Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali (also known as Abdul Malik Ali and Abd Al-Malik) is a black Imam associated with the Masjid Al Islam mosque in Oakland. A graduate of San Francisco State University and a former Nation of Islam member, he is a frequent guest lecturer at Muslim Student Union and Muslim Students Association events. A passionate supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, he helped organize a July 1999 rally in San Francisco at which Imam Abdul-Alim Musa proudly displayed a cashier’s check made out to “Hamas, Palestine.” Malik-Ali endorses suicide bombings as a legitimate “resistance” tactic: “Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, ‘Go honey, go!’ That ain’t suicide; that’s martyrdom.”
A fervent admirer of the famed Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Malik-Ali is a leader of the As-Sabiqun movement which is inspired by Malcolm’s work and life. He is also part of the Al-Masjid movement which is dedicated to creating an Islamic revolution in the United States. His ultimate goal is to see Islamic law instituted in America, and he refers to those who oppose this objective as “poop-butts.” “From an Islamic movement we graduate to an Islamic revolution,” he says, “then to an Islamic state. . . . We must implement Islam as a totality [in which] Allah controls every place — the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress.”
Malik-Ali is a favorite guest speaker of UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union (MSU). In 2002, he told an MSU audience: “Israel wants Palestinians to have their own state. It’s beyond that now. No. That’s off the table. One state. Majority rules. Us. The Muslims.”
On February 26, 2004, MSU again brought Malik-Ali to the UC Irvine campus to deliver a speech titled “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda.” According to UCI’s student newspaper, he “implied that Zionism is a mixture of ‘chosen people-ness and white supremacy’; that the Iraqi war is in the process of ‘Israelization’; that the Zionists had the ‘Congress, the media and the FBI in their back pocket’; that the downfall of former Democratic [presidential] front-runner Howard Dean was due to the Zionists; and that the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] would have assassinated Al Gore if he was elected [in 2000] just to bring Joe Lieberman (his Jewish vice-president) to power.”
At a February 2005 MSU-organized event held in the center quad at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali stood at a podium that bore the inscription “Desperation of the Zionist Lobby,” and told his audience of some 150 mostly Muslim listeners: “Zionism is a mixture, a fusion of the concept of white supremacy and the chosen people.” He complained about Zionist control of the American media, Zionist complicity in the war in Iraq, and Zionists’ ability to deflect justified criticism. “You will have to hear more about the Holocaust when you accuse them of their Nazi behavior,” Malik-Ali declared. “One state. Majority rule,” he added, to rousing applause. “Check that out. Us. The Muslims.”
In February 2006, Malik-Ali told an audience at Long Beach State University that “the Zionist Jews were behind” the Danish cartoon controversy that had recently sparked Muslim riots around the world.
In a May 2006 appearance at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali accused the “apartheid State of Israel” of carrying out a “holocaust” and a “genocide” against the Palestinian people. He spoke from a podium whose facade was adorned with a banner that read, “Israel, the 4th Reich.” Referring to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks,” he told Jews directly: “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered. We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.” He also gloated over the fact that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had been felled by a massive stroke four months earlier, was “a vegetable now.”
Malik-Ali was again the featured speaker at an October 5, 2006 MSU event where he told a crowd of roughly 200 cheering students: “They [Jews] think they are superman, but we, the Muslims, are kryptonite. They [Jews] know that their days are numbered.”
In May 2007, MSU held an “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” week that featured twice-daily speeches and rallies condemning the State of Israel. On May 17, Malik-Ali delivered a lecture titled “UC Intifada: How you can help Palestine,” wherein he informed Muslim students that a martyr’s death is the most honorable form of death. “Victory or martyrdom,” he asserted, are the only two viable options available to the Palestinians in their battle against Israel. Refusing to recognize Israel’s existence, Malik-Ali referred to that country not by its name, but only as the “Zionist Apartheid State.”
Also among Malik-Ali’s notable quotes and positions are the following:
- “The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we’re gonna check ’em.”
- “Stay conscious and ask Allah to raise the Muslims and give us victory over the disbeliever.”
- “When it’s all over, the only one standing is gonna be us [Muslims].”
- “Sooner or later, today’s Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.”
- “Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews.”
- “The wars against Iraq [Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom] were manufactured by the Jews in America to avert attention from the two [Palestinian] Intifadas.”
- “You [Jews] made all the mistakes we wanted you to make. You went after [former Georgia congresswoman] Cynthia McKinney. So now black folks don’t like you…. You’re walking into all the traps we want you to walk into. You hijacked American foreign policy.”
- “[T]he Israelis were in control of 9-11,” which “was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.”
- Israelis ought to return “to Germany, to Poland, to Russia. The Germans should hook y’all up. You [Israelis] should go back to Germany.”
- “In America, you’re mostly fighting with your tongue, but you should also learn how to fight with the sword.”
- At the Sixth Annual Muslim Student Association Conference held at UC Berkeley in February 2004, Malik-Ali denounced “the white man, who is the enemy.”
- At the Universal Heritage Foundation’s December 2003 Islamic Conference in Florida, he warned moderate American Muslims that their desire to be “liked” was turning them into “‘house slaves’ in the mansion of a racist, imperialistic and destructive America.”
- He has described Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “pretty good guy.”