Malcolm X on Palestine (MLK Jr. Day)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Snopes via MSN questioning Malcolm X's quote

Friends MLK and friend Buddhist monk Thai

It's wonderful to honor Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday, but we often give short shrift to the amazing contributions of Malcolm X. There's no reason we cannot celebrate both. But since Malcolm is perceived as being more militant or willing to fight back in a non-Gandhiesque way, it's all MLK all the time and Malcolm who?

MLK had the bravery to speak out against the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world, this country the USA. Doing so made him persona non grata. Now everyone pretends they have always loved and supported him. But they did not. At the time he had a great friend in Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Together they spoke out against the American War Machine. They raged against the machine and got in big trouble for doing so, culminating in assassination of King. Malcolm X met the same fate, whereas Thai (Thich Nhat Hanh) survived, avoiding inflammatory language that would have gotten him assassinated. Inasmuch as we love and love to say we love all things MLK, Americans in fact do not know much about him. When asked to quote something he said -- other than "I have a dream" -- we are at a loss.

And help your brother get there, too.

We really don't learn his message, just his cult of personality. It is this way with so many important figures. Take the modern Edward Snowden. A movie gets made about him, and people come away with knowing next to nothing about what he exposed but everything about his quirks and habits. If a person is important, that person is important for the content of speeches as much as character, not less. People have defects, like MLK cheating on Mrs. Cora King. No one talks about that, but no one talks about what so moved him to speak out against the American narrative, to speak truth to power, to say American racism had to be brought down. One great quote about this struggle ran:

"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

Claim: U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X said the Palestinian struggle is “not just a cry for justice. It’s a blistering battle for the most fundamental human rights that every living soul on this planet should inherit by birthright. It’s an unyielding resistance against the oppressive suffocating grip of occupation and the callous denial of the most basic human dignity. Just as the civil rights movement in the United States fought against the chains of racial discrimination, so too do the Palestinian people.”

• TikTok video of Malcolm X saying this
• Instagram.com
• Fact Check: About that Malcolm X quote on Palestine's 'blistering battle' for 'fundamental human rights' (Snopes via msn.com)