Malcolm X describes in detail his Hajj experience in 1964. Arriving as an individual Muslim black man from the United States, he is an anomaly, and everyone wants to meet him. Based on news reports over the past few years, many people know who he is – and recognize him – which makes him even more popular. He is amazed that many of the “white men” who are Muslims do not act like “white men,” and he decides that global Islam has produced real brotherhood. He has grown beyond the Nation of Islam and the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.
Yet at the time of his Hajj to Mecca, slavery in Saudi Arabia (and Mecca) had only been abolished two years earlier in 1964. Like the United States, Saudi slaves were primarily black Africans whose ancestors had been forcibly sold into the Arabian penisula against their will.
Even today, foreign workers in Saudi Arabia are treated harshly. Passports must be handed over to the employer/sponsor so these workers are not free to leave the country if mistreated. Many female household workers report they have been raped, beaten and tortured, so much so that Indonesia has recently banned its citizens from working in Saudi Arabia. [http://www.hudson-ny.org/2347/saudi-beheading-grandmother] Though both Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are Muslim countries (the reason workers from Indonesia and Pakistan are preferred) the Saudis embrace a racism where they are at the top.
Malcolm X had his exhilirating experiences with the wealthy leaders of Arab and African nations, not the peasants on the streets and farms. He was treated as a celebrety, wined and dined (no actual alcohol was consumed), and asked to speak at universities and social clubs. Compare that to his experience in the United States, where he was seen as the leader of a criminal enterprise.
From his writings, X reminds me of a young person, fascinated with learning things that are new, accepting of things that are different, growing and changing. Ghandi seemed to have been that way, too. Doing what was correct in that moment, not worrying if he was “consistent” over time.
Alex Haley’s Afterword explains how the autobiography was written over two years. As it finished, Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad were parting ways. Haley and X made a conscious decision not to rewrite the earlier chapters to reflect his new views, but to leave them representing the man he had been at the time. An excellent decision which brings an immediacy to the book.
It is tempting to project what his life would have been had he not been murdered. How would this man have changed the course of civil rights? Would he have helped or hindered? Or would he eventually gone off and got a law degree, as he told his high school teacher so many years before. He would have been a good attorney. Or whatever else he put his mind to.
