Malcolm Shabazz mourned at California funeral; burial Tuesday in Hartsdale
Hundreds gathered Friday to remember the late grandson of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X as mourners said Malcolm Shabazz was well on his way to cementing his own legacy.
More than 200 people attended a traditional Islamic service in Oakland for the 28-year-old Shabazz, who authorities say was beaten to death last week over a $1,200 bar bill in Mexico City.
The service, which lasted more than two hours, featured plenty of prayer, songs, spoken word and tears. Many among the procession of speakers said while they initially connected with Shabazz because of his famous grandfather, they learned to appreciate a man they called “Young Malcolm” as a leader in his own right.
“If I could put into one word how I feel about Malcolm, it would be, ‘inspiration,'” Hussein Mekki, 32, of Houston, Texas, told fellow mourners. “Hopefully that will continue, and he can inspire us for the rest of our lives.”
Despite troubles early in life, mourners said Shabazz was seeking redemption with plans to write a memoir and another book denouncing youth violence.
Abdel Malik Ali, 55, a community activist from Oakland, said “Young Malcolm” appeared ready to fuse the history of Malcolm X along with his own experiences he described as “Generation Next.”
Shabazz, who also was the father of a young girl, wanted to help build mosques and education centers across America, Ali said.
“He was looking for his own voice, his own place in this world,” Ali said. “He had his struggles just like everybody else, but he eventually took on a huge responsibility in embracing his family’s legacy that’s harder than anybody could ever imagine.”
While Shabazz was originally from New York, he settled in the Bay Area more than three years ago after taking a spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca at the advice of friends and local political activist Yuri Kochiyama, who knew his grandfather and wrote to Shabazz while he was incarcerated.
Close friend Hashim Ali Alauddeen, a doctoral student in Islamic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said Friday that Shabazz had plans to attend community college in the area and eventually seek a bachelor’s degree in African-American studies at Berkeley.
“His heart was sincere. He strived to do what’s right,”
Alauddeen said tearfully as he stood over Shabazz’s casket while delivering his friend’s eulogy. “He did his best to purify his soul. His intention and his sincerity were to serve God.”
NEW YORK REMEMBRANCES
Shabazz’s body will be brought back to New York, where on Tuesday his family will hold a private service at The Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem. He will then be interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, where Malcolm X is buried.
Officials at the Harlem mosque said that the family is in the process of arranging a public memorial.
On May 9, Shabazz was found badly beaten outside of the Palace bar near Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City by a friend, Miguel Suarez. Shabazz was taken to a hospital where he died, according to Suarez.
Officials in Mexico City have arrested bar employees David Hernandez Cruz and Manuel Alejandro Perez de Jesus in connection with Shabazz’s death. Prosecutors allege that a fight broke out over a bar bill and the two men ended up punching and kicking Shabazz, as well as beating him with a bat. Cruz and Perez de Jesus are facing homicide and aggravated robbery charges.
Shabazz had been turning his life around in recent years, after several run-ins with the law in the Hudson Valley.
Shabazz, born in 1984 to Qubilah Shabazz, one of six daughters of Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz, was only 12 when he set fire to his grandmother’s Yonkers home. Betty Shabazz died from severe burns, and Malcolm Shabazz ended up serving 4 years in juvenile detention.
He later expressed regret for his actions, telling The New York Times in 2003 that he would sit on his jail cot and ask for a sign of forgiveness from his dead grandmother.
“I just wanted her to know I was sorry and I wanted to know she accepted my apology, that I didn’t mean it,” he said. “But I would get no response, and I really wanted that response.”
Malcolm Shabazz also served time for a 2002 attempted robbery in Middletown. He was released in 2005. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to criminal mischief for smashing the window of a Yonkers doughnut shop.
In recent years, Malcolm Shabazz said he was writing a memoir and traveling the country to speak out against youth violence. On his Facebook profile, he said he was attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
He proudly embraced his grandfather’s legacy, describing himself on his Twitter page as “Grandson, name-sake and first male heir of the greatest revolutionary leader of the 20th century.”
Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 as he delivered a speech in a Harlem ballroom. The annual pilgrimage to his Hartsdale burial site will be held this weekend, on the anniversary of his birthday.