Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 100
always trying to sneak in), and were taught that America is the most vile and wicked nation
on earth (p. 30). They were being trained to rule the world, believing that all people of color
are good, and Blacks the very best.
When Tate was 9 years old, Elijah Muhammad died his son took over the leadership of the
Nation and instituted many changes. For one, the Muslim schools closed, causing Tate to go
to public schools. For the first time, she was around White people and people of different
faiths, and for the first time, some of her ideas were being challenged. As a teenager, Tate
began to question the Nation‟s sexism and hypocrisy she began to pull away from some of
the teachings. She resented how differently her brother was treated. She began to see how
unhappy the women were and witnessed her own mother begin to question the Nation‟s
teachings and lean toward Orthodox Islam, which much of the rest of her family followed.
One of her aunts, for example, describes her time in the Nation as her “coffin years” (p.
183).
Throughout, Tate writes with the freshness of the child she was, bewildered by so many
things she had to accept as fact and truth. She looks back and examines the ideas and
people that shaped her with the perspective of an adult who has removed herself from a
controlling environment. She writes with great fondness and honesty about various family
members and their individual searches for truth and spirituality.
While the publisher classifies this book as African-American Studies, and for some people it
might describe an “interesting” time in American Black history, I find it a more important
study of one child‟s experience growing up in a high-control group. Although Tate never
says outright, “I grew up in a cult,” she certainly implies it and at one point calls the Nation
a “militant, cultlike institution” (p. 104). Yet, she never analyzes the experience in a greater
context, leaving a reader familiar with cults somewhat frustrated.
Kathy Klein
Former cult member
Berkeley, California
Make Believe: A True Story. Diana Athill. Steerforth Press, South Royalton, VT,
1993, 130 pages.
Athill writes of an American Black militant who calls himself Hakim Jamal. As a boy, he knew
Malcolm X and became a convert to Islam in his twenties after Malcolm X helped him to kick
alcohol and heroin. At one time a Black Panther, by the age of 20 Hakim was in prison for
attempted murder. His “chief credential” was his part in founding the Malcolm X Montessori
School in Los Angeles as a memorial (although he neglected to mention to people that the
school collapsed soon after it opened). Hakim was invited to London by people who thought
he was doing interesting work organizing progressive schools for ghetto children. It was
1969, and fashionable to be around young, attractive, American Black activists. Athill‟s
British publishing firm was going to publish Hakim‟s book, which was to focus on Malcolm
X‟s teachings and his impact on Hakim. (Later, Athill states that the publisher didn‟t hope to
sell more than 2,000 copies of the book in England.)
Athill became friendly with Hakim she admits she was predisposed to Black men, and that
she was fascinated by him because he came from such a different background. She, in fact,
studies him like a cultural experience. Hakim drew in women everywhere with his charm:
reportedly, he had a wife in the States, a liaison with Jean Seberg (an American movie
star), and other girlfriends. Athill finds Hakim‟s political agenda boring and rhetorical she‟s
really more interested in his autobiographical account. She paints a picture of him as a
neglected child, in love with his light-skinned mother. Hakim was the most dark-skinned
child in his family and always equated his blackness with ugliness, so that in later life, says
Athill, he was always looking for forgiveness for his blackness. Athill was drawn to the hurt

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 101
child and the abused, misunderstood Black man in society. She admits that when her heart
is wrung, she equates it with sensations of love. The author saw herself as having a
soothing, stabilizing effect on Hakim when he would become verbally violent and
aggressive. She was 14 years older than he, and liked to mother him. She thought she
inhibited his God-feelings.
For his part, Hakim was able to manipulate Athill‟s emotions, tell her what she wanted to
hear, keep her wrapped up in him. She says, “I have never known anyone so impossible to
disregard” (p. 24). She saw signs of madness early on, such as his calling himself God, his
interest in the occult, and his seeing himself as a bestower of bliss. She obviously has read
about psychopaths, as she exhibits knowledge of them. Nevertheless, she does not provide
her story a frame of reference as she describes her continued involvement with Hakim:
giving him money, trying to help him, letting him and his girlfriend Halé (Halé was the
daughter of a former member of Parliament) stay in her flat.
Both Jean Seberg, the film star, and Halé showed their own signs of madness, and both died
in connection with Hakim (Seberg later committed suicide). And Athill admits to some of her
own lunacy in her relationship with Hakim. Athill becomes sexually involved with Hakim and
describes their three sexual encounters unnecessarily graphically, almost as if she is trying
to portray herself as a very liberated middle-aged woman. She tells Hakim that she sees
nothing wrong with incest or infantile sex. At one point she thinks, “Incest must be
delicious” (p. 27), as she‟s embracing him and feeling motherly toward him.
Hakim and Halé traveled from place to place, until they ran out of money, were kicked out,
or both. They spent time in Morocco, the United States, Guyana, then Trinidad, and at one
point hooked up with Michael X (another troubled person), to whom Hakim then passed on
the title of God. Halé was murdered very brutally by several of Michael X‟s men (it was
described as a bonding experience for them, and they were apprehended, charged, and
found guilty of the crime). Later, in Boston, Hakim is murdered, seemingly by accident.
It is this murder that Athill focuses on: the tragedy of the poor little ugly Black boy
murdered in the ghetto in which he was raised. Athill gives very little mention of Halé being
sucked in by Hakim‟s persuasive charm. Athill calls Halé‟s “a crazy infatuation --because
some vacuum in her needed filling with an emotion of sacrifice and self-immolation” (p. 95).
The author appears to have little understanding of how one person is able to manipulate
and control another.
Early in the story Athill says she dislikes and distrusts Michael X, but Hakim she likes. She
ends the book speaking of her sadness regarding this loving man who didn‟t have a chance.
Although she‟s a good, interesting writer, I was disturbed by the incongruity between her
cheerful detachment in relating these events and their inherent horribleness. I attempted to
puzzle out the author‟s approach and her point in writing this book more than 20 years after
the narrated events occurred. It‟s not quite a personal cult experience because the author is
not that introspective (although it incidentally becomes a good portrayal of what appears to
be a psychopath, yet only because she describes his deterioration as she sees him through
the years). I seemed to find the answer in her statement: “What a glutton I am for
discussing my own and everyone else‟s behavior ...even if I‟d murdered someone it
wouldn‟t seem „unspeakable‟ to me (I‟d have written a book about it by now!)” (p. 80).
Kathy Klein
Former cult member
Berkeley, California