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By Root 1961 0

several years before. Malcolm’s discontent with the Nation was only one of many varieties, and many MMI members had departed the Nation for reasons that had little to do with his new agenda. Some, remembered James, “were brothers who wanted to go and set things right about Ronald Stokes,” in Los Angeles. They had quit the Nation back in 1962 “based upon Captain Joseph’s throwing cold water on their aspirations” to punish Los Angeles police. Others had fallen away due to the Nation of Islam’s rigor: “People who thought of [the NOI] as a good idea said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t make these moral adjustments in my life.’ Some former Muslims could not go back to Mosque No. 7 because they were living, as we say down South, common law. And they were supposed to get married.”

These MMI members would require a clear vision to direct their energies, but Malcolm had not fully defined the group’s purpose. James assumed that hostilities with the Nation would be inevitable because it would view Muslim Mosque as a competitive sect, but he himself was not so clear on what exactly MMI was as a religious organization, “because Brother Malcolm wasn’t specific.” Despite the regular meetings, things were so disorganized that he was already tempted to resign as MMI coordinator. Worse yet, many of the lapsed Muslims flocking to the MMI still believed in the Nation’s old theology. At a May 20 meeting, one questioner asked Malcolm whether “he had seen W. D. Fard” during his hajj to Mecca—receiving the reply that MMI members must reject “the old notions” of what constituted the Islamic faith and must embrace “reality.”

One of the few newspaper articles that presented Malcolm’s conversion in a positive light had appeared in the Washington Post on May 18. Dr. Mahmoud Shawarbi, by this time the director of the Islamic Center in New York City, was credited with being the “man who tamed Malcolm.” He informed the Post that some Arab Muslims living in the United States had voiced “opposition to his tutelage of Malcolm Xʺ stemming “from fears that [he] is not sincere and may use the religion and pilgrimage as a device to improve his public image.” Shawarbi gave a full-throated defense. “I have no doubt of his sincerity,” he said, recalling of Malcolm that “sometimes he would even cry while passages of the Holy Koran were being read.” He accurately predicted that Malcolm would soon disavow his call for Negroes to form rifle clubs, and that his political efforts would reach beyond blacks. “If he admits all people . . . and goes about things quietly and Islamically, I am sure it will be a very big movement,” he declared. The Post story noted, however, that the majority of civil rights observers in New York City were “adopting a wait and see attitude.”

The FBI had also not forgotten Malcolm. Early on May 29, Malcolm received a call from its New York office, requesting an interview at his home. He consented, but before the FBI agents arrived he set up a tape recorder hidden under his couch. The agents were investigating a federal case based in Rochester, in which a man awaiting trial had given an incriminating statement about Malcolm. The agents wanted to know if Malcolm had attended an evening meeting of Muslims in that city on January 14 to plan the assassination of President Johnson. Fortunately, he could prove that on that date and time he was with Alex Haley, working on his autobiography; the statement given to the FBI was “so ridiculous,” he later wrote, “that it sounds like to me that it was something that was invented even though it would be denied, it would still serve as a propaganda thing.” The FBI agents asked him to provide “any information you want to give us about the Muslims.” Yet the most curious part of the interview came when the agents questioned him on his current status in the NOI. Malcolm replied that he was still under the suspension ordered by Elijah Muhammad. “He is the only one who can give out any information. I couldn’t say nothing behind what he would say.” Far from revealing his break from the Nation, he instead vigorously defended