Moorish Science Temple

Prophet Noble Drew Ali, founder of the first Islamic organization in America and the Moorish Divine & National Movement, explicitly claims that the Moors (so-called "Blacks") of America were descendants of the ancient Moabites. Ali made the claim that the Moors were the ancient Moabites and these same Moabites founded the Holy City of Mecca. These claims have been called innovative and dismissed as having no historical validity whatsoever. This paper refutes these claims and proves Ali's claims via the historical records.

MSTA leader Grand Sheik Frederick Turner-El was briefly investigated by the FBI in the mid-1960s after he called up the SCLC and expressed his concern over a 'great slur' being used on Martin Luther King, Jr. The brief investigation reveals small details in Turner-El's interesting life.

Acknowledgement of Moorish treaty rights is a procedure that will require you to detail certain evidence that cannot be disputed. There can be none who assume that proof of good standing membership will entitle them to royal treatment and complete exemption of corporate domestic cooperation. There is something unique about the sovereign that binds he or she to a set of unspoken virtues remaining as quietly kept as the days before light. This should be seen in every declaration of heritage or sovereign rights proported. Due to the advent of technology, this has become relatively easy to construct with integrity. In order to make a declaration that is multilateral in transmission, it has to have simple to understand format to avoid mistranslation of style and origin. To illustrate this, I have constructed my personal format to an aboriginal declaration using my own DNA results (provided by 23andme) and historical reference to the origin of the selected people in which the sovereign treaty references.

This short piece hopes to shed some much-needed light on the teachings of Jim Jones by applying the psychobiographical theory of nurture failure to the troubled religious leader's early years. The essay concludes  that hiding behind Jones' psychopathy was a childhood of abuse and neglect punctuated by occasional pulses of idealistic rhetoric from his mother. This combination became lethal once the child Jones began to think of himself as a messiah whose task was to save humanity from limitations that could be attributed either to a deficiency in the environment or to a deficiency in the wills of his followers.

This paper examines the development of the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Black American Islamic religious organisation from 1933 to 1945, a period largely unexplored by academics. Through the lens of Father Prophet Mohammed Bey and Mother Jesus Rosie Bey—two controversial vernacular Moorish-American leaders in Kansas City—I hope to illustrate how Kansas City Moors coped with the organisation’s fissiparous tendencies and exegetically revised and reframed Moorish-American Prophet Noble Drew Ali’s 1920s Black Asiatic Orientalist doctrines vis-à-vis the 1930s and 1940s subversive socio-political culture. In the process, both Father Prophet Mohammed Bey and Mother Jesus Rosie Bey shaped and advocated an early form of Black theology and Black power, though they differed in their modus operandi. While Father Prophet Mohammed Bey militantly confronted Kansas City’s local racist institutions, Mother Jesus Rosie Bey internationalized and politicized the Kansas City Moors to collaborate/contend with the looming spectre of Japanese agent provocateurs, America’s Selective Service Act, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogations. While the size and scope of the Kansas City Moors remained limited, their unique orientation to militant Moorish Islam is vital for historians’ understanding of the re-flowering of Moorish-American Islamic activism in the 1930s as well as the eventual decay of the religious organisation by 1945, due in part to the theological softening of other Moorish communities.

A leading yet little-studied figure in the first generation of the
Moorish Science Temple of America movement, Juanita Mayo
Richardson Bey was editor of the group’s newspaper, literary educator,
and religious poet. Analysis of the textual legacy of Richardson
Bey shows evidence of a model of leadership that contrasts starkly
with that of the religion’s founder, Prophet Noble Drew Ali. While
Ali focused on maintaining ideological control and doctrinal orthodoxy,
Richardson Bey, as editor and educator, insisted on a vision of
collective participation in Moorish uplift, emphasized the importance
of education and specifically the values of literary education
for such uplift, encouraged individual creative expression of and
synthetic engagement with Moorish Science teachings, and, as poet,
modeled in intimate and emotional language her own sense of the
meaning of Moorish identity.

Although generations of Westernized Euro-centric thinking have tried to expunge this era from the historical record, recent archeology and scholarship now shed fresh light on the Moors who flourished in Europe , mainly Modern day Spain as far north as Great Britan and as far west as Croatia and far south as Sicily for more than 700 years – from 711 AD until 1492.  The (Blackamoor/Black) Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and agriculture helped propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

According to Ivan Van Sertima. "It is generally assumed that the movement of Africans into Europe in significantly large numbers and into positions of real power, did not occur until the Muslim invasion of Spain in 711 A.D."
Author and historian Chancellor Williams said “the original Moors, like the original Egyptians, were black Africans.”

"The 16th century English playwright William Shakespeare used the word Moor as a synonym for African. His contemporary Christopher Marlowe also used African and Moor interchangeably".

The corruption and misconceptions of Hebrew Culture can be traced back to the writings of the Babylonian Talmud. From the infamous (and false) "Curse of Ham" to Adam kicking Elohiym (God) out of the Garden to laws on usury and the intricate ways of deception; they all can be traced back to the Talmud.  Most (not all) Non Secular Jews believe that the  oral law of the Talmud has credence over the written Torah.

This is the original manuscript of a recently expanded text on the WPA studies on sects and cults in 1930s Black Chicago. The current revision is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Studies-Nationalism-Churches-Chicago/dp/1494335719/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1515084811&sr=8-8

The term "zine" is an abbreviation for "fanzine", a self-published, non-commercial periodical customarily distributed at cost through the mail. The North American culture of fanzine publishing originated in the 1930s, and reached an apex fifty years later with the heterogeneous "zine scene". By the late 1980s, the practice of making and distributing zines spread beyond fandom (and specifically the small clusters of "correspondence clubs" that networked science fiction fans) to a wide range of other outsider subcultures. Now largely forgotten, the vast reserve of material that circulated in these small-circulation print periodicals represents an undiscovered continent for scholars of esotericism.

Call encouraging people to locate and share with the author documents concerning the history of Islam in America since 1975 to help provide material for the forthcoming book A History of Conversion to Islam in the US, Volume 3. Please contact Patrick D. Bowen at pbowen303@gmail.com

The purpose of this study is to locate the “African” personality within the geographic and socio-religious domains of American society. Working on the assumption that, although Christian philosophy has traditionally exercised the greatest influences on the way blacks have constructed an American identity, Islamic and proto-Islamic philosophies have been increasingly adopted by blacks posing a rival narrative of self-definition.  To better understand the black paradigm shift from predominantly Christian understandings to the expanding influence of the Islamic narrative, this study closely examines the writings and publications of black Christian leaders speaking of racial progress through religious duty.  Using an inquiring lens of Theodicy, the data collected is analyzed for responses to questions of reconciliation between an “all knowing” God and black suffering in the religion of this God.  The study further examines the Philosophy and Sociology of two of the most effective religious movements in proselytizing a distinctly ‘African’ worldview in Islam: the Moorish Science Temple (MST) and the Nation of Islam (NOI).  Data collected, from the scriptures each produced, shows how both sects specifically designed theologies to address the concerns of black Americans who predominantly held Christian views. Additionally, many of the titles, uniforms, themes, and lessons of both the MST and NOI bear a striking similarity to those of freemasonry.  In searching for clues pertaining to the space from which the Islamic African personality is derived, the data closely examines the masonic interactions of the acclaimed teacher of Noble Drew Ali, one Abdul Hamid Suleiman, with the black freemasons (Prince Hall).  The data will ultimately illuminate the efforts of Africans from the continent and in America, to return or restore the African personality to blacks through Islam.  A final synthesis illuminates a process by which Islam proselytized to black Americans, through Noble Drew Ali and Honorable Elijah Muhammad that included genuine efforts to re-construct the African worldview.

http://patrickdbowen.blogspot.com/2014/04/new-article-on-abdul-hamid-suleiman.html
*NOTE* Unfortunately, very few libraries carry this journal--in either hard-copy or electronic form. However, it is available through some library subscriptions of the the ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials [EBSCO Publishing]. If you library does not have it, you can obtain a copy through your library's Interlibrary Loan department. Or, if you belong to a college that has a Religious Studies department that is a member of Theta Alpha Kappa, they may have a copy.

For a  copy of my thesis, e-mail me your request (dsalgado@alfaisal.edu).

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the African American Muslim community’s continual search for authenticity, especially among the Salafīs. The author argues that Salafiyya would not have taken hold among African American Muslims, had the community not gone through the experiences of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Nation of Islam (NOI), and the American Muslim Mission. These experiences led to a greater search for authenticity, the hallmark of Salafiyya. In this study, the author defines what is Salafiyya and who is a Salafī. The author also examines the origins of the term “Salafī-jihadism.” The author presents contemporary Salafiyya and its development at the Islamic University of Medina. Additionally, there is an examination of the precursors and first conduits to Salafiyya among African Americans. In the 1980s, former NOI-affiliated independent masjids were on a quest for authenticity, leading to the founding of the Islamic Center of East Orange. This community, a one-time Salafī hub, is presented as a case study for the development of Salafiyya in a specific African American Muslim community. Additionally, the author examines the effect that Rabī al-Madkhalī’s influence has had on Salafīs. The author concludes by stressing that researchers should understand what Salafīs mean by Salafiyya and be cautious of very broad definitions of Salafiyya. Furthermore, the African American Salafī community is an integral part of the African American Muslim community, and thereby, the American Muslim community.


ABSTRACT (Old Version)

The focus of this study is the African American Muslim community’s continual search for authenticity, especially among the Salafīs. Salafiyya has been present among African American Muslims since at least the mid-1970s, reaching its peak in the late 1990s. Yet, little research has been done on this important aspect of American Muslim and African American lives.

Chapter I will deal with defining what Salafiyya is and who a Salafī is. The term “Salafiyya” originated as a creedal school and later expanded to include neo-Ẓahirīs. Additionally, the relationship to “Wahhabism” and Islamic modernism is discussed. Thereafter, the origins of the term “Salafī-jihadism” are examined. This chapter also discusses contemporary Salafiyya with its roots in the Islamic University of Medina, the type eventually disseminated to African Americans.

Chapter II will examine the early African American Sunni communities of the 20th century. This section also describes the first callers to Salafiyya among African Americans. In the 1980s, certain independent African American Muslim communities emerged when they broke off from the leadership of Imam W. D. Mohammed in a quest for more authenticity.

Chapter III will present a case study of the Islamic Center of East Orange – one of the breakaway masjids – and a description of the build-up to Salafiyya there. After Dawud Adib became the masjid’s imam, he transformed it into the leading Salafī hub in the country. Thereafter, Imam Abu Muslimah expanded those efforts in spreading Salafiyya, throughout the country and especially in the Northeast.

Chapter IV will analyze the decline of Abu Muslimah’s influence and the rise of Rabī al-Madkhalī’s influence on Salafī and the infighting which followed. Lastly, Hadith al-Iftirāq (Division) and the role it played among African American Salafīs will be discussed.

The author concludes by stressing that researchers should understand what Salafīs mean by Salafiyya and be cautious of very broad definitions of Salafiyya. Furthermore, the African American Salafī community is an integral part of the African American Muslim community, and thereby, American Muslim community. Salafiyya among African Americans has evolved and it is yet to be seen what direction the community will take.