The Malcolm X effect of Gambian-British activist Momodou Taal.
Momodou Taal. Image via author.
At a time of global unrest and political upheaval, voices that bridge the gap between historical scholarship and frontline grassroots politics are crucial. Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian PhD student at Cornell University reflects on this moment and his upcoming anthology, The Malcolm Effect Revisited.
The book reflects African history, black internationalism, pan-Africanism, Islam, Marxism, political economy, race and gender. But Taal is not just an up-and-coming scholar. He is a committed activist whose journey, from studying Islamic sciences in Cairo to advocating for racial equality during the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement, to leading student encampments against the Gaza genocide, makes him a compelling figure in today’s fight for justice. Adama Juldeh Munu caught up with him in an exclusive to find out what it means to carry out the Malcolm X Effect.
I am sitting at a table with a glass of homemade ginger beer at Kara Lounge. This restaurant serves delicious Senegambian and West African cuisine in one of Istanbul’s busiest areas, Cihangir, which is in the Beyoğlu district. This historic area, named after Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent’s son, Şehzade Cihangir, is known for its Bohemian vibe, stunning Bosphorus views and community of artists and intellectuals. It seems a fitting place to speak to 30-year-old Momodou Taal, who, like me, is of West African descent and has a penchant for pan-African politics and commentary. I’ve long wanted to speak with him, but I hadn’t until now, even though we run in similar circles.
You might recognize him from his dynamic speeches at the recent pro-Palestinian encampment at Cornell University. However, like many Black British Muslim millennials, I first encountered Taal a few years ago through the Baraka Boys. This influential group of young British Muslim men of mainly African and African Caribbean descent gained prominence in the 2010s for their podcast, which featured vibrant debates on social, spiritual, and political issues facing millennial and Gen Z Muslims in the West. Both Taal and I were in the United Kingdom during this time. But now, neither of us is “home”; Taal is in Cairo, and I’m in Istanbul. “For me, Baraka Boys was a time,” Taal says. “It was necessary, but I think it is also nice seeing everyone doing their own thing. I still see parts of that time in myself.”
In our initial conversation, he shared that his interest in politics was partially sparked by the election of US President Barack Obama. Inspired by Obama, Taal wanted to become the UK’s first Black prime minister. This ambition led him to join the UK Youth Parliament at a time when the Labour government was transitioning to a Conservative administration in the late 2000s. However, he later became disillusioned by what he felt was the stark contrast between both parties’ ideals and the socioeconomic realities faced by the communities he grew up in.
But political activism is not unfamiliar to Taal, as he comes from (and I hope he excuses me for saying this) political royalty. His maternal great-grandfather was Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, The Gambia’s first president from 1974 to 1994. That lineage alone has attracted criticism online, with some accusing Taal of being part of the Black bourgeoisie, which he pushes back on. “I love this,” Taal says, “because this is what people try to get at—to say that though I am a Marxist, I’m part of the ‘African elite.’ It cracks me up. Long story short, my great-grandfather was the first president of The Gambia. He was a conservative and close to the West … My dad’s side of the family was made up of radical pan-Africanists. They were responsible for bringing Kwame Ture to The Gambia; they spoke about Nkrumah, Lumumba, and Sankara. I grew up hearing radical as well as establishment politics in conversations across both sides of my family.”
Taal was born in The Gambia and moved to the UK when he was a child, and it could be argued his continental and diaspora African identity gives him a unique perspective into what it means to be a Black Briton today. But as I speak to him, he seems like he was the kind of young Black boy in London I grew up with. He tells me that he was a bit of a “wild one,” which he channeled into his one-time ambition to become a rapper. His stage name was MenTaal (a play on “mental” and his surname). And like many other young Black men, he grappled with momentary self-hatred. “At the time, in London, being Black was synonymous with being Jamaican and light-skinned, and being [continental] African was not cool,” Taal explains. “These are things that were being seared into me at the same time. [But] I remember looking at how I looked at myself through the ‘Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?’ speech of Malcolm X that I found on YouTube.”
During this time, he was gifted The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which for generations has been a literary reference for Black people. But it also seems like a rite of passage for the Black Muslim to be handed this book and to uncover the hardships the civil rights leader faced, from growing up in Nebraska to his “Red” days to becoming a Black nationalist under the Nation of Islam, to his conversion to Islam while adhering to a more pan-Africanist and globalist philosophy, right before he was assassinated in 1965. Taal speaks about belonging to a Muslim family but not fully adhering to Islamic practice. And he tells me that he can now appreciate what this means beyond prayer or fasting. Taal believes that Malcolm X showed him that religion is something to be engaged with, in the context of social change.
To explore this, Taal wanted to learn more about the religion itself, from both an academic and theological standpoint. After completing an undergraduate law degree, he moved to Egypt when he was 21 years old to attend the prestigious Al-Azhar Mosque Program where he studied Arabic and earned an ijazah, or certification in Sharia law. He always had a love for Islamic jurisprudence, arguably one of the more creative Islamic sciences, and how it translates into addressing issues that people experience across different communities. “I wanted to be an Islamic scholar to help young people,” he says. “For better or for worse, we can talk about the institution of religion, but at the end of the day, there has not been a greater tool for social organization than religion.”
Taal believes Islam can improve the conditions of Black people, which echoes comments Malcolm X made during his trip to Cairo on July 17, 1964, where he said that “Islam is the only religion that gives both the spiritual and material solution to the problems of Black men in America. Only through Islam can the Black man hope to become a complete human being.” It’s precisely why an Islam that is aligned with Western-state projects feels very alien to Taal.
A look at the historical record in North and West Africa reveals that anticolonial movements were rarely divorced from the scholarly class. Figures who exemplify this connection include Usman dan Fodio, who founded the Sokoto Caliphate and whose wars against Hausa rulers laid the groundwork for resistance to European colonization; Ahmadou Bamba, the Senegalese Sufi leader and founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, who was exiled multiple times by the French for his nonviolent resistance; Imam Mukhtar al-Senussi, more commonly known as Omar Mukhtar, who led the struggle against Italian colonial rule in Libya; and Sierra Leone’s Bai Bureh, a Temne chief who led the Hut Tax War in 1898 to challenge British authority; among many others. Islam has been noted by various academics to have been a revolutionary force in the political and social conditions of the society the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) lived in and beyond. One of the Prophet’s closest companions was an enslaved Black man from present-day Ethiopia, Bilal ibn Rabah, who was freed when he became Muslim.
While Taal recognizes his Cairene alma mater tried to engage with both classical and contemporary issues, he says that the spirit of this rich tradition—that is, the fight against racial discrimination—at times was downplayed by some tutors and classmates. “Our classes are divided by school of thought. So in the Maliki classes, it’s mainly Black people. But you’d hear things like ‘Don’t get married to an African woman,’ or I’d hear from other classes that ‘Black women are not as desirable.’ Knowing me, I wouldn’t let that slide. When I’d speak up in class, other Western students, Asian or Arab (I thought they’d have my back), would tell me, ‘Why are you challenging the teacher? Why can’t you just read the text? We want to get through the book.’”
These experiences led Taal to what he calls the “limitations of traditional circles.” While Islam does not under any circumstance permit racism, he could appreciate that Muslims are not immune to ideals and systems that have racialized and demonized global majority communities. It was this realization that marked a turning point in Taal’s intellectual journey, leading him to embark on a PhD at Cornell University. His transition from a traditional Islamic student in Cairo to an academic-in-training in the US, delving into Black liberation politics and Marxist theory, is an interesting intellectual and personal evolution. A ‘Malcolm X effect’, if you like.
Malcolm X’s complex engagement with the political landscape (marked by his response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his subsequent exile from the Nation of Islam) mirrors the disillusionment Taal experienced, particularly during the racial reckoning of 2020, after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “The pandemic hit, and I was on Clubhouse,” he says. “I remember entering a room where people were speaking about Black liberation and radical politics, and I am thinking that this conversation was inspiring. I [then] opened a WhatsApp group where students of Islamic law were speaking about issues that I did not want to speak about or focus on, and all this during the Black Spring of 2020, after George Floyd died. It’s not a critique of them, if that’s what gets your blood boiling, alhamdulillah [praise be to God]. But I wanted to be a part of a discussion and move it forward, so I decided to get a PhD.”
Taal is part of Cornell University’s Africana Studies Department—the first in the United States. This is distinct from a Black studies program because it deals with the diaspora. Taal was inspired by how his hero lectured at the university a year before his infamous “Chickens Come Home to Roost” speech in 1963. It catapulted Malcolm X out of the Nation of Islam into Islam and pan-Africanism. The latter is a transition Taal also experienced. He told me that he had been a Black nationalist but developed a more pan-African outlook over time. “[Black nationalism] can have a myopic understanding of Blackness that is specifically tied to geographical locations,” he explains. “But pan-Africanism comes from a recognition that Africa is the root. Of course, there is specificity in how we see Blackness based on our location, but the pan-Africanism I hold to recognizes that Africa is still the root and that’s what binds us together.”
And it follows that a guiding question for Taal is “Why are Black people going through what they are going through particularly when it comes to material conditions?” He was attracted to Marxism for its analyses and theoretical framing, which he does not see as a contradiction to his religious beliefs. But he has found himself at loggerheads with some in the Muslim community because of his views. “Marx is not a prophet,” Taal says. “He was not divinely guided, but he has a critique of capitalism which up until now has been true. How can Africa be the most resource-rich area in the world but so poor? I was not afraid of causing controversy. I was so fed up with traditional circles that I wanted to make an exodus, and it had to happen in such a way that people understood that I was doing things that were going to have people ‘cancel me.’ Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do, but it worked.” He laughs. Having said that, he describes his engagement with the Muslim scene now as “more sincere” and “more organic.” “I don’t have the pressure, because I am not trying to be a shaykh. Initially, I did things that pissed people off; now it’s all right.”
His intellectual transformation is timely, as Palestinian liberation has gained unprecedented prominence due to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza following the October 7 attacks. The Palestine-Israel issue is a hot-button topic in Muslim communities due to the region’s deep historical, cultural, and religious significance. Additionally, the occupation of Palestinian land resonates with the colonization and displacement experienced by global Black and Brown populations at the hands of Western nations, intersecting with pan-African struggles against both colonialism and neocolonialism. Taal says, “pan-Africanism can mean different things to different people, but there are no distinctions between that and anti-Zionism. What frustrates me is that up until 1991, Zionism was declared racism, and that was because of Black folk. So when I hear people say things like ‘Palestinians can be anti-Black,’ I say, ‘That’s missing the point.’ The systems that oppress the Palestinians also oppress us. It’s in your interest to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist.”
This focus on the intersection of global struggles is reflected in Taal’s book, The Malcolm Effect Revisited, which is based on his podcast, The Malcolm Effect, which he started during the coronavirus lockdown. It features interviews with academics, activists, and thought leaders who explore how Malcolm X’s legacy continues to shape contemporary discourse. It covers a wide range of topics, including Black empowerment, Pan-Africanism, and the intersection of race and religion. “I was a bit dismayed at the podcasting scene, especially the Black one,” Taal explains. “Look, get your bag, through entertainment or pranks, but I asked ‘Where are the podcasts that speak to Black people’s issues?’ Because political education is equipping people to understand and read their situation in an accessible way.”
The book and the podcast are documentation of where Taal is in his politics. He emphasizes that he does not have all the answers and that the podcast is a journey through his intellectual meanderings. It’s an honesty I can appreciate, not least because Malcolm X’s autobiography speaks to his own intellectual journey, one that was cut short when he was assassinated in 1965.
Taal is uniquely positioned to undertake this task of tracing the legacy of Malcolm X, given his background in both continental Africa and Black British contexts, and now as a Black diasporan in the US, where his decision to produce a book is particularly significant, given the country’s unequivocal support for Israel. “We are in a pivotal moment. We are neoliberal subjects, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and this moment in Gaza has shown a mirror to the Western order’s brutality,” Taal says. “We all thought the Black Lives Matter movement was going to be a watershed, but I don’t want to overstate it, I hope there is an embrace of a better world. I hope people can reimagine a new world order.”
Reflecting on our conversation, I am taken by some parallels between Taal and Malcolm X. Both navigated their social conditions and used their experiences to drive change by asking deep political questions about their respective communities and then later about global Black communities. As we head toward the 60th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, and confront the gaping hole he left behind, it is fair to say that Taal is one among many who are, in their ways, continuing his legacy.
