Letter from Malcolm X from Mecca

Malcolm X or Al-Hajj Malik Ash-Shabazz, saw the light of true Islam through his pilgrimage in April 1964.
As a member, until then, and spokesperson of the organization “The Nation of Islam”, a nationalist socio-political religious movement with racist tendencies.
Malcolm firmly believed that the white man was diabolical and the black man should be his enemy.
After leaving the Nation of Islam in March 1964, he changed his perspective completely on white men, and abandoned his stance of rejection of them.
The pilgrimage was a primary factor in achieving this evolution.
This is a quote from a letter that Al-Hajj Malik Ash-Shabazz wrote to his aides and followers in Harlem, from the heart, telling them about his experience.
In it, he explains what he experienced during Hajj and what produced such a profound change in his perspective on race and racism.
We must keep in mind that this letter was written at a time when the history of African Americans in the United States was still being forged.

“I have not seen any case of hospitality and a sense of brotherhood as strong as the one I have observed here by people of all colors and races; here, in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly mute and fascinated by the grace I constantly see displayed around me by people of all skin colors. I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca, I have made my seven circuits around the Ka’aba, I was brought by a young mutawaf named Muhammad, I drank water from the well of Zam Zam. I walked back and forth seven times between the hills of As Safa and Al Marwah. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mount Arafat. There were tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blonde people with blue eyes, to black Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe could not exist between the white and the non-white. America needs to understand Islam, because this is the religion that erases the problem of racism from society. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people in America who would have been considered “white,” but the white attitude was driven out of their minds by the religion of Islam.
I have never before had such an experience of sincere and true brotherhood, practiced together by people of all colors, regardless of their race.
You may be frightened by these words coming from me.
But in this pilgrimage, what I have seen and experienced has forced me to restructure many of my thoughts and models that I had previously held, and I am forced to put some of my previous conclusions aside.
This wasn’t too hard for me.
Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face the facts, and accept the reality of life with the new experience and the new knowledge it brings.
I have always had an open mind that must necessarily go, along with flexibility, hand in hand with each person who intelligently seeks the truth.
For the past eleven days, here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same carpet – while praying to the same God – with fellow Muslims, whose eyes are the bluest, whose hair is the most blonde, and who have the whitest skin.
But in the words and deeds of white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.
We were truly all the same, brethren, because the belief in one God had taken the white out of their minds, the white of their conduct, and the white of their attitude.
I could see that perhaps, if white Americans would accept the Oneness of God, they too could actually accept the Oneness of Man, and stop measuring people by the color of their skin.
With racism afflicting America as an incurable cancer of so-called ‘Christianity’, the white American heart must be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem.
Perhaps it might be time to save America from impending disaster: the same destruction brought to Germany by the racism that destroyed the country. Here in the Holy Land, I have the clearest spiritual visions of what is going on in America between the black and the white.
The American Negro can never be blamed for his racial animosities, he is only reacting to four hundred years of conscious racism of the American white.
But since the preeminence of racism is leading America down the path of suicide, I believe, from the experiences I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the universities and colleges, will become aware and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth, the only way to save America from the disaster to which racism will inevitably lead it.
He had never been so sincere.
I have never felt more humble and worthy.
Who would believe the blessings that have accrued in a black American?
A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a “white man,” a United Nations diplomat, ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his place in the hotel, his bed.
I would never have dreamed that I would be the recipient of these honors, honors that in America would be given only to a King, not to a Negro.
All praise is due to God, the Lord of the Worlds.”

Malcolm X saw and experienced many positive things: generosity and sincerity were qualities that impressed him and the welcome he received in those places.
He saw the real brotherhood and fraternity of different ethnicities, and this led him to change his attitude towards the white man and say:

“I’m not racist… In the past I have allowed myself to make crushing accusations against white people, against the entire white race, and these generalizations have caused injury to some white person who perhaps did not deserve to be hurt. Because of the spiritual enlightenment with which I was blessed as a result of my recent pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to the general accusations against the white race. I am striving to live the life of a true Muslim. I must repeat that I am not racist nor do I admit the principles of racism. I can declare now, with complete sincerity, that I desire freedom, justice and equality, life, liberty and happiness for all people.”

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