Now, Negroes are developing some kind of intellectual maturity too, and they can see that having waited upon the government to protect them has been a wait that has been in vain. So, any of them who live in areas where the government is not able to do its job, then we do have to get together and do a job of protecting ourselves.


Return from Mecca Press Conference at Hotel Theresa, Harlem, New York (May 21, 1964)

May Allah have mercy on his soul. El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965)

( Source: http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com )

Hon. Malcolm X: Oxford Union

I enjoy replaying this vintage gem every now and then  -- Malcolm X debating at Oxford University in 1964. In this classic video, you get a good feel for Malcolm X's presence and message, not to mention the social issues that were alive during the day. You'll hear X's trademark claim that liberty can be attained by "whatever means necessary," including force, if the government won't guarantee it, and that "intelligently directed extremism" will achieve liberty far more effectively than pacifist strategies. (He's clearly alluding to Martin Luther King.) You can listen to the speech in its entirety here (Real Audio), something that is well worth doing. But I'd also encourage you to watch the dramatic closing minutes and pay some attention to the nice rhetorical slide, where X takes lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet and uses them to justify his "by whatever means necessary" position. You'd probably never expect to see Hamlet getting invoked that way, let alone Malcolm X speaking at Oxford. A wonderful set of contrasts.

“I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think, it was, who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something—whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—moderation—or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built—is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”

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Malcolm X is still misunderstood - and misused

Every semester in which I teach a course on Muslims in the Civil Rights Movement at Southern Methodist University, I give my students a selection of quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X and ask them to guess who said what. So for example, I will posit the following two quotes and ask for their proper ascription:

"Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore, we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about."

"The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity."

And every single time, they have been unable to identify the first quote as belonging to Malcolm, and the second to Martin. But it is not just a few students that have gotten it wrong. The American education system and most mainstream portrayals of Martin and Malcolm have been simplistic and sanitising.

Martin is the perfect hero who preached non-violence and love, and Malcolm the perfect villain who served as his violent counterpart, preaching hate and militancy. The result is not just a dishonest reading of history, but a dichotomy that allows for Dr King to be curated to make us more comfortable, and Malcolm X to be demonised as a demagogue from whom we must all flee. Reducing these men to such simplistic symbols allows us to filter political programmes according to how "King-like" they are. Hence, illegitimate forms of reconciliation are legitimised through King and legitimate forms of resistance are delegitimised through Malcolm X.

Malcolm was never violent, not as a member of the Nation of Islam, nor as a Sunni Muslim. But Malcolm did find it hypocritical to demand that black people in the United States commit to non-violence when they were perpetually on the receiving end of state violence. He believed that black people in the US had a right to defend themselves, and charged that the US was inconsistent in referencing its founding fathers’ defence of liberty for everyone but them.

Malcolm knew that his insistence on this principle would cause him to be demonised even further and ultimately benefit the movement of Dr King, which is exactly what he had intended. Just weeks before his assassination, he went to Selma to support Dr King and willingly embraced his role as the scary alternative. In every interview, in his meeting with Dr Coretta Scott King, and elsewhere, he vocalised that the US would do well to give the good reverend what he was asking for, or else.

But he never actually said what the "or else" was, placing a greater urgency on America to cede to King’s demands. Malcolm had no problem playing the villain, so long as it led to his people no longer being treated like animals. And while King may have been steadfast in his commitment to non-violence, the thrust of Malcolm fully served its purpose.

As Colin Morris, the author of Unyoung, Uncolored, Unpoor wrote, "I am not denying passive resistance its due place in the freedom struggle, or belittling the contribution to it of men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Both have a secure place in history. I merely want to show that however much the disciples of passive resistance detest violence, they are politically impotent without it. American Negroes needed both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X …"

But it was not just that Malcolm and Martin had complementary strategies to achieve black freedom, they also spoke to different realities. Malcolm spoke more to the Northern reality of black Americans who were only superficially integrated, whereas Martin spoke to the Southern reality where even that was not possible.

Malcolm also spoke to the internalised racism of black people that was essential to overcome for true liberation. As the late James Cone states, "King was a political revolutionary. Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary. Malcolm changed how black people thought about themselves. Before Malcolm came along, we were all Negroes. After Malcolm, he helped us become black."

That is why, despite the diminishing of Malcolm in textbooks and holidays, he has been consistently revived through protest movements and the arts. He has lived through the activism of the likes of Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick, inspired the black power movement, and been an icon for American Muslims on how to exist with dignity and faith in a hostile environment.

And even in those claims to Malcolm as a symbol, Malcolm himself in the fullness of his identity is erased. In championing his movement's philosophy, some seek to secularise him, intentionally erasing his Muslim identity. And in championing his religious identity, others seek to depoliticise him. This was a tension that Malcolm noted in his own life, saying: "For the Muslims, I’m too worldly. For other groups, I’m too religious. For militants, I’m too moderate, for moderates I’m too militant. I feel like I’m on a tightrope."

Muslims too should be cautious not to sanitise Malcolm, as the US has sanitised Dr King. To restrict Malcolm solely to his Hajj experience is similar to restricting King solely to his "I have a dream" speech. Malcolm was a proud Muslim who never stopped being black. And while he no longer subscribed to a condemnation of the entire white race, he was unrelenting in his critique of global white supremacy.

Malcolm was consistently growing in a way that allowed him to not only champion his own people’s plight more effectively but to tackle a broader set of interconnected issues. And while history seems to posit Malcolm as his polar opposite, Dr King had begun to articulate many of the same positions that made Malcolm so unpopular.

In the words of the great James Baldwin, "As concerns Malcolm and Martin, I watched two men, coming from unimaginably different backgrounds, whose positions, originally, were poles apart, driven closer and closer together. By the time each died, their positions had become virtually the same position. It can be said, indeed, that Martin picked up Malcolm’s burden, articulated the vision which Malcolm had begun to see, and for which he paid with his life. And that Malcolm was one of the people Martin saw on the mountaintop."

Perhaps it is time we ask why we only seem to celebrate one of them.

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Malcolm X - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

When Malcolm X visited Smethwick after racist election

"The politics of racism and anti-racism that was born out of American struggles strongly influenced the ways in which race was conceived of in Britain. The ripples of the civil rights movement were felt across the Atlantic in 1960s Britain, where images of the civil rights movement in the South and urban revolts in the North were circulated widely by the media.

"This was brought into sharp focus by Malcolm X's visit to the Black Country town of Smethwick. His presence was opposed by both liberals and conservatives within Britain, representing the dangerous possibility of black resistance spreading from America to the West Midlands. This anxiety was powerfully expressed by Enoch Powell in his Rivers of Blood speech three years later."
In an interview with a local BBC journalist, when asked why he decided to visit Smethwick, Malcolm X drew parallels with Nazi Germany.

"I have heard that the blacks ... are being treated in the same way as the Negroes were treated in Alabama- like Hitler treated the Jews."

For Jouhl, inviting Malcolm X to Smethwick was an expression of solidarity.
"We didn't hope to take anything from it other than strengthening the bonds between us. It was an act of proletarian internationalism," he said.

"We hoped to show solidarity with the struggle of the African Americans who, at that time, were involved in a bitter struggle with US imperialism."

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Malcolm X's Famous Speech After Returning From Mecca

#ilovemalcolm: Tariq Ali on Malcolm X at Oxford

Malcolm X 16-02-2015 ~ Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Legacy of Malcolm X: SOAS, 21 February 2012