Shabazz Rites Draw Hundreds of Mourners

Betty Shabazz was remembered Friday by hundreds of mourners who prayed in Arabic and English in Islamic services three decades after her husband, assassinated civil right leader Malcolm X, was laid to rest.

“Our sister Betty Shabazz died by burning. May Allah forgive the person who did that,” Dr. Muhammad Salem Agwa, an imam, or Muslim prayer leader, told mourners at Manhattan’s Islamic Cultural Center during a service before the funeral.

The prayers came over a loudspeaker from a room marked “For sisters only,” where hundreds of women, some with children, bowed in neat rows before a prayer rug on the wall. They wore multicolored dresses and head coverings with only their faces visible.

Following custom, women were separated from men. The mourners carried their shoes in plastic bags.

Shabazz, 61, died Monday, three weeks after suffering severe burns in a fire allegedly set in her suburban Yonkers apartment by her 12-year-old grandson. The boy remains in custody, charged in juvenile court with attempted murder, arson and other counts.

Mourners arriving at the East Side mosque walked past a large photograph of Shabazz, bordered with red flowers, at the entrance.

During the half-hour service, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rose to call Shabazz “a great leader in New York City.”

“All 7 million New Yorkers share with you this sense of loss,” Giuliani said. “Everybody in New York City is ennobled by Betty Shabazz.”

Former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, former Mayor David N. Dinkins, American Indian activist Russell Means and diplomats from Muslim countries also attended.

All six of Shabazz’s daughters attended the service, including Qubilah Shabazz, whose son is accused of setting the fatal fire.

The family lingered for a brief private service before the coffin was carried out of the mosque to a waiting hearse. Hundreds of people stood outside chanting prayers in Arabic as the procession passed.

Shabazz was buried next to Malcolm X at a cemetery in suburban Ardsley, just north of New York City.