Omar Suleiman

In a matter of seconds, two, three million people get arranged in perfect rows for prayer, right?

And it just, it looks like this perfect optical, you know, vision of just beauty when you see people in unison, standing, bowing, prostrating.

And you don't know who the person next to you is.

And that's where, you know, Malcolm X, you read about the history of Malcolm X. When he went to Hajj, that's where his entire worldview shifts.

Not just his previous baggage, but...

the dream that he then had, the possibilities that he saw for people to be able to overcome some of the false distinctions that we have, race and class, and to see God as one and to come together and worship him alone and also seeing each other equal participants in that worship.

I think reading his autobiography is...

Extremely important for anyone that wants to understand him, right?

So you read him his own words.

Malcolm lived the tragedy of being a young disenfranchised black man in America who went through all of the difficulties that were posed in a 1950s America.

towards him.

I mean, he went through the system and it was awful for him and he had to pull himself out of that and make himself into an incredible orator, an incredible leader that suddenly had a pretty empowering vision and a calm and nonetheless courageous, but a calm presence to him.

And was able to bring together people, especially uplift black people in America, to believe in themselves.

Young men in America, in prisons in particular, will read the autobiography of Malcolm X and see hope for themselves.

To come out of the darkness of, you know, being imprisoned not just by...

the bars in front of them, but also by what they thought to be their own worth prior to that moment.

And so Malcolm climbs out of that and he goes through multiple phases.

So Malcolm dies as an Orthodox Muslim who does not believe in the superiority of one race over the other.

finds great tranquility in the practice of the Hajj, great clarity.

And I think you read his letters from Mecca and he talks about his change, his transformation in particular.