Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [199]
Still, the powerful sight of thousands of people of different nationalities and ethnicities praying in unison to the same God deeply moved Malcolm, as he struggled to reconcile the few remaining fragments of NOI dogma he still believed in with the universalism he saw embodied in the hajj. Like many tourists, Malcolm purchased dozens of postcards and sent them to acquaintances back home. These letters revealed the profound shift in his attitudes about white people. Writing to Alex Haley on April 25, Malcolm confessed, “I began to perceive that ‘white man,’ as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it describes attitudes and actions.” In the Muslim world he had witnessed individuals who in the United States would be classified as white but who “were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been.” Malcolm was quick to credit Islam with the power to transform whites into nonracists. This revelation reinforced Malcolm’s newfound decision to separate himself completely from the Nation of Islam, not simply from its leadership, but from its theology.
If Malcolm found much to rejoice over in his travels through the Middle East, he also wished for a more active role for Islam on the world stage. Here the seeds of his role as a kind of evangelist for true Islam were planted, but he saw in the Arabs’ unwillingness to proselytize a problem that could hinder the religion’s spread. “The Arabs are poor at public relations,” he wrote. “They say insha Allah [if God wills it] and then wait; and while they are waiting the world passes them by.” Malcolm hoped that one day Muslims would understand “the necessity of modernizing the methods to propagate Islam, and project an image that the mind of the modern world can understand.” But his thoughts of returning home with a new knowledge of the religious rituals filled him with genuine pride and excitement. “America’s Black Muslims would fit right into the best of the earth’s Muslim[s] anywhere in the world if they would first be encouraged to learn the true prayer ritual and how to say their prayers in Arabic,” he wrote.
Upon his arrival in Jeddah, Malcolm encountered an “outspoken” African, a cabinet minister of Nigerian prime minister Ahmadu Bello. The minister informed Malcolm about recent civil disobedience demonstrations by blacks at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and recounted his own unhappy experiences with American racism. “He had suffered many indignities that he could now describe with intense passion, but could not understand why Negroes had not established some degree of business economic independence,” Malcolm observed.
Malcolm then flew to Medina, Saudi Arabia, on April 25, and en route he continued to make detailed notes in his travel diary. He was convinced that on the pilgrimage “everyone forgets Self and turns to God and out of this submission to the One God comes a brotherhood in which all are equals.” He embraced an inner peace he had not known since the years he was incarcerated in Massachusetts. “There is no greater serenity of mind,” Malcolm reflected, “than when one can shut the hectic noise and pace of the materialistic outside world, and seek inner peace within oneself.” Later that evening Malcolm wrote, “The very essences of the Islam religion in teaching the Oneness of God, gives the Believer genuine, voluntary obligations towards his fellow man (all of whom are One Human Family, brothers and sisters to each other) . . . the True Believer recognizes the Oneness of all Humanity.”
Returning to Jeddah the next day, he toured the local bazaar and purchased an attractive head scarf for Betty. His eyes were drawn to a beautiful necklace, but he could not afford it. Although Malcolm