Moorish Science Temple of America

The founder of the "Moorish Science Temple of America" ​​is Timothy Drew, an African American from North Carolina (1886-1929), who later took on his name - Noble (noble) Drew Ali. In 1913, he founded the Canaan Temple organization in New Wark, New Jersey, which split in 1916 as a result of internal disagreements. One of the groups formed as a result of the split remained in New Wark and became known as the “Holy Moabite Temple of Peace”. Another group, led by Drew Ali, moved to Chicago in 1925, where they founded the Moorish Holy Temple of Science, in 1928 the organization was renamed the Moorish Science Temple of America and its organizations were created in several cities in the north of the United States.

The personality of the founder of the "Moorish Scientific Temple of America" ​​is strongly mythologized. According to the official version of the organization, Timothy Drew was brought up by the Cherokee Indians. From the age of 16 he began traveling around the country and the world, became a circus magician, went to Egypt , where he received secret knowledge from the last priest of a certain cult of High Magic, practiced for many centuries in the pyramid of Cheops. This “last priest of the cult of High Magic” saw in Timothy Drew the reincarnation of the last chapter of his cult and all previous prophets. From this priest, Drew Ali learned about certain prophets of the “Quran of the seventh circle” and received the highest knowledge. In a dream, someone appeared to him and ordered the founding of a new religion "for the spiritual ascent of fallen humanity."

Then Drew Ali declared himself the messenger of the king of Morocco and the prophet of Allah. He did not recognize such definitions of ethnic division as "black", "black", "color", "Ethiopian" and argued that people with black skin are descendants of the ancient Asian people of the Moabites (or Moabites ) who inhabited southern Jordan in I— II millennium BC e., and then, in his opinion, mixed with the Arab tribes of North Africa and became Moors . In his sermons, he insisted that a person must realize his nationality before he can find God. In the column “race” and “nationality” in identification documents, members of this religious organization called themselves “Moors”.

• Islam nation
• The people of the gods and lands

in Russian

• Kosheleva N.V. Africa and Islam in the ideology of African-American Muslims // African Digest - 2007 / Ros. Acad. Sciences, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kuntskamera) RAS, etc .; Editorial: V.F. Vydrin et al. - SPb. : Science , 2008 .-- pp. 112-123. - 527 p.

in other languages

• Ali, Noble Prophet Drew (1928), Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America
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• Abu Shouk, Ahmed I. (1997) "A Sudanese Missionary to the United States", Sudanic Africa , 9: 137–191.
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• Chicago Defender (1929) "Drew Ali, 'Prophet' of Moorish Cult, Dies Suddenly", July 27, 1929, page 1.
• Chicago Tribune (May 1929) "Cult Head Took Too Much Power, Witnesses Say", May 14, 1929.
• Chicago Tribune (September 1929) "Seize 60 After So. Side Cult Tragedy", September 26, 1929, p. one.
• Gale Group, "Timothy Drew" , Religious Leaders of America , 2nd ed., 1999, Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich .: Thomson Gale , 2007.
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• Hamm, Mark S. (2007) Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Non-Traditional Faith Groups Final Report , US Department of Justice , December 2007, Document No .: 220957.
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• Nance, Susan. (2002) "Respectability and Representation: The Moorish Science Temple, Morocco and Black Public Culture in 1920s Chicago", American Quarterly 54, no. 4 (December): 623–659.
• Nash, Jay Robert (1993) World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime , Da Capo Press , ISBN 978-0-306-80535-6 .
• Nashashibi, Rami (2007) "The Blackstone Legacy, Islam, and the Rise of Ghetto Cosmopolitanism", Souls , Volume 9, Issue 2 April 2007, pages 123–131.
• Paghdiwala, Tasneem (2007), "The Aging of the Moors" , Chicago Reader , November 15, 2007, Vol 37 No. 8.
• Perkins, William Eric (1996) Droppin 'Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture , Temple University Press .
• Prashad, Vijay (2002) Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity , Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-5011-3 .
• Scopino Jr., AJ (2001) "Moorish Science Temple of America", in Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations , Nina Mjagkij, ed., Garland Publishing, p. 346.
• Shipp ER (1985) "Chicago Gang Sues to Be Recognized as Religion", New York Times , Dec 27, 1985, p. A14.
• Turner, Richard Brent (2003) Islam in the African-American Experience , Indiana University Press , ISBN 0-253-21630-3 .
• The Washington Post (1929), "Three Deaths Laid to Fanatical Plot", September 27, 1929, p. 2.
• Wilson, Peter Lamborn (1993) Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam , City Lights Books, ISBN 0-87286-275-5 .

• Official site of the Moorish Science Temple of America