Malcolm X at 100 : Malcolm X Goes to Mecca

It is the Hajj season of 2025 — and it also marks the 100th anniversary of Malcolm X’s birth.

In these difficult times filled with despair, anger, and growing racism in the Arab Muslim world — and beyond — I find myself unable to ignore the profound spiritual experience Malcolm X had during his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in April 1964.

That journey was a turning point in his life. It marked his transformation from a former member of the Nation of Islam — which he had recently left — to someone who truly embraced being a brother within the global Muslim ummah.

Hajj expanded Malcolm X’s worldview. After years of advocating the separatist, Afrocentric ideology of the Nation of Islam, the pilgrimage introduced him to a vision of Islam rooted in unity, equality, and racial harmony among Muslims of all backgrounds.

The experience moved him deeply — so much so that he wrote a letter during the pilgrimage to a friend. That letter, written in Mecca on April 26, 1964, would later be included in the final chapters of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley.

What follows is the full text of that letter, written by Malcolm X — who by then was calling himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

Letter from Mecca

I have just completed my pilgrimage (Hajj) here to the Holy City of Mecca, the hollyiest City on earth, which is absolutely forbidden for non-Muslims to even rest their eyes upon. This pilgrimage is the most important event in the life of all Muslims, and there are over 226,000 who are here right now from outside of Arabia. From Turkey came the largest contagion, around 50,000 in over 600 buses. This refutes Westerner propaganda that Turkey is turning away from Islam.

I know of only 2 others who have made the actual Hajj to Mecca from America, and both of them are West Indians who also converts to Islam. Mr. Elijah Muhammad, 2 of his sons, and a couple of his followers visited Mecca outside the Hajj season, and their visit is known as the “Omra”, or Lesser Pilgrimage. It is con-

(Page 2) -sidered a blessing in the Muslim World even to make the “Omra”. I very much doubt that 10 American citizens have ever visited Mecca, and I do believe that I might be the first American born Negro to make the actual Hajj itself. I’m not saying this to boast but only to point out what a wonderful accomplishment and blessing it is, and also to enable you to be in a better position intellectually to evaluate it in its proper light, and then your own intelligence can place it in its proper place.

This pilgrimage to the Holliest of Cities as been a unique experience for me, but one which as made me the recipient of numerous unexpected blessings beyond my wildest dreams.

Shortly after my arrival in Jeddah, I was met by Prince Muhammed Faisal who informed me that his illustrious father, his Excellency Crowned Prince Faisal had decret that I be that I The ruler of Arabia be his Guest. What has happened since then would take several books to described, but through the ***** of his Excellency I have since stayed in ***** hotels in Jeddah, Mecca, Mina – with a private car, a driver, a religious guide, and many servants at my disposal.

Malcolm X with Crown Prince Faisal then in April 1964

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Never have I been so highly honored and never had such honor and respect made me feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe that such blessing could be heaped upon an American Negro!!! (But) in the Muslim World, when one accepts Islam and ceases to be white or Negro, Islam recognizes all men as Men because the people here in Arabia believe that God is One, they believe that all people are also One, and that all our brothers and sisters is One Human Family.

I have never before witnessed such sincere hospitality and the practice of true brotherhood as I have seen it here in Arabia. In fact all I have seen and experienced on this pilgrimage as forced me to “re-arrange” much of thoughts pattern and to toss aside some

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of my previous conclusions. This “adjustment to reality” wasn’t to difficult for me to undergo, because despite my firm conviction in whatever I believe, I have always tried to keep an open mind, which is absolutely necessary to reflect the flexibility that must go hand in hand with anyone with intelligent quest for truth never comes to an end.

Malcolm X's original letter, click
to see the header

There are Muslims here of all colors and from every part of this earth. During the past days here in Mecca (Jeddah, Mina, and Mustaliph) while understanding the rituals of the Hajj, I have eaten. From the same plate, drank from the same glass and slept on the same bed or rug – with Kings, potentates and other forms of rulers – ******* with fellow Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes was the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond – I could look into their blue eyes and see that they regarded me as the same (Brothers), because their faith in One God (Allah) had actually removed “white” from their mind, which automatically changed their attitude and their behavior (towards) people of other colors. Their beliefs in the Oneness as made them so different from American whites that their colors played no part in my mind in my dealing with them. Their sincere

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To One God and their acceptance of all people as equals makes them (so called “Whites”) also accepted as equals into the brotherhood of Islam along with the non-whites.

If white Americans could accept the religion of Islam, if they could accept the Oneness of God (Allah) they too could then sincerely accept the Oneness of Men, and cease to measure others always in terms of their “difference in color”. And with racism now plaguing in America like an incurable cancer all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem.

The American Negro could never be blamed for his racial “animosities” because his are only reaction or defense mechanism which is subconscious intelligence has forced him to react

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against the conscious racism practiced (initiated against Negroes in America) by American Whites. But as America’s insane obsession with racism leads her up the suicidal path, nearer to the precipice that leads to the bottomless pits below, I do believe that Whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellects will see the “Handwriting on the Wall” and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam, and force the older generation to turn with them—

This is the only way white America can worn off the inevitable disaster that racism always leads to, and Hitler’s Nazi Germany was best proof of this.

Now that have visited Mecca and gotten my own personal spiritual path adjusted to where I can better understand the depth of my religion (Islam), I shall be living in a couple days to continue my journey into our African Fatherland. Allah willing, by May 20th before my return to New York, I shall have visited Sudan, Kenya, Tanguanyika, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Ghana, and Algeria.
You may use this letter in any way you desire,

Mecca, Saudi Arabia ..April , 26,1964.

To understand why this experience was so powerful for Malcolm X, we must first consider what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had long emphasized. He famously said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” This came from a man who was himself a pastor at a Baptist church in the American South — the very heart of U.S. segregation and racism.

Malcolm X went to Hajj at a time when the United States was deeply entrenched in the civil rights struggle. African Americans were fighting to dismantle segregation and gain access to previously all-white public schools and institutions. The battle was far from easy — the first Black students to integrate white schools often needed police or military escorts just to enter the classroom.

So, for Malcolm X to witness — and participate in — the annual Hajj pilgrimage, where Muslims of every colour, background, and nationality worshipped side by side in unity and humility, was a profound revelation. Hajj was not luxurious or performative; it was physically demanding and spiritually equalizing. It struck a deep chord in him.

Malcolm X praying in New York City

In his earlier years, Malcolm X — the son of two African American activists — joined the Nation of Islam while serving a prison sentence in the late 1940s. The group was gaining momentum at the time, offering a response to white supremacy through an Afrocentric ideology that promoted Black superiority. For nearly a decade, Malcolm X believed in that vision — a reverse image of the racism he had grown up with.

Many Muslims in the Arab world still mistakenly believe that the Nation of Islam (NOI) is a traditional Islamic group, largely because of Louis Farrakhan’s media appearances and anti-imperialist rhetoric. Farrakhan, who maintained friendships with figures like Muammar Qaddafi, often appeared on Arab television, presented as a Muslim activist from the U.S.

It wasn't until years later, through online research, that I came to understand the NOI as an Afrocentric offshoot that uses Islamic symbols and language but diverges significantly from mainstream Islam.

Yet despite Malcolm X’s eventual break with the Nation of Islam — and his public criticism of its teachings — U.S. mainstream media has long preferred to preserve the image of an angry Black separatist rather than acknowledge his transformation into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

There has never been a clear explanation to the American public that Malcolm X not only defected from the Nation of Islam but also embraced mainstream Islam. It was as if he had undergone a profound personal transformation — a kind of spiritual reprogramming.

By the way, Malcolm X visited Cairo before Mecca, and I’m still amazed at how both the Nasser regime in Egypt and the Faisal regime in Saudi Arabia were closely following U.S. media and chose to support figures like Malcolm X.
I don’t believe activists like him would receive the same welcome in either country today.