(Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum)
Muslim youngsters being taught Arabic at the University of Islam in Chicago, the largest Arabic school in the nation. The University is accredited and trains youth from kindergarten through high school. Picture above blackboard is of Elijah Muhammad. The star and crescent is the symbol of the Nation of Islam.
(Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum)
These candidates will not be Black Muslims; they will be “race” men who are willing to “speak out,” an act that is so dear to the hearts of Muslims. These Negro candidates will not back such Muslim programs as the quest for an all-black state, but neither will they denounce the Black Muslims. Some Black Muslims may run for office, however. Malcolm X has often flirted with the idea of seeking a Congressional seat, and there are those, including me, who feel he would win if he selected the right area.
This would mean that the Black Muslims would work with political candidates who must also work with other groups, some of whom would support direct action. This would indirectly ally the Muslims with direct action and would improve their image, provided they accompanied such action with the cessation of attacks on men like Martin Luther King and Roy Wilkins. As I see it, this is the best possible position for the Black Muslims: it would ally them with the Negro push for better housing, jobs, and schools while at the same time allowing them to abstain from direct action; it would also free them to say that a separate state is still the best answer. Most of all, such a move would lift the Black Muslims to the level of respectability they have so long wanted. Other Negro spokesmen would have to practice summitry with the Muslims, and they would become an accepted rather than feared force in the Negro community.
A second factor involved in the Black Muslim search for a new policy turns on Akbar Muhammad, the youngest son of Elijah, who has just returned to America after two years of study at Egypt’s famed Al-Azhar University. Al-Azhar is the cultural center of orthodox Islam, and its professors are the brains of that faith. It is beyond question that Elijah’s position has been enhanced by Akbar’s period of study there; it is just as certain that the Black Muslim movement will be affected by Akbar’s return.
At this writing Akbar has been home less than a month. He is in the company of Malcolm X and will make a nation-wide tour of Muhammad’s temples, where he will lecture on traditional Islam and the influence of Africa in current world affairs.