He graduated 22nd in a class of 135 at Roosevelt High School, and he played percussion instruments and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism.
[4] He was a talented jazz drummer and played with Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Billie Holiday, and J.J. Johnson in New York City.
Although he remained high-functioning in everyday life and excelled at jazz and his undergraduate studies, he was unable to find stable employment because of his schizophrenia diagnosis.
In 1954, at the suggestion of Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad named Khaalis the National Secretary of the NOI, a position he held until 1957.
[6]: 39–43 At an unknown point following his departure, Khaalis met a Sunni Muslim mystic named Tasibur Uddein Rahman, an immigrant from Kolkata.
[6]: 46 In December 1960, Khaalis briefly returned to Chicago and personally appealed to Elijah Muhammad to take the shahada and convert to Sunni Islam.
When this was denied, Khaalis founded a separate organization with the legal name American Social Federation for Mutual Improvement, Inc.[6]: 50 In 1968, he was arrested for attempted extortion but released on grounds of mental illness.
[9] Abdul-Jabbar donated a fieldstone mansion, 7700 16th Street NW, to serve as the headquarters of Khaalis' organization in Washington, D.C.[10] In 1972, Khaalis circulated an open letter that referred to Elijah Muhammad as a "lying deceiver" and asserted that he lured "former dope addicts and prostitutes to monk-like lives of sacrifice" that would "lead them to hell.
Two members of his family survived: his daughter Amina was shot six times and sustained permanent brain damage, and his wife Bibi entered a vegetative state from which she never recovered.