Malcolm X's Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Weekly

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Imam Tom Live

Malcolm X's Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Weekly

Malcolm X’s dedication to the truth and justice, his love for Islam, and the dignity (izzah) he carried himself with are characteristics we must embody ourselves as Muslims. But that’s not the only legacy that Malcolm left for us to uphold. His ideas on unity and economic autonomy to uplift communities and the ummah are not often discussed.

Imam Tom Facchine unpacks Malcolm’s legacy, this brilliant torch that he bore and passed onto us, and how we must now commit to carrying it.

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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.

Malcolm X was one of the most important Muslim figures of the last 100 years.

And unfortunately, Malcolm's legacy has been so abused intentionally that we as Muslims absolutely have to reclaim it. Even the way we remember him, I mean, he's remembered best as Malcolm X.

He's become a figure that's been associated with radicalism and violence and these sorts of things. But the name that he died upon was Al-Hajj Malik Shabazz. And that indicates the evolution of Malcolm X throughout his life.

And that was one of the things that all of us have to learn from. That Malcolm was someone who was always dedicated to reinventing himself when he came into contact with something that was better.

He was not stuck in his ways. He was not worried about his brand. He was not worried about being consistent or being called out on being a flip-flopper or hypocrisy. No, he was true to himself.

And when he came upon a better way of doing things, a better way of understanding things, he adapted himself. And he even reinvented himself. And this is the essence of Islam. The essence of Islam is that when you're confronted with the truth, you comport to the truth.

Not that you double down on what you've been doing and who you think you are and your ideas about who you are or how things should be.

The other thing is that what is well known is that Malcolm was such a thriving example of 'izzah, of dignity, that he refused to compromise on his dignity.

Even despite other people trying to imitate his cadence of speech or the way he dresses or his mannerisms in interviews.

How he was able to always question the framing of the questions and completely subvert the way in which people were always trying to trap him with questions, especially in interviews. You can always, he's never on the defensive.

Would you mind telling me what your father's last name was? The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves.

And then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse. We reject that name today. You mean you won't even tell me what your father's supposed last name was or gifted last name was?

I never acknowledged it whatsoever.

The way that he interviewed, he was always somebody to attack intellectually, ideologically, to make the interlocutor or the interviewer look like a fool and to shine a light on the assumptions that were hiding very deviously, usually behind the questions that were thrown his way.

He never for a second entertained the inferiority of Islam or his beliefs or his principles or his values.

When I was in on the pilgrimage, I had close contact with Muslims whose skin would in America be classified as white and with Muslims who themselves would be classified as white in America.

But these particular Muslims didn't call themselves white. They looked upon themselves as human beings, as part of the human family, and therefore they looked upon all other segments of the human family as part of that same family.

Another thing that about Malcolm that a lot of people don't realize, especially towards the end of his life, was his dedication to what he called black economics and economic autonomy, that his vision for local community based economic autonomy was unparalleled and unfortunately is mostly forgotten and understudied.

He understood very, very well the essential nature of being able to employ your own and being able to buy from your own and being able to provide and having an entire supply chain with your community, not being vulnerable and dependent upon people who don't really want you to succeed because those points of vulnerability, they are leveraged in times of political crisis, as many of us are seeing today.

So being able to establish businesses and have a tight knit community and have the discipline as consumers and purchasers and buy from our community and to be able to have the broadness of vision to encourage our youth to open up businesses and to work with their hands and to be electricians and plumbers and to make stuff, not just to be employees.

That's not how you be independent or autonomous. And Malcolm understood that perfectly well. And another point when Malcolm would say that Islam is the solution for racism in the United States. And there's two very important dimensions to that reflection.

One is that it is bold to believe that there is a solution at all. Many people have given up on the possibility of there being a solution.

So Malcolm's observation and his conviction that Islam was the solution is predicated upon a hope and a belief that there can be a solution, that the United States society, which was built on the eradication of Native Americans and built on the slave labor of enslaved Africans, it is redeemable.

It is redeemable. And we believe that firmly in Islam. People can be redeemed, that people can see the light and entire societies can be redeemed and see the light. But you have to do the work. You actually have to go through the steps of redemption.

And Malcolm believed that the only thing that would redeem the United States was Islam. And that throws the burden back on us in the Muslim community.

Are we living the solution that Malcolm saw when he traveled through the Muslim world? Do we still suffer from racism in our own communities? Yes, we do.

Do we still suffer from colorism in our communities where people will talk about marrying a shade lighter or the parents will step in the way sometimes and prevent two righteous people from getting married because of issues of color or race?

Are we living this solution, this goldmine that Malcolm knew that Islam was sitting on, the ability to redeem society and American society in particular from racism and bigotry in order to live Malcolm's legacy and to live it holistically?

It's not just about doing something in February. It's not just giving lip service or imitating him. But it has to do with taking his analysis seriously and trying to further it and trying to implement it.

Malcolm's lessons for the Muslim community and for the world by and large are sitting in his interviews and his books and haven't been implemented. And they're right there, easily accessible to all.

So as the years continue to pass, let's try to live that legacy and resuscitate and revive that legacy and put it into practice to show people that Islam truly is the solution. That we call the people to something that is beautiful and perfect and we call to it in a beautiful way.

That we show people another way of interacting and another way of relating to yourself.

That your value as an individual is not tied to your racial identity or your this identity or that identity but it's in your righteousness, your piety and your status with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

I think a lot of people are confused by the new Arabic name, Al-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz. This is always, I've always had the name on my passport Malik Al-Shabazz, only I only used it in the Muslim world.

Well Hajj is a title that is given to any Muslim who makes the pilgrimage to Mecca during the official Hajj season. Well will you now use Shabazz and drop X?

I'll probably continue to use Malcolm X because and I'll probably use it as long as the situation that produced it exists.

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