Philosophies of Resistance: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and The Palestinian Struggle
2025 marks the 100-year anniversary of the birth of radical Black leader, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X, and the 60-year anniversary of his assassination. As we commemorate these anniversaries, we reflect on his anti-imperialist, Pan-Africanist, and internationalist principles to understand not only his relationship to Palestine, but to emphasize historical and contemporary linkages of resistance, sacrifice, and faith. In 2025, his life and teachings remain as relevant as ever.
While Hajj Malik is widely known for his revolutionary activism for Afro-American communities across the United States, it was the year before his death in 1964 when Hajj Malik paid visits to international comrades across West Africa and the Middle East that further cemented his internationalist perspective. After a short stay in the Gaza Strip, Hajj Malik published his well-known article Zionist Logic in the Egyptian Gazette that presented Israel as a classic case of colonialism. In spite of the indifference and cultural divide our governments manufacture, the Black and Palestinian struggles remain deeply interconnected, calling us to continually examine the linkages in both our struggles and our common vision of liberation.
Through a reflection on Hajj Malik’s relationship with Palestine, we can develop new and increasingly complex understandings of the Palestinian struggle in ways that the western media cycle and Israeli propaganda cycle doesn’t allow. Similarly, we can explore the Palestinian resistance movement and its leadership, Hamas, through a reflection of Hajj Malik’s own philosophies of resistance and examine what relationship may exist, if at all, between Hajj Malik and martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, both of whom led and helped establish movements of resistance.
We must return
No boundaries should exist
No obstacles can stop us
Cry out refugees: “We shall return”
Tell the Mts: “We shall return”
Tell the alley: “We shall return”
We are going back to our youth
Palestine calls us to arm ourselves
And we are armed and are going to fight
We must return
In 1964, Hajj Malik travelled to Gaza for a two-day visit, arriving on Palestinian soil while the territory was under Egyptian control. Hajj Malik kept a diary where he documented his visits to local hospitals, mosques, and the Khan Younis refugee camp, which developed the year after the Nakba, and today is home to 95,550 displaced Palestinians. It was during this trip that Hajj Malik met Harun Hashem Rashid, a distinguished poet that Hajj Malik documented with regard in his diary. He captured a poem Rashid shared with him, We Must Return, inspired by Rashid’s own narrow escape from the 1956 Khan Younis massacre. The poem shares the good news of resistance and expresses the total faith that displaced Palestinians must and will return to their land.
On September 15, 1964, Malcolm X met with members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization at Cairo’s Shepheards Hotel (UNC Press).
For Hajj Malik, 1964 was a transformative year. He left the Nation of Islam, took a pilgrimage to Mecca, and travelled through West Africa. It was during his visit to Ghana that year that he decided to form the Organization of African Unity (OAAU). Upon his return, Hajj Malik stated he wanted to stress: “the importance in realising the direct connection between the struggle of Afro-Americans…and the struggle of our people all over the world.”
During his inaugural 1964 speech at the OAAU rally near Harlem, New York, Hajj Malik declared to his audience that the objective of the organization, as well as for Afro-Americans in the organization, was to: “fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.” Hajj Malik outlined the remainder of the objectives of the OAAU that centered the political, economical, cultural, social, and educational goals of the organization. Without hesitation, Hajj Malik repeated that these goals would be achieved “by any means necessary.”
It was during this speech that Hajj Malik first used the phrase “by any means necessary.” The quote originates from a 1948 French play “Dirty Hands” by Jean-Paul Sartre, who used it in the context of eradicating class stratifications “by any means necessary.” The phrase has also been used by revolutionary philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon during his address to the Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security in Africa in 1960. It’s clear that Hajj Malik’s travels to occupied Palestine cemented his understanding of the necessity of strong force on the part of the resistance. To paraphrase, he understood that an enemy who fights with guns cannot be defeated with rhetoric alone. His speech bears many similarities to Rashid’s poem, and can be viewed in the long tradition of global anti-colonial cultural and political work.
Malcolm X's visit to Gaza in 1964. During his visit, he was welcomed by Gaza's chief judge and scholar, Muhammad Khulusi Bseiso. Both men departed our world in 1965.
In a parallel time to the struggle for civil rights in Black America and national liberation movements on the African continent, Palestinians were struggling against the invading Israeli occupation. After the second world war, white settler forces in the West supported the mass immigration of Jewish Europeans and Americans to Palestine. The growing Zionist movement at the time, backed by Western governments and the UN, were able to force the partitioning of the land, carving out the state of Israel on Palestinian soil. It was in 1948 that Zionists forcibly expelled nearly a million Palestinians to claim the city of Jerusalem. This period, known as the Nakba, propelled us forward into what is now several decades of ongoing occupation, displacement, and genocide. As of the date of this publication, we have collectively witnessed 571 days of genocide in Palestine and 77 years of Israeli occupation.
The Gaza Strip has frequently been described as an open-air prison due to its relatively small size (365 km²) and the presence of the occupation's weapons, boots, and surveillance surrounding the strip by land, air, and sea. Israel has dedicated immense resources towards maiming and controlling the strip since the Nakba, majority of which has been provided by their main ally, the US regime, who endow the Israeli state with an abundance of arms, resources, and defense equipment. The unlimited supply of resources and the undisputed political support of the US has given rise to one of the world’s most well-funded and advanced armed forces, rendering them largely unphased by the stones and rocks that characterize Palestinian resistance. However, the mystique that Israel had developed and maintained regarding the strength of its sophisticated army and intelligence operations was shattered on October 7th, 2024 during the Al-Aqsa Flood.
In a report released by the Palestinian resistance, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is described as a strategic step to alleviate the blockade in the Gaza Strip and break from the siege of Israeli settler colonialism that has eroded access to water and sanitation, critical infrastructure such as hospitals and electricity, food provisions, free movement, and the collapse of the economy. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/43 affirms that a people struggling for independence and liberation from colonial rule have the right to do so using “all available means, including armed struggle.” For Hamas, as reiterated in their ceasefire negotiations, “the resistance and its weapons are linked to the existence of the occupation, and it is a natural right of our people and all peoples under occupation.”
In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Palestinian activist Khaled Barakat spoke with the Orinoco Tribune about the long-term strategy employed by the resistance movement. Barakat, a leftist voice currently based in Canada documenting the resistance, frames the Al-Aqsa Flood as the result of years of strategic planning by Hamas. In the interview, he explains that in 2019 Hamas adopted the strategy to defend Gaza against ground invasions from Israel - preparing for multiple scenarios in which Israel would attack. “So in every scenario that the Israeli commanders are now thinking to use, the Palestinian commanders know exactly how they can counter that.”
Hajj Malik, as briefly noted, spoke with precision when he outlined the objectives of his newly formed organization, the OAAU, that they would fight through opposition to establish the total independence of its people by any means necessary. The righteous cause of the Palestinian people and their social and national liberation movement against the ethnic cleansing project of Israel offers the greatest contemporary understanding of Hajj Malik's by any means necessary philosophy since his martyrdom.
“I am not saying I won’t fight anymore… I am saying that I don’t want war anymore. I want the end of the [Israeli] siege [of Gaza]. You walk to the beach at sunset, and you see all these teenagers on the shore chatting and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like. It’s breaking. And should break everybody. I want them free.” An excerpt from a 2018 interview with Yahya Sinwar.
Baraket describes “the relation between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance,” as “the relationship between the blood and the flesh to the body.” A relationship forged by the great strength and character of a people of whom no matter the status, nor the age, nor the student, nor the worker, nor the fighter; has been free from the weight of sacrifice and hardship that has characterized their relationship to their homeland since the dawn of the Nakba. The righteousness of the Palestinian social and national liberation movement follows their fundamental belief in their cause: their Iman (Faith), that despite the devastation, tragedy, and destruction, they are fighting and resisting against a usurping occupation for a just cause, under a just God.
While the occupation has hoped that its genocidal extermination agenda would extinguish the spirit and hope of the Palestinian people, it has only emboldened a new generation of believers. A generation of believers, fighters, and a global community of witnesses who wish to see the freedom of the Palestinian people. It is widely remarked that the resistance factions are comprised of groups of individuals who have been orphaned as a result of the destruction caused by USraeli shelling and colonialism that has manifested during their childhood. Since October 7th, some 17,000 children have been orphaned as a result of USraeli attacks. Orphans who will now grow up in refugee camps around other orphans and share the tales of the destruction of their homes, families, and the lives they left behind. Orphans, as history has shown us, that will have lost everything except their homeland, and that will live and grow to protect it, by any means necessary.
For 17 months following the Al-Aqsa flood, under the dire conditions that characterized the Gaza Strip before the flood and the renewed brutality, aggression, and genocide that characterized the strip post the flood, the Israeli military regime could not meet any of its military objectives nor inflict significant damage to the Palestinian resistance apparatus and its leading parties. The cradle describes the ceasefire deal brokered in January 2025 by Hamas as a courageous victory against an unruly onslaught only possible through a complex development of institutional capacity and field and psychological tactics displayed by Hamas that have yielded numerous tactical military victories while simultaneously preventing the occupation's political or military success. Barakat notes: “They know they were defeated on October 7th, and they are being defeated on the ground, and they are being defeated morally because there is nothing brave about an Israeli pilot going into his F-16 and throwing bombs at children” (Barakat, 2023).
Yahya Sinwar, the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024 until his martyrdom in October 2024, helped lead and architect the Al-Aqsa flood. Sinwar also served as the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from February 2017, the same place his martyrdom reached him on the battlefield. In his last moments, he was documented resisting until his last breath, shoulder to shoulder with his brigades repelling IDF ground incursions. While the leadership of Hamas has suffered great loss following the Al-Aqsa flood, the philosophy of the resistance regarding personality driven movements is quite clear; “the true source of Hamas’s strength lies in its collective and institutional structure” (The Cradles Palestine Correspondent, 2025). This organizational framework has enabled Hamas to endure even the most extreme challenges as well as express their progressive acumen in its development of its guerrilla tactics and military capabilities. Even amidst the occupation's repeated and consistent assassination attempts, aiming to break the spirit of the resistance and the hopes of the Palestinian people by assassinating their leaders, their faith and spirit remains high.
Yahya Sinwar captured in 2021 seated calmly in an armchair, smiling amidst the rubble of his home following an Israeli airstrike.
In 2021, in one of Sinwar’s last public interviews, he corroborated Hajj Malik's thoughts in 1964 when he stated that he wished to “take this opportunity to remember the racist murder of George Floyd… the same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by Israel against the Palestinians.”
The concept of armed resistance is a radical, uncompromising stance to protect a people and their land and requires a total belief and willingness to face sacrifice. While Sinwar and Hajj Malik shared a common belief in the spirit of resistance, they also understood that it carries with it the burden of the ultimate sacrifice. As companions of faith and politics and disassociates of time, Sinwar and Hajj Malik were distinguished radicals not simply due to their willingness to fight, but their concrete willingness to do so as part of their radical love for their community. Their companionship in Islam was becoming of their total love for their communities and their unflinching Iman in the struggle; Iman that is fostered by their belief in Islam and the duty for justice they have been taught to steward. A duty for justice that, regardless of competing social and political temporal forces, connects the lives of these two companions of faith against their geographically separate, yet deeply connected struggles resisting imperialism.
Western Imperialism, as both Hajj Malik and Sinwar cite, produces the violence, racism, and plundering we witness today globally. Both leaders teach that a dedicated, principled, and clear stance must be taken by the people to control their own destiny. Hajj Malik’s visit to Palestine provides a clear moment of connection that we can continue to learn from to inspire our sustained fight against Israeli occupation and Western imperialism.
For the 77 years of occupation that Palestinians have endured, there has been 77 years of resistance, steadfastness, and Iman that has carried us forward into the current moment. As witnesses to the current struggle, we remember the unrelenting sacrifice of the Palestinian people and the uncompromising stance of the resistance. It’s through this resistance and Hajj Malik’s own philosophies that we reaffirm that a people struggling for liberation from colonial domination have the right to do so by any and all means necessary. Linking the struggles of oppressed peoples globally allows us to continue developing deeper understandings of the stakes involved in achieving freedom, and strengthens the commitment to the unity necessary to realize it. As Frantz Fanon states in one of his seminal works, the Wretched of the Earth: “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”