By Kaamil Ahmed

Malcolm X’s Hajj trip famously changed his views on race but did he idealise Muslim unity? Part of a Convivencia series on writings about Muslim societies.

There are people who believe they do not see skin colour. Malcolm X was not one of them – he never had the privilege. That did not change during his 1964 Hajj trip, which also took him through other Arab and African corners of the Muslim world, but it did famously allow him to view race within a very different paradigm, one where he could imagine racism erased. The feeling, he said, was “as though I had just stepped out of a prison.”

That moment of escape, when he was able to haul himself to a position above the haze of centuries of racial oppression, in order to view a world where race existed but meant something different, might be recognisable to many a Western Muslim visiting Muslim societies — and especially Islam’s holy places. He saw a world where both whiteness and blackness, while still present, did not equate to what he had experienced in his life to that point. But that contrast in environment and the Arab and African nationalism of the non-aligned nations he visited could, in some ways, have arguably led to him idealising these societies in his writing about the trip.

“As they give the same honour to the same god, they in turn give the same (equal) honour to each other.” – The Diary of Malcolm X

60 years later many more Muslims travelling from the West, emulating a trip made by Malcolm at a time when many of their parents might have been migrating westwards, are also hit by these contrasts he wrote about in his Hajj diary. They were born into a world still full of walls, ones that do not appear to exist in the Muslim world and especially at those cross-roads of trade and faith where the marks of Muslim multi-culturalism remain etched. The personal interactions with light-skinned people treating him well or the success of dark-skinned pilots, shared faith and the novelty of being a Muslim from a strange land, and perhaps the atmosphere of Hajj itself, provide that feeling of security within your own skin that Malcolm and many Muslims now experience. This is despite a residual reality of deep social structures ensuring Muslims do not actually equally honour all, whether in Saudi Arabia or North Africa. While we would like to hold on to the idea that Muslims honour Islam’s hatred of racism, the reality can be found in how Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s skin tone was a basis for insults, the treatment of non-Arab workers in the Gulf, or the superiority claimed by those who claim to be of Arab descent in places like Sudan and Mali.

So was Malcolm actually idealising race and Muslim societies? Not entirely. While he was full of praise for the apparent racial harmony in Muslim spaces and the achievements of post-colonial nationalism — in countries like Egypt and Ghana, leaders in the ‘non-aligned’ movement — it is also clear that the trip was a way for him to brainstorm and build solutions to the problems facing black Americans. He remained intensely aware of race at every stage, whether pointing out the race or skin tone of whoever he met or highlighting the ingrained colonial traits of the Pakistani general whose “‘air’ was more English than Pakistani.”

“All colors here, none force [themselves] on others, yet none feel neglected or ignored, and still ‘birds of the same colour stay primarily together.’”

The broad statements Malcolm made about Islam erasing race occasionally stood awkwardly next to comments on his own discomfort and self-consciousness over not speaking Arabic and the regular misunderstandings about whether he was a Muslim at all. In both his Hajj diary and the Autobiography of Malcolm X he recalls resonating with being told in Dakar, Senegal: “Our people can’t speak Arabic, but we have Islam in our hearts.”

In her comparison of Malcolm’s Hajj experience with that of Iranian intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad, historian Golnar Nikpour points out that Malcolm’s talk about Islam removing race from society did not actually lead to him adopting a liberal approach of colour-blindness after his trip — an indication perhaps that he was not as convinced by these societies as he projected. She argues instead that his understanding of race was jarred by being thrown into an environment where lines were less distinct because so many actions were performed together – all had eaten “from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug.”

Even with the speed of his trip and how much of it was spent with dignitaries who showered him with favour – the like of which he had not experienced in the US – Malcolm still probed for what role race played in society. That he put such a positive light on it, despite many of the tensions that exist in Muslim societies, may also have been because he saw in Islam a solution. While problems of race existed, they were still counter-balanced by Islam, with the pride of mutual religion outweighing any cultural notions of racial superiority, as opposed to the white supremacy that was both institutionalised and legalised in the US.

His praise was also mostly concentrated on, but not totally limited to, Islam itself rather than Muslim societies in general. The moments when he felt most comfortable and “not conscious of color (race) around whites for 1st time”, were places of religion. Having previously subscribed to a very racially divisive ideology, Malcolm was building on the idea that Islam could not only uplift black Americans but also fight racism itself.

“Witnessing this Hajj has opened my eyes to the real brotherhood created by Islam among people of all colors. I am convinced that Islam will remove the cancer of racism from the heart of all Americans who accept it.”

His exploration of solutions for the condition of black Americans was also clear from the way he projected the nationalisms of Ghana and Egypt. Particularly in Egypt, Malcolm was full of praise for the national pride closely linked to the projects of Gamal Abdul Nasser and the United Arab Republic. On several occasions, he mentioned how people were acutely aware of how they were viewed abroad. “No Egyptian reflects any inferiority complex.”

“I took a picture & one little dark-skinned boy (shoe shine) objected. Farouk explained that they resented tourists taking pictures of them ‘at work’ and then showing it abroad to make it appear all Egyptians looked like this…I took some pictures of a man & his trained baboon. The crowd again gathered resentfully, fearing that this would be shown abroad and the image of the Egyptian distorted.”

Malcolm’s admiration was based on his project of building an international case for black Americans. He saw in Islam and the nationalisms of post-colonial governments a route for erasing racism, building pride and forging coalitions for the world’s non-white majority that could internationalise the cause of the black American.

He enunciated some of these ideas in another of his writings from Hajj, a letter written while he was in Mecca, where he both continued to emphasize that a black American “never can be blamed for his racial ‘animosities’” because of the ongoing legacy of white supremacy, while also mentioning how the trip to Mecca had allowed him to readjust his understanding of Islam, to “toss aside” some of his previous convictions about race and to declare that Islam could cure the US of its racism.

“And with racism now plaguing in America like an incurable cancer all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem.”

*The views in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily represent Convivencia’s positions.

When Malcolm X met the Muslim world, it felt “like stepping out of prison” was originally published in Convivencia Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.