Posted on 06/24/2009 10:54:57 PM PDT by neverdem
http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0210/10111.html/(page)/2
Malcolm X, traveling without any administrative support, took up offers of help from the sympathetic expatriate community. When he wasnt meeting with African heads of state, days were spent in conference with senior officials of the Al Azhar Islamic Center, who are authorities of Sunni Islam. It was here that Malcolm X sought official consent for his break-away movement and support for himself as a genuine minister of Islam.
It is apparent that there was distrust at first, that he was considered a pseudo Islamic leader, but in the end, Al Azhar Islamic Center supported his movement. One person quoted at the time said, They saw the possibility of him bringing people to Sunni Islam. Today, Al Azhar pragmatically describes Malcolm X as an Islamic reformer.
Malcolm X in Cairo at the al-Azhar Mosque in 1964, Obama at the al-Azhar Mosque in 2009 where he made his first overseas speech.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 4, 2009
...As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities -- (applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. (Applause.)
HISTORYOF THE ARABS, by Philip K Hitti
WIKI: Hitti was educated at an American Presbyterian mission school at Suq al-Gharb and at the American University of Beirut. After graduating in 1908 he taught at the American University of Beirut before moving to Columbia University where he taught Semitic languages and got his PhD in 1915. After World War I he returned to American University of Beirut and taught there until 1926. In February 1926 he was offered a Chair at Princeton University which he held until he retired in 1954. He was both Professor of Semitic Literature and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. After formal retirement he accepted a position at Harvard. He also taught in the summer schools at the University of Utah and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently held a research position at the University of Minnesota. Philip Hitti almost single handedly created the discipline of Arabic Studies in the United States...
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Hitti claims for the arabs every innovation and science known to man. The book was the most nauseating reading experience of my life. Obama didn't study history, he quoted Philip Hitti.
Again, all roads lead to The American University of Beirut.
http://www.malcolmxbio.com/node/20
...Malcolm encouraged Muhammad to move the sect towards greater synchronization with orthodox Islam. Malcolm advised that the leader study Arabic before going to Egypt and planned to return in six months. Perhaps due to Malcolms advice, or to his own experiences in the Middle East in early 1960, Muhammad did in fact move the NOI in this direction: temples were renamed mosques, Arabic instruction was instituted, and his son Akbar was sent to study at Al-Azhar University...
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/196115
...The vast majority of people have no idea how ultra-Orthodox Malcolm became during the last six months of his life. He studied the Koran and Hadiths for sometimes 12 to 15 hours a day. He was wrapped and buried exactly according to Islamic tradition. He knew that he was marked for assassination, so he drew up a plan to be carried out after he died.
In Saudi Arabia, Shabazz/Malcolm Xs studies were supervised by Shaykh Muhammad Sarur As-Sabban, the Secretary-General of theMuslim World League . During this period of time, The University of Medina offered Shabazz 15 scholarships for young African Americans, to go along with those offered by Al-Azhar. Thus it is evident that those detractors who think that Malik Shabazz had no formal Islamic training according to the Sunna are clearly mistaken. In fact, his intensive training occupied five of the last eleven months of his life...
http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0210/10111.html/(page)/2
Malcolm X, traveling without any administrative support, took up offers of help from the sympathetic expatriate community. When he wasnt meeting with African heads of state, days were spent in conference with senior officials of the Al Azhar Islamic Center, who are authorities of Sunni Islam. It was here that Malcolm X sought official consent for his break-away movement and support for himself as a genuine minister of Islam.
It is apparent that there was distrust at first, that he was considered a pseudo Islamic leader, but in the end, Al Azhar Islamic Center supported his movement. One person quoted at the time said, They saw the possibility of him bringing people to Sunni Islam. Today, Al Azhar pragmatically describes Malcolm X as an Islamic reformer.
On July 17, 1964 Malcolm X, acting in his capacity as “observer”, distributed this memorandum to delegates of the Organization of African Unity meeting in Cairo, Egypt. A clear indication of his growing “internationalism”, it represents his most powerful formulation about the struggle being over “human rights” rather than “civil rights” also it represents Malcolm’s awareness of the fact that we needed a international voice. I believe if Malcolm had lived longer, we would have membership in the African Union today. So what has changed? We need a voice and say in the African Union today. The Organization of Pan African Unity will submit a petition to join into the African Union, so our voices will be heard. So members of the African Union we give you a message that was delivered to you in 1963 and we hope that it will make a difference, so that African American’s can have representation into the African Union.
Speech to the OAU
The Organization of Afro-American Unity has sent me to attend this historic African Summit Conference as an observer to represent the interests of 22 million African-Americans whose human rights are being violated daily by the racism of American imperialists.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity has been formed by a cross section of America’s African-American community, and is patterned after the letter and spirit of the Organization of African Unity.
Just as the Organization of African Unity has called upon all African leaders to submerge their differences and unite on common objectives for the common good of all Africans, in America the Organization of Afro-American Unity has called upon Afro-American leaders to submerge their differences and find areas of agreement wherein we can work in unity for the good of the entire 22 million African Americans.
Since the 22 million of us were originally Africans, who are now in America, not by choice but only by a cruel accident in our history, we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems.
We also believe that as heads of the independent African states you are the shepherds of all African peoples everywhere, whether they are still at home here on the mother continent or have been scattered abroad.
Some African leaders at this conference have implied that they have enough problems here on the mother continent without adding the Afro-American problem.
With all due respect to your esteemed positions, I must remind all of you that the Good Shepherd will leave ninety-nine sheep who are safe at home to go to the aid of the one who is lost and has fallen into the clutches of the imperialist wolf.
We in America are your long-lost brothers and sisters, and I am here only to remind you that our problems are your problems. As the African-Americans “awaken” today, we find ourselves in a strange land that has rejected us, and, like the prodigal son, we are turning to our elder brothers for help. We pray our pleas will not fall upon deaf ears.
We were taken forcibly in chains from this mother continent and have now spent over three hundred years in America, suffering the most inhuman forms of physical and psychological tortures imaginable.
During the past ten years the entire world has witnessed our men, women, and children being attacked and bitten by vicious police dogs, brutally beaten by police clubs, and washed down the sewers by high-pressure water hoses that would rip the clothes from our bodies and the flesh from our limbs.
And all of these inhuman atrocities have been inflicted upon us by the American governmental authorities, the police themselves, for no reason other than that we seek the recognition and respect granted other human beings in America.
The American Government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of your 22 million African-American brothers and sisters. We stand defenseless, at the mercy of American racists who murder us at will for no reason other than we are black and of African descent.
Last week an unarmed African-American educator was murdered in cold blood in Georgia; a few days before that three civil rights workers disappeared completely, perhaps murdered also, only because they were teaching our people in Mississippi how to vote and how to secure their political rights.
Our problems are your problems. We have lived for over three hundred years in that American den of racist wolves in constant fear of losing life and limb. Recently, three students from Kenya were mistaken for American Negroes and were brutally beaten by the New York police. Shortly after that two diplomats from Uganda were also beaten by the New York City police, who mistook them for American Negroes.
If Africans are brutally beaten while only visiting in America, imagine the physical and psychological suffering received by your brothers and sisters who have lived there for over three hundred years.
Our problem is your problem. No matter how much independence Africans get here on the mother continent, unless you wear your national dress at all time when you visit America, you may be mistaken for one of us and suffer the same psychological and physical mutilation that is an everyday occurrence in our lives.
Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected. You will never be recognized as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings.
Our problem is your problem. It is not a Negro problem, nor an American problem. This is a world problem, a problem for humanity. It is not a problem of civil rights, it is a problem of human rights.
We pray that our African brothers have not freed themselves of European colonialism only to be overcome and held in check now by American dollarism. Don’t let American racism be “legalized” by American dollarism.
America is worse than South Africa, because not only is America racist, but she is also deceitful and hypocritical. South Africa preaches segregation and practices segregation. She, at least, practices what she preaches. America preaches integration and practices segregation. She preaches one thing while deceitfully practicing another.
South Africa is like a vicious wolf, openly hostile toward black humanity. But America is cunning like a fox, friendly and smiling, but even more vicious and deadly than the wolf.
The wolf and the fox are both enemies of humanity, both are canine, both humiliate and mutilate their victims. Both have the same objectives, but differ only in methods.
If South Africa is guilty of violating the human rights of Africans here on the mother continent, then America is guilty of worse violations of the 22 million Africans on the American continent. And if South African racism is not a domestic issue, then American racism also is not a domestic issue.
We beseech independent African states to help us bring our problem before the United Nations, on the grounds that the United States Government is morally incapable of protecting the lives and the property of 22 million African-Americans. And on the grounds that our deteriorating plight is definitely becoming a threat to world peace.
Out of frustration and hopelessness our young people have reached the point of no return. We no longer endorse patience and turning the other cheek. We assert the right of self-defense by whatever means necessary, and reserve the right of maximum retaliation against our racist oppressors, no matter what the odds against us are.
We are well aware that our future efforts to defend ourselves by retaliating- by meeting violence with violence, eye for eye and tooth for tooth-could create the type of racial conflict in America that could easily escalate into a violent, worldwide, bloody race war.
In the interests of world peace and security, we beseech the heads of the independent African states to recommend an immediate investigation into our problem by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
One last word, my beloved brothers at this African Summit: “No one knows the master better than his servant.” We have been servants in America for over three hundred years. We have a thorough inside knowledge of this man who calls himself “Uncle Sam.” Therefore, you must heed our warning. Don’t escape from European colonialism only to become even more enslaved by deceitful,”friendly” American dollarism.
May Allah’s blessings of good health and wisdom be upon you all.
You ignore the deterioration and free-loaders in today's society.
A lot over a period of years has brought us to where we are as a society that would vote for an Obama, and blaming it on "Republican implosion" is shallow, narrow-minded, ignorant, stupid thinking!
Monday is Kenya's first nationwide election since the 2007 vote devolved into massive tribal violence that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 600,000 from their homes.
The 54-year-old Malik Obama hopes to become the first governor of Kenya's western county of Siaya.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unless I missed a headline, this election [on Monday, March 4] is just becoming "news."
He's just going back to his Yemeni Arab roots.
Love that Arab Warrior look. They used to collect slaves for the Arabs, and now they are little Islamofascist Cowboys playing cops and robbers?
I’d love to get a few of these Wazabis in my sights.
And to think that we have a president who kisses the ring of the Saudfi King and keeps oil prices in the West high for him. Yech!
The rot surely continues.
Jun 27, 2011
By Eljeer Hawkins, Harlem, New York
Book Review
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
By Manning Marable
May 19 marked the 86th birthday of Malcolm X; it has been 46 years since his public assassination. In the hearts and minds of workers particularly black workers, the poor, and youth across the world, Malcolm X remains an icon of revolutionary spirit and commitment to justice, freedom, and liberty for the most oppressed people in the world. Malcolm exposed the racism, white supremacy, and its tragic effects on people of African descent throughout the United States and Diaspora.
On April 1, 2011, three days before the release of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, its author, Dr. Manning Marable, succumbed to complications of pneumonia. Marable, a noted scholar of the African-American experience in the U.S. was an activist, editor and author of 20 books, which included the 1983 trailblazing polemic How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.
In writing the biography, Marable intended to highlight the missing three chapters from Alex Haleys The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Those chapters are in the hands of Detroit lawyer Gregory Reed, who owns the recently-discovered papers of W.D. Fard, originator of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. A key task of the new book is to launch a campaign to investigate the wider conspiracy to assassinate Malcolm X and bring to justice one of the assailants who fired the kill shot ending the life of Malcolm on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.
Although in 1966 three NOI members were convicted of the murder, extensive evidence suggests that two of these men were completely innocent of the crime, that both the FBI and the NYPD had advance knowledge of it, and that the New York County District Attorneys office may have cared more about protecting the identities of undercover police officers and informants than arresting the real killers, (p. 13).
Marable aims to show Malcolms struggle to overcome his human flaws and become one of the most important and revered leaders of the black freedom movement in the 20th century. In the build-up to the release of the biography - some 10 years in the making - new detailed information was supposed to be revealed. Marable has been dismissive of works published in the late ‘80s and ‘90s on Malcolm Xs life and using the rescued collection of Malcolm Xs diaries, photos, letters, speeches and other material (now archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) to reconstruct the full contours of his remarkable life.
The Black Experience in the United States
In the early chapters of the book, Marable delves into Malcolms early childhood, the conditions African-Americans faced in early 20th century, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the growth of U.S. capitalism and white supremacy. He deals with the rise of Jamaican-born publisher and journalist, Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) movement (Malcolms parents, Earl and Louise Little, were members) and the development of socialist, communist, trade unionism, culture, art and radical politics in the wider society and the black community in urban centers like Harlem, New York. In the Harlem community Negro and white canvassers sidled up alongside you, talking fast as they tried to get you to buy a copy of the Daily Worker (Communist Party USA newspaper): This papers trying to keep your rent controlled
Make that greedy landlord kill them rats in your apartment
Who do you think fought the hardest to help free those Scottsboro boys? (p. 52).
The development of Islam in the U.S. dates back to the Atlantic slave trade and Marable examines the growth of Islam during slavery, the rise of black nationalism in the mid-1800s, the teachings of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the father of Pan-Africanism, as well as black urban Islamist sects like the Noble Drew Alis Moorish Science Temple of America. With the decline of the Garvey movement, which was the largest black led movement in the early 20th century comprised of cultural nationalism and black capitalism, many former Garveyites became attracted to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI) under the leadership of W.D. Fard and eventually, Elijah Poole, who would later become Elijah Muhammad.
The Nation of Islam spoke out against the hypocrisy of American democracy, capitalism, white supremacy, and the horrid conditions faced by black people since slavery. Drawing their membership from the urban black working class, poor, prison population and the semi-employed, NOI preached and practiced a combination of cultural Black Nationalism and pro-capitalist ideals. NOI was a top-down leadership, including a paramilitary wing. Theologically, NOI preached that black people are the chosen people to be delivered from the evil of white-supremacy. It was a distinct form of black American Islam that was not recognized by mainstream Sunni Islam in the Middle East. The NOI would even conduct secret negotiations with George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi party and invite George Lincoln Rockwell to speak from its platform. Marable writes: both groups, after all, dreamed of a segregated world in which interracial marriages were outlawed and the races dwelled in separate states, (p. 199).
Marable covers Malcolms political association with organizations and activists like the Revolutionary Action Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Socialist Workers Party before and after his split from the NOI. Also, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention shows Malcolms connection to leaders of the anti-colonial movement like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Nasser of Egypt, his meeting with Fidel Castro in Harlem in 1960 and a possible meeting with Che Guevara in late 1964. All of this expanded his popularity and broadened his international understanding. Malcolm would frequently use in his political speeches to stress the importance of the 1955 Bandung Conference of the non-aligned countries of the former colonial world that were not linked to U.S./Western imperialism or the Stalinist Soviet Union.
New Material
Marables new and groundbreaking material is in the chronological details of Malcolms 25 weeks away from the United States during his hajj to Mecca. Malcolms trips throughout the Middle East and Africa had a huge effect on his thinking on Islam and the colonial revolution as he and the Muslim Mosque, Inc. attempted to gain legitimacy in the mainstream Muslim world. Malcolm believed spirituality Islam could play a role in the liberation struggle against racism and white supremacy. Malcolm states, Our success in America will involve two circles, black nationalism and Islam
And Islam will link us spiritually to Africa, Arabia and Asia, (p. 311-312).
Malcolm attempted to forge links with newly-independent African nations like Ghana. Despite the gains from the transfer of power in 1957 from England, by the mid-60s there were political criticisms against Nkrumah and the ruling Convention Peoples Party, for a lack of democracy and the rise of a cult of personality. As Marable points out, Malcolm surely heard the criticisms from the African-American expatriates but might have turned a blind eye to it. Malcolm may have also endorsed the authoritarian measures by the government. Malcolms trips to Africa sought to gain support for his repeated calls for the United Nations to condemn U.S. human rights violations,and were important steps to internationalize the black freedom movement in the U.S.
Marable brings out the challenges facing Malcolm, navigating the difficult geo-political dilemmas facing former colonialized countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania in a polarized world dominated by imperialism and Stalinism and experimenting with hybrid African socialist/capitalist models. William Sales, author of From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity states, The various African socialisms and the systems established on that basis in Africa have been criticized by African Marxists as veiled apologies for the consolidation of various forms of dependency and dependent capitalism. In some of these countries, the Communist Party was either outlawed or its members harassed by the government as was the case in Egypt under Nasser (p. 86).
Malcolms political and religious relationship with Nasser’s Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudi royal family and his denunciation of Israeli Zionism would pose serious questions for Malcolms international work. Marable explains, This calculated view reflected the broader balancing act he (Malcolm X) performed throughout his time in the Middle East. Egypts secular government stood forcefully at odds with religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been implicated in a 1954 plot to kill Nasser and subsequently banned Malcolm, indebted to both sides, could not afford to take positions that might offend either. During his stay in Cairo, his Islamic studies were directed by Sheikh Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, the secretary-general of the Muslim World League. This group was financed by the Saudi government and it reflected conservative political views, so Malcolm had to exercise considerable tact and political discretion. (p. 368)
One of the great questions about Malcolms political development has to do with his statements on socialism and capitalism. As Marable and Sales point out, despite Malcolms anti-capitalist statements and favorable socialist remarks on the platform of the Socialist Workers Partys Militant Labor forums and socialism practiced in the so-called third world, Malcolm was not a socialist. At the time of his assassination, Malcolm was clearly moving in a new political direction which could have led him to socialist conclusions or deepening his revolutionary nationalist ideas. Malcolm didnt have access to genuine Marxism at home or abroad. Professor Sales states, Those who noted Malcolms turn toward socialism, like George Breitman and Michael Williams, consistently failed to make a distinction between the Marxist-Leninist tradition of scientific socialism and the socialist thought of Malcolm X. There is no information available that demonstrates that Malcolm X seriously studied Marxism-Leninism, (p. 86).
Marable documents an interview Malcolm had with NY Times reporter M.S. Handler, exposing Malcolms ambiguity to socialist ideas.
I am not anti-American, un-American, seditious nor subversive. I dont buy the anti-capitalist propaganda of the communist, nor do I buy the anti-communist propaganda of capitalists Im for whoever and whatever benefits humanity (human beings) as a whole whether they are capitalist, communists or socialist, all have assets as well as liabilities (p. 369).
The material dealing with the assassination plot in Marables biography have been covered extensively in Karl Evanzzs book The Judas Factor: the Plot to Kill Malcolm X published in 1992, and Zak Kondo, author of Conspiracy: Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X, published in 1993.
From his release from prison in 1952 to his public assassination, Malcolms actions were monitored by the state authorities. The plot to kill Malcolm X flowed from the governmental opposition under the auspices of the Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro), which sought to prevent the development of a unified radical movement with leadership. Cointelpro used disruptive methods such as sending falsified letters to organizations and leaders that would lead to bloodshed in the black community. Cointelpro, developed under the leadership of FBI Director, J.Edgar Hoover, was a continuation of the Palmer raids of the early 1900s and the McCarthy witch-hunts of the late 40s and early 50s to neutralize the movements of resistance against U.S. big business at home and abroad.
The NOI and Malcolms Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) and Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) was thoroughly infiltrated by the FBI and New York City police department (BOSS unit) respectively. Marable points out, The NYPDs narrative about Malcolms murder was simple. The slaying was the culmination of an almost yearlong feud between two black hate groups. The NYPD had two priorities in conducting its investigation: first, to protect the identities of its undercover police officers and informants, like Gene Roberts; and second, to make successful cases against NOI members with histories of violence. Its hasty and haphazard treatment of forensic evidence at the crime scene suggested that it had little interest in solving the actual homicide, (p. 451).
Marable highlights the five assailants are from the NOI Newark, New Jersey mosque. The three men convicted of killing Malcolm; Norman 3X Butler, Thomas 15X Johnson, and Talmadge Hayer convicted of first degree murder in 1966, were sentenced to life. Both Butler and Johnson fought for their innocence in the conspiracy to kill Malcolm. Talmadge Hayer was paroled in April 2010 with great protest from activists. Marable makes the claim, the killshot assailant Willie Bradley is still alive, living in New Jersey and was never brought to justice.
Malcolms internationalism and revolutionary message was a powerful challenge to the American empire at home and abroad. The conspiracy to kill Malcolm X was a collective effort by elements in the NOI, FBI and CIA, that is still unresolved today.
Marable deals with the controversial aspects of Malcolms life like his hustling days as Detroit Red and his homosexual relationship with a rich white man named Paul Lennon. (This topic was covered by Bruce Perry in his Malcolm X: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, published in 1991.) The stormy, strained relationship and possible extramarital affairs of both Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz are also covered. Rather than place these events in their political, social and cultural context, in our pop, sensationalized tabloid news, these revelations are receiving more attention by the corporate media in its attempts to discredit Malcolm X.
In the Age of Obama
Marables most questionable conclusions are the ones in the chapter Reflections on a Revolutionary Vision. Here Marable attempts to draw a direct historical line from Malcolm X to President Obamas presidential win in 2008. Marable exclaims, These aspects of Malcolms public personality were indelibly stamped into the Black Power movement; they were present in the cry, Its our turn! by black proponents of Harold Washington in the Democrats successful 1983 mayoral race in Chicago. It was partially expressed in the unprecedented voter turnouts in black neighborhoods in Jesse Jacksons presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 and in the successful electoral bid of Barack Obama in 2008. Malcolm truly anticipated that the black electorate could potentially be the balance of power in a divided white republic, (p. 483).
This sorry attempt to mollify Malcolms uncompromising stance against the corporate two-party system of U.S. capitalism, is intended to neuter the militant, independent, and revolutionary message that Malcolm articulated in his April 3, 1964 speech, The Ballot or The Bullet.
They get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didnt need big jobs, they already had jobs. Thats camouflage, thats trickery, thats treachery, window-dressing. Im not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans; well get them in a minute. But it is true - you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.
The best example of Malcolms independent electoral program for black people could be seen in the 1966 Lowndes County Freedom Organization in rural Lowndes County, Alabama. Organized by Stokely Carmichael and SNCC, it was an all-black independent political party that fought against black political disenfranchisement and white supremacy. This project was spurred on by the events and lessons of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and Fannie Lou Hamer protest at the Democratic Party Atlantic City convention in 1964, when the Democratic and Mississippi Democratic Party leadership refused to recognize the MFDP delegates at the convention. The Freedom Now Party (FNP) was founded in 1963 by black militants within Detroit who had close ties to Malcolm, and they spoke frequently at political rallies with Rev Albert B. Cleage Jr. and Milton brothers, while he was a member of NOI, and then afterward. The FNP ran independent black candidates for governor, congress, the state senate and the board of education in 1964.
The last two chapters of Marables Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, and also Peniel Josephs Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama and Ta-Neshisi Coates review of Marables biography titled “The Legacy of Malcolm X: Why his vision lives on in Barack Obama” published in Atlantic Magazine are all intended to render Malcolm Xs revolutionary stance against empire and racism unnecessary in the face of the so-called post-racial U.S. society and the first black president occupying the White House. These apologists for this corporate war president and the capitalist system have re-packaged Malcolm X as an outdated firebrand who would have had to check his revolutionary message at the door in todays political environment. A far more accurate description of Obama is to be found in Cornell Wests statement describing Obama as a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. West goes on to point out that Obama has now become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it (Chris Hedges, The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic, Truthdig, 5/16/11)
The Meaning of Malcolm X Today
Marables Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention allows a new generation to study and learn more about Malcolm. But Marables biography shouldnt be looked upon as the definitive work because there are more aspects of his life and political trajectory that demand further study and research. Malcolms life experience and world events moved him to be an active participant in the revolutionary awakening and revolt of the 1950s and ‘60s. Malcolms revolutionary nationalism, pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, and anti-corporate stances inspired the birth of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the militancy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), militant trade unionism of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, and other radical and socialist organizations.
Malcolm matters because the conditions that produced Malcolm still exist. The abject poverty, racism, high rates of unemployment, mass prison incarceration, police violence, layoffs and massive budget cuts, are a byproduct of a sick capitalist system - based on delivering profits for a small ruling elite. These conditions are producing a new generation of revolutionaries who will be inspired by the shining example of Malcolm X:
I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash
—Malcolm X
http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article15.php?id=1629
Interesting, although all the timelines for MX in Africa and the middle east commence in 1959, the son of Shirley Graham Du Bois and the stepson of W.E.B. Du Bois appears to place him in Cairo in 1960:
In Cairo, an Expatriate Black American Recalls Malcolm X
.By Carol Berger, Special to The Christian Science Monitor / February 10, 1992
CAIRO
WHEN Malcolm X made his third and last visit to Cairo in 1964, he was alone. Besieged at home by the Nation of Islam, the extremist black Muslim group that he had broken with, he was to spend almost two months in Cairo before embarking on a lengthy journey through Africa.
He arrived in Cairo without fanfare. But when word spread, young black Americans keen to speak with a representative of the struggle they’d left behind, sought him out. Many of them were former members of the Nation of Islam, weary of its anti-white racism and failure to play an active role in the struggle for black rights. Before Malcolm X left the city, they had agreed to establish a chapter of his new group, the Organization of African-American Unity.
In the early 1960s, young black men from cities like Chicago and Philadelphia made their way to Egypt, many of them seeking not only African but also Islamic identities. The Egyptian government provided meager scholarships to Al Azhar Islamic University. One of those blacks was Akhbar Muhammad, the son of the Nation of Islam’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. For most of the students, living allowances were negligible. Some, in order to make ends meet, played gigs in Cairo jazz clubs.
One of those expatriates still lives in Cairo. David Du Bois is a visiting professor of journalism and Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, but resides for most of the year in his adopted home of Egypt. He is author of the novel, And Bid Him Sing,” a story of black American exiles in Cairo in the mid-1960s.
In 1960, Mr. Du Bois arrived in Egypt as a traveler. Later he became a journalist. He was following in the path of his grandparents, missionaries in Liberia, and his parents: His father was the revered black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the first names in the Pan-African movement.
Du Bois recalled his reactions after arriving by boat in the port city of Alexandria: “I fell in love with Egypt. I got here and discovered that everybody looked like me, and I looked like everybody else. I was accepted as a human being without any reference to the color of my skin. It was an overwhelming experience. I found myself invisible.”
Unlike other black expatriates he befriended in Cairo, Du Bois was not religious. Many were new arrivals who came to study Islam at Al Azhar. As Du Bois now says: “They came here in search both of their African and Islamic roots, but they approached Egypt as an African country.”
He met several times with Malcolm X and remembers a “calm and cool” figure.
When asked by Du Bois if people needed religion, Malcolm X replied that religion - whether Islam or Christianity - was a means of putting “blinders” on the minds of those who might otherwise stray from good and moral lives.
cont: see page two
http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0210/10111.html
Du Bois, Shirley Graham
(b. 11 November 1896; d. 27 March 1977),
author, composer, and activist. When Shirley Graham Du Bois was thirteen years old she met the prominent scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. The meeting had a profound impact on her political and personal development, for she eventually married Du Bois in 1951. She became well known as W. E. B. Du Bois’s second wife, causing some to overlook her tremendous personal accomplishments.
Shirley Graham was born near Evansville, Indiana, to David Graham and Etta Graham. Her father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister, a career that caused him to move his family to various locations in the United States, including Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and Nashville. At his churches Shirley first discovered a love for music, learning to play the organ and piano. She completed high school in Spokane, Washington, and then moved to Seattle, where she married Shadrack T. McCants, the owner of a dry-cleaning business, in 1921. The marriage soon ended, and she was left with two sons, Robert and David, to raise on her own...
Kwame Nkrumah with WEB Dubois and Shirley Graham Dubois in Ghana at Republic Day ceremony, July 1, 1960.
FOR THE RECORD:
Fihris al-Muqtataf, 1876-1952
[The Index of al-Muqtataf, 1876-1952)]
Edited by Fuad Sarruf and Linda Sadaka
The Muqtataf was one of the leading Arabic scientific and cultural monthly journals of the latter part of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Published in Egypt and edited for many years by Ya’qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, the editorship was later taken up by Fuad Sarruf, a well-known Arab literary figure and writer on science.
The index comes in three volumes. Entries are listed under the author’s name, title and subject of the articles, each followed by volume number, year and page.
Arabic, 1967, 1968, Vol 1: 753 pages; Vol 2: 708 pages; Vol. 3: 698 pages, hardcover, $15 each.
http://www.aub.edu.lb/php/aubpress/site/sub_bibliography_and_indexes.html
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