Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [143]
One part of Malcolm’s strategy to promote the cult around Muhammad involved taking a more aggressive role in defending the Islamic legitimacy of the NOIʹs religious views, especially when criticized by orthodox Muslims, who often took great offense at Muhammad’s claim of connection with the divine. Near the end of the summer a Sudanese Muslim college student, Yahya Hayari, publicly criticized the NOI, prompting Malcolm to write him a letter of protest, not so much addressing the meat of Hayari’s critique, but taking him to task for airing his complaint publicly. It is “difficult for me to believe that you’re a Muslim from the Sudan,” Malcolm began. “No real Muslim will ever attack another Muslim just to gain the friendship of Christians.” Differences, he suggested, should be settled “in private . . . but never to the public delight of Jews and Christians.” Malcolm drew upon international conflicts to explain the dangers of Muslim disunity: “The Europeans are still in the Congo because the Congolese have been kept busy fighting each other. . . . It would be quite foolish for Muslim students to come here from the Sudan or any other part of Africa and allow themselves to be used to attack us in a Christian country, a white country, a country in which 20 million of their own ‘Darker Brothers’ are yet being held as Second-Class Citizens, which is only a modified form of 20th Century Colonialism.” Hayari’s criticisms against the Nation continued, prompting Malcolm to send a letter of protest to the Pittsburgh Courier. Hayari “has been in Christian America too long,” Malcolm advised, because he “sounds like . . . [a] brainwashed, American Negro.” Malcolm minimized the theological differences between his sect and global Islam, arguing that the tactics of “the police of the enemies of Islam have always been ‘divide and conquer.’ ” Hayari was clearly among those who “suffer” from a “colonial mentality.” Hayari’s response appeared in the October 27, 1962, issue of the Pittsburgh Courier. “Mr. Elijah does not believe in or teach Islam,” Hayari insisted. “What he teaches in the name of Islam is his own social theory.” Because of Muhammad’s heresies, “all those that follow him should know that they are being led straight to Hell.”
On November 24, Malcolm’s letter criticizing an Afghani Muslim’s critique of the NOI appeared in the Amsterdam News. To demonstrate his fidelity to Islamic orthodoxy, Malcolm responded by citing verses from the Qurʹan. “Messenger Elijah Muhammad’s followers here in America live by a higher moral code and practice a more strict form of religious discipline than Muslims do anywhere else on this earth,” Malcolm insisted. “Oh, you who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for friends . . . And whoever takes them for friends he is indeed one of them,” Malcolm praised Elijah Muhammad as “Allah’s last messenger today, and by accepting his divine message we receive such strong spiritual strength from him that we are able to reform ourselves from the evils of this Christian world overnight.”
Also in 1962, another Sudanese Muslim, Ahmed Osman, studying at Dartmouth College, attended Mosque No. 7 services and directly challenged Malcolm X during a question and answer period. Osman was particularly agitated by the NOIʹs claims that Elijah Muhammad was the “Messenger of God,” and that whites were literally “devils.” Osman came away “greatly impressed with Malcolm,” but “unsatisfied” with his answers. He began sending literature from the Islamic Center in Geneva, Switzerland, and writing to him about the “true Islam.” Malcolm appreciated the literature and asked Osman for more. Yet despite his exposure to orthodox Islam, Malcolm was still unprepared to break from the Nation.
Yet the more challengers he engaged on the question of Islam, the more emerged to confront him. In March 1963, he debated Louis Lomax and others as part of a program on Los Angeles Channel 11, during which he appeared to distance himself from Muhammad. He explained, “One becomes a Muslim only by accepting the religion