dawud, it’s funny. i’ve been having strange attacks of nostalgia for jeddah, too. i don’t know why. i think it’s partly that i just want to move around a bit. and maybe a desire for good, clean, burning heat. but, yeah, strange indeed.

I would also have had the same dynamic influence me that you spoke of, from feeling very positive about Islam’s views on race relations to feeling very disappointed – particularly when I travelled to, and lived in, Saudi Arabia; that Arabs could be just as racist as Americans – indeed, one black friend who grew up in DC and had roots in the American South said Saudi reminded him of how his parents and grandparents had described their lives in the south.

Cynicism is not what grabs me though, because I think that Malcolm was self-critical enough that he would have seen through much of that, just as he turned on Elijah Poole when he discovered his cynical manipulation of the NoI. Allah knows though.

As for feeling conflicted when muslims in the MSA, some of whom I know are less than critical of the tendencies towards racism amongst the muslim community, that’s shared…

I’m thinking of returning to Jeddah. Should I have my head checked?

rawi,
malcolm was probably less about the activism than about the conversion narrative
yeah, i think that’s true for most young muslims. and there’s a part of me, out of respect for my teenage self and my friends, that doesn’t want to dismiss that or trivialise it entirely. i think we’re sorely lacking, as a community, for figures like Malcolm, so it’s understandable that we read that need into his story. especially when it was genuinely integral to the many changes that constituted that his life.
but there’s another part of me, of course, that wants to tear apart that reading entirely. and that considers that effort a labour of love.

funny, also, that the first time i finally got to see the movie was at college when we screened it one night during IAW (for which i did the poster!)

your comments on the wider muslim appropriation of malcolm are an excellent point of departure for further research on this. after all, most muslims read the autobiography because he was muslim. for me back then, malcolm was probably less about the activism than about the conversion narrative (even as i had a fair bit of the young activist’s rage…). malcolm happened to be a particularly inspiring case of the typical conversion narrative so popular in muslim circles. in fact, i think the first time i read an excerpt from the autobiography was in an anthology called “why i became muslim”

p.s. i too have been meaning to read fanon for quite some time. hopefully soon…

adnan,
regardless of the political or religious influences.
at the risk of sounding single-minded, i will say that i don’t much like those kinds of readings. they neutralise his life entirely so as to render the book little more than a sort of new-age coming-of-age story. and if you can talk about malcolm x – and i’m not saying you are – as purely an exercise in self-realisation, as though this self-knowledge exists outside of the realms of politics/religion/culture, then i really don’t want to talk to you.

yasmine,
yes, a lot of muslims do say this. and for this reason, come IAW, every MSA across the continent drops his name and has at least one event about him, and – i say this having designed posters for said events – this makes me deeply uncomfortable. it feels too easy, too comfortable, far too superficial. what happens after we have our obligatory movie night? how would this be different if Malcolm weren’t so inexplicably popular in mainstream cultures? is he really just a Muslim MLK? because he’s not, really. and should not be presented as such. but that’s what i feel happens.
yes, most people (and muslims) i know have read the book. but – and this will make me sound elitist – i was thinking of only a very few friends when i wrote this.
and not all of those friends are muslim. – which is another thing i want to think about: how muslim youth and non-muslim youth differ in their readings. i think that there must be a significant difference, just because Malcolm was muslim. and at some point, for my (muslim) friends and me anyway, it became apparent that Malcolm’s being muslim meant more and less than we’d initially assumed. first, his faith guaranteed nothing in terms of his politics; and second, the chronology of his faith is a lot more complicated than the straightforward progress narrative a lot of muslims claim Malcolm demonstrated.