# The Letter From Malcolm X Led Him to Islam! "I Shook His Hand!" - 70 Year Story of Khalid Yasin

- Language: en
- Published: 2026-08-26
- Canonical: https://blog.towardseternity.com/en/blog/the-letter-from-malcolm-x-led-him-to-islam-i-shook-his-hand-70-year-story-of-khalid-yasin
- Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3x4qbMsZY
- Channel: Towards Eternity

This is the cleaned transcript of the source video. The speech is unaltered.

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I was born in New York. 1946 Christian parents I walk like a gang member. I talk like a gang member. Why? Because that's New York That's Brooklyn Malcolm X was assassinated It was a very cold morning. Thousands of people were in the street to listen to Malcolm, to see him. We were on the roof myself and two or three others and his security saw us on the roof and told us to come down. It's just something that happened at that time. Assalamualaikum Sheikh Khalid Yasin We are very happy to have you with us. I want to start with who is Khalid Yasin? and can you tell us briefly about your life? Alhamdulillah assalatu wassalam ya rasool allah I was born in New York, 1946.

Christian parents and I grew up in, sort of as an orphan, although I had parents. I accepted Islam in 1965 from a very dignified personality by the name of Shaikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal. 1965 was the same year that Malcolm X was assassinated. So he was assassinated in February and I became Muslim in October. How was your life in regards to faith? What were you believing in? Well, the Christian I mean, the foster homes that I were in each one of them were a different persuasion of Christianity. We can say it was like a buffet. So Methodists, Episcopalian, Baptists. So I had the whole spectrum, by the time that I was 16 years old.

And then I went into the military service, and I was in the Air Force for two and a half years. So when I was in the military service, the Catholic religion was the most dominant. And so I had an occasion to to go and talk to a priest. Because I thought that, you know the priest is a person that he can mentor you or whatever. And then I saw some inconsistencies in that. So I tried my hand at Catholicism, but it was just too rigid, too much mystique, too European, too clinical. And then there was some tremendous contradictions inside the Catholic Church that manifested itself later on. Can you tell us about some of those contradictions?

So while I was in the Air Force, I was still trying to practice Christianity. You know, traditionally in some forms. It wasn't making sense to me when I was seven, but you digest it because it's given to you. But there were issues that were not making sense. Like... Well Jesus being God and his own son. That didn't make sense to me. And then he's also somehow the personality of the Holy Ghost. So, you know, the Trinity, this whole three in one concept in a person, three separate persons, but one God, it just didn't make sense to me. So how did your journey to Islam start? At 17 years old I remember riding on a train, I saw this letter, it was the New York Times.

And New York Times did a a complete full page advertisement or they printed the letter of Malcolm from Mecca. So I remember reading that letter. And in that letter, Malcolm He mentioned words like Mecca, you know, the Prophet Muhammad (saw) He mentioned the Kaaba, he mentioned the Quran. So there's five or six or seven things that he said in that letter, Hajj, Arafat and I never heard those words before. So at that time, we didn't have social media. If you were fortunate as a young person, and I was one of those fortunate young people, I had a set of what was called at that time the Encyclopedia Britannica. So I went to the encyclopedia and I looked up these words. That was it.

I never saw those words before. When I understood those words I understood why Malcolm was moved, I understood why he could not put his car into reverse. So you were very inspired by him. Did you meet Malcolm X? So I started looking into this nation of Islam that he evolved out of. I started looking at his words and his trip to Mecca. And just before he was assassinated, I had a chance to to attend one of his talks in Harlem. And it was a very cold morning. I think he spoke from the hotel Theresa, which is no longer there. And I was one of the people that was there. Thousands of people were in the street to listen to Malcolm to see him. We saw him. We came.

We were on the roof, myself and two or three others and his security saw us on the roof and told us to come down. We came downstairs and of course, we were very cold. And he called us over and we shook his hand. And when I look back now, that was very memorable. It's just something that happened at that time. Malcolm was, he was electric. You know he was a personality that African-Americans had never seen, but Malcolm took his shahada. He was assassinated in February 1965. I was 17, or 18. And so he was assassinated in February, and I became Muslim in October. So how did you take your shahada? It was a friend of mine named Zakaria. Zakaria Rasheed May Allah have mercy on him.

And so I went and met his father and his father's name was Alwan Rasheed. May Allah have mercy upon him. A very, very unusual, intellectual, powerful thinking person. And he sent me to Shaikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal from the Islamic Mission of America. And on September the, I'm sorry, October the fifth, 1965, at the Islamic Mission of America, I became Muslim. So I never went through the Nation of Islam. I took my shahada directly and then I saw my my Islamic we can say my Islamic evolution. It started in October. How did your family and the people around you react to your conversion to Islam? It started with my father. I didn't meet my father until I was 22.

When I did meet him, I think he passed away when I was 27, so I didn't know him until he died and then I buried him. I was fortunate enough to have a good relationship with him before he died. And he asked me to wash him and bury him the way that we wash and bury the Muslims. He asked me to wash, and because I was an Imam at the time, and my sister told him that, that I was responsible that when people passed away in my community, I was the person that did the washing and burial. I wish that he would have accepted Islam, but maybe in his own way he did because we had several conversations. And secondly, my mother never resisted Islam.

She told me, Son if you if you believe that this way of life is gonna make you a better person, just go, but don't be a blind follower. That's what she told me. And my mother was there. She accepted Islam 11 years before she died. And so my sisters, my siblings, they had various reactions but over the period of time God made it so that, I'm not going to say it was because of my maturity or, it wound up that I became sort of like the counselor to my family. So today, what Islam gave me with my family members, generally, I've been able to mentor them, even if they didn't agree. Morally I became the mentor for the family. And then now today I have about 151 Muslims in my family.

That's an incredible number. Which of those conversions was the most special for you? My mother. My mother's acceptance of Islam was probably worth if it was 70,000 or 75,000, they were not equal to my mother. And ironically, the person who actually gave my mother the shahada wasn't me. My mother was following me. She was supporting me, respecting me probably for 25, 30 years. But it was my Somali wife that actually gave her the shahada. And my Somali wife didn't speak English that much. It was her treatment of my mother. My mother told me that one day she wanted to go to church. She didn't know where the churches were. So Aaminah told her, mother, I'll take you to church.

So mother said, you're going to take me to church? Aaminah drove her to church. When they got there, my mother said to Aaminah, Aaminah are you going to wait in the car for me? Aaminah said, no mother, I'm coming in the church with you. Aaminah has full hijab like Somali girls do. Aaminah is sat in the church with her until she left and then drove her home. And my mother told me that was the most profound experience for her, that this Somali girl, she's wearing full hijab. My mother said, are you allowed to do that? And Aaminah just said to her, mother, this is a church and I'm sitting with you. If they say something wrong, I'll say Astagfirullah.

If they say something good, I'll say Alhamdulillah. This was her simple rationale to go with my mother, which she was treating like her mother. It was that cumulative experience that made my mother comfortable to take shahada. And when I came from Europe, Aaminah had my mother sitting in a doorway. She had already given her the shahada. Is it true that you were a gang member? No. No, I was never part of a gang. First of all, I was raised in middle class homes. I was not a product of the ghetto because of the foster homes that I was in. They were middle class Christian homes. So in my youth, I didn't belong to the gangs and even and I became a muslim at 18.

So there was nothing there for me to become a gang member. But I walk like a gang member. I talk like a gang member. Why? Because that's New York That's Brooklyn. And metamorphosing is just a part of our culture. I think that some people, they they say the Sheikh he's like a sometimes he talks like a gangster. They said that, but I never said that. No, I've never been. Can you tell us about a memory that you cannot forget? I can recall being invited to a group of churches, and they invited me because I had delivered a talk called Jesus the Prophet of Allah. And so they were very interested to know, how do we come up with that perspective? Jesus the Prophet of Allah?

There were around 600 of them in this church. I talked to them about 3 hours. And the priest, or the reverend, he started to see that maybe I was having a little bit too much influence with his congregation, and he interrupted and said that we've reached kind of like the end of our program and then some of the people said, no, no, no, no, he's not finished. So he sent us downstairs. So most of the people left, maybe close to 200 stayed and we talk some more. Well, in that final discussion, I was emphasizing to them, about the oneness of Allah, about the distinction of Jesus Christ, about Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.

And the parallel of Islam and the Scripture, and the parallel of Muhammad (saw) and Isa (as). And so I asked him if what you have heard, do you bear witness that there's none to be worshipped except Almighty God? And at least 80 of them said yes. When I asked them about Muhammad (saw) they said yes. I told them well first of all you've become muslims. Well, they were kind of like surprised. How can we be Muslims? You know, we're Christians. Well, you're Christians by indoctrination, but by affirmation you've become Muslims. Now how are you going to reconcile that? That's not my job. Now, so look at that. Look.

Look at their behavior in the invitation and look at their response in their church. So if that happened and I was a witness to that, just look at that phenomenon across the world. If Muslims were able to interact with Christians and if we were able to treat Christians in the way that they treated me, I think that things can be different. What impressed you the most about Prophet Muhammad (saw)? The fact that the Prophet (saw) was not he was not allowed by Allah to chill out. He wasn't given any time for relaxation.

If you study the seerah of the Prophet (saw) those 13 years and all the battles that he supervised and the battles that he engaged with and the treaties that he had written or that was given to him from Jibreel to to have written and whatever, if you just look at his life, it was nonstop. And it's just unbelievable how that rate of activity consistently on an individual whose job it was to deliver the message, regulate the people, act as a judge, act as an arbiter, inspire the people, educate the people, be a warrior, a general, a head of state, a husband, a friend. How does he do that? It’s because of the wahy. is because God mandated that. What is the biggest mistake in teaching religion?

Indoctrinating people. You don't have to indoctrinate children to eat candy. You don't have to indoctrinate young people to use their phones. This mobile phone. Nobody leaves the house without it. It's the first thing they look at when they get up in the morning. So this incentive they have, this relationship that they have with these phones and this social media. If we were to make Islam attractive like that, connect Islam to that, it's going to flow. But we've got the older generation starting out with saying, oh, the TV is haram or the movies is haram or or the mobile phone is haram. And so you're scaring the kids because you don't understand something.

So I think that today, if fathers would spend more time with their sons and mothers, spent more time with their daughters embracing each other, tolerating each other, talking about issues together, using the same technology together, encouraging each other. Eventually, Islam as a faith, as a discipline, will become a part of the technology. It'll become the part of the the industrial phenomena. Islam will be there. It will not be something separate. If you had a chance to speak to all the non-Muslims in the world, what would you like to say to them? There's a verse of the Qur'an because today everybody feels challenged. We don't know what to do we're frustrated, people are emotional.

They don't have answers and it leads to depression, it leads to anger. There's a verse of the Quran where Allah (swt) says I think this is the 16th surah, 90th verse of the Quran. And then there's a hadith of the Prophet a dua of the Prophet (saw) that our mother, Aisha (ra) she said that he used to recite after every prayer, not every day, but after every prayer. The translation of Oh Allah I seek refuge in you from anxiety and grief, from lack of strength and laziness, from cowardice, and from stinginess, and from being overpowered by debt and the oppression of men. Oh Allah suffice me with what is lawful to keep me away from what is unlawful.

And with your grace and your magnitude, make me free and independent from everyone and everything other than you. So if the Prophet (saw) used to recite this after every prayer, and he's a Prophet, it seems to me that that should be one of the prayers that each one of us recite.