Malcolm’s first priority was to complete the Hajj. Borrowing money from his sister, Ella Collins, he flew to Egypt and then Saudi Arabia in April 1964. Malcolm X had long been curious about mainstream Muslim communities, having been introduced to Sunni Islam by his sister Ella and the Egyptian academic Mohamed Shawarbi. Correspondence with Muslim friends suggests that he was already beginning to have doubts about the theology of the Nation of Islam. As Sunni jurists pointed out, the Nation’s belief in the inherent superiority of Black people and its claim that its founder Wallace Fard Muhammad was an incarnation of Allah were particularly offensive to Muslim communities across the world. It was during the Hajj, however, that Malcolm X finally abandoned his hard-line beliefs and embraced Sunni Islam.
“I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color,” he explained in one letter from Mecca. “You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen and experienced has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions.”
With this new religious outlook in place, Malcolm X began searching for new models of radical political action. He traveled first to Lebanon, where he was impressed by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. He then returned to Egypt, where he was inspired by the government’s support for industrialization and its strong one-party system. “No African nation,” he noted in his diary, “needs a political system that will allow division and bickering while it is trying to decolonize itself.” He then flew on to Nigeria and Ghana, where he spent time with nationalist politicians and became fascinated by their historic campaigns against British imperialism. Over time, this fact-finding tour also began providing opportunities for Malcolm X to speak directly to new African audiences. He gave frequent interviews to the press from Nigeria and Ghana, and his university lectures were broadcast over national radio services. Malcolm’s priority was to undermine the publicity of the U.S. Information Agency, which he believed had used Kennedy’s popularity in Africa and the promise of the civil rights bill to present the United States as a progressive and responsible world power. With characteristic dark humor, Malcolm X claimed that his speeches and interviews had “shot holes in the JFK image” across the continent. Africans, he said, would soon learn to distrust any “information agents” who claimed that the United States was abandoning its racist past.