FBI file on the Moorish Science Temple of America.

Format:

Book

Government document

Contributor:

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation, current owner.

Series:

Religions of America.

Religions of America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Moorish Science Temple of America.

Black nationalism--United States.

Black nationalism.

African Americans--Religion.

United States.

African Americans--Religion--20th century.

African Americans.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (51 manuscripts).

Other Title:

Federal Bureau of Investigation file on the Moorish Science Temple of America

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 1931-1978.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

In 1913, the Prophet Noble, Drew Ali, founded the Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, New Jersey. Preaching a synthesis of orthodox Islam, black nationalism, and Christian revivalism, he and his followers offered first-generation urban African Americans a religion that addressed black consciousness and frustrations. The Temple's following peaked between the two world wars and declined thereafter. But Ali's teachings did serve as the basis for the modern black Islamic tradition in the United States, with the Nation of Islam standing as its most notable progeny. Little is known of Ali's life before the founding of the Moorish Science Temple of America. Born Timothy Drew in North Carolina in 1886, he spent his early years among the state's Cherokee tribe. At some point, Drew became part of the growing wave of African Americans moving north, finding work as a railway brakeman. It is unknown what prophecy transformed Timothy Drew into Prophet Drew Ali, but he began preaching in Newark sometime after 1910. The foundation of his teachings, and the most radical part of the Temple's canon of faith, was the belief that African Americans descended from the Moors, not Ethiopians, and thus were Asiatic in origin, not African. Ali believed that this misconception originated in America's Revolutionary Continental Congress, which stripped the Moors of their identity and labeled them Africans in order to create a permanent underclass for the new nation. Drew Ali preached that the rediscovery of this Moorish heritage would bring salvation and liberation to black Americans. Thus, his followers attempted to reclaim that heritage by adopting Moorish-sounding names, often by adding "Bey" or "El" to their names. Many also began wearing the fez. Initially, followers carried ID cards that proved their Moorish identity and would accost whites in the street who treated them as Africans. The ostensible rediscovery of black America's true racial heritage provided the core upon which the Temple would build its canon. Since black Americans were originally Moorish, then, per Ali's teaching, Islam was their natural religion. He preached that a return to this true religion would bring unity and advancement for the race. However, the Temple did not offer a "pure" Islam but rather a synthesis of the teachings of Mohammed and Protestant Christianity, held together with the black separatist belief that emerged among many black American intellectuals around the turn of the century. For example, some believed that Jesus Christ was a black man who had been executed by white Romans and that Marcus Garvey was John the Baptist to Drew Ali's Jesus. Ali's religion also manifested itself in the conviction that the white race was the opposite and negative of blacks, soon to be destroyed by the divine retribution of God. As radical and dangerous as many of these beliefs appeared, especially considering the Jim Crow society in which they were proffered, AIi was a political conservative who stressed obedience to the law and an avoidance of political radicalism. Ali moved the Temple's headquarters to Chicago in I 925. There, for his movement, he published The Holy Koran, a work that combined the story of the blacks' creation and fall with ideas from the original Koran and the writings of spiritualist Levi Dowling (and author of The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus). In 1929, Ali died under mysterious circumstances, yet the Temple continued to grow. In the interwar years the Temple spread across the nation, reaching its zenith just prior to the Second World War. By the end of the 1940s, however, the Temple began a decline. It remains active today, now headquartered in Washington, DC. The Moorish Science Temple of America reflects a larger cultural current in the lives of northern and urban black Americans al the turn of the century, one which resulted in an explosion of new religions. The vast majority of blacks were migrants from the rural South and new to northern urban life. They flooded churches in search of spiritual security in their alien surroundings. Not uncommonly, established churches failed to address these migrants' problems, precipitating a number of new religions, including the Moorish Science Temple of America. This brand of religious revival, characterized by its emphasis on racial restoration, reflected black America's frustrations, the harshness of its life, and the near destruction of the black race during the first years of the twentieth century. The Temple's key tenet, the denial that black Americans were African, appealed to many in the early part of this century as white Americans institutionalized the Jim Crow system throughout the nation and supported the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The claim of Moorish, and thus Asiatic, heritage provided a kind of psychological liberation to the Temple's followers from the humiliations, degradations and physical violence from which they suffered. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's interest in Drew Ali and his movement are self-evident. Despite Ali's political conservatism, he represented a threat to the status quo. His message of the imminent destruction of the white race was clearly subversive to the white power structure and created a potentially explosive breeding ground for black radicals motivated by religion and race, a frightening combination to any ruling elite. For four decades, beginning in the 1930s, the FBI investigated the Moorish Science Temple for alleged anticapitalistic attitudes and efforts to incite revolution. The files were collected from various field offices, including the Temple's Chicago headquarters and other main centers of activity, particularly Baltimore and Philadelphia. The documents that appear here were drawn from the Washington files of the FBI and were released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Notes:

Date range: 1931-1978.

Source institution: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.

OCLC:

1117405511

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.