Posted on 06/09/2009 2:51:43 PM PDT by givemELL
Timothy Drew is not a subject of black history month. He has not been the subject of a PBS documentary nor a critical biography. Most history professors, even at prestigious black universities, know little about him. But few African American leaders have cast a larger shadow. Without Drew, there would be no black leaders such as Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X, Mukasa Dada, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, or Louis Farrakhan; no organizations such as the Black Power Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Death Angels, or the New Black Panthers; no rap and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy, Ice Cube, KRS-One, X-Clan, or Lauryn Hill; and no Barack Hussein Obama.
By 1913, Timothy Drew, now known as Noble Drew Ali, managed to convince hundreds of Newark Negroes that they were not the descendants of African slaves, but the sons and daughters of Berber Moors, the very Moors who had introduced slavery to the Ivory Coast. In 1913, he opened what is reportedly the first mosque in America - - the Holy Moabite Temple of the Science of the World, also known as the Canaanite Temple. “The Moors were living up and down the Mississippi River before the European man came to them,‚” Drew told his flock. “The bananas were large and the grapes were four-in-hand. It took two men with hand sticks to carry a bunch of grapes.‚”1
No one within the Moorish Science Movement came to realize that the
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
A bit more excerpting...THE NEW MECCA
The Newark temple became so successful that the Prophet opened branch temples in Harlem, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, Flint, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Norfolk, and Louisville, Kentucky.6 In 1925, Drew relocated to Chicago, where he established the central shrine of the movement on Indiana Avenue. “Chicago, Illinois is going to be our new Mecca,‚” he said.7
By 1926, when the Moorish Science Temple became a legal corporation, the movement had garnered more than 32,000 adherents. Within the next three years, a host of other temples - - 36 in all - - were established throughout the country. The temples were governed by Grand Sheikhs and “Grand Sheikhesses‚” [sic] who had been appointed by Noble Drew. One such “Grand Sheikhess‚” turned out to be Pearl Jones Ali, the aunt of one of the Noble Drew’s wives.8
By 1929, the Chicago branch of the Moorish Science Temple boasted 12,000 members; the Detroit branch 10,000. The movement operated grocery stores, clothing shops, and The Moorish Voice, a national newspaper.
WHO’S MUHAMMAD???
A Muslim from the Middle East, who happened to stumble into one of Drew’s Moorish Temples on a Friday night, would have thought that all Bedlam or Parnassus had been let out. The temple members with their red fezzes, yellow pantaloons, and curled slippers, knew nothing of the five pillars of Islam. They prayed standing upright with two fingers lifted on one hand and five on the other. They were ignorant of the exordium and even the basmalah. They claimed that the Prophet Muhammad was a black man, even though various hadiths spoke of the whiteness of the Prophet’s skin. They fancied that the holy city of Islam was Morocco, not Mecca. They upheld shocking shirks, such as their insistence that Noble Drew was the divinely ordained prophet of Allah - - a heresy in Islam which taught that the age of the prophets had ended with the death of Muhammad. And they presented themselves as “angelic gods,‚” even though the words of the shahadah - - Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Llah (”I testify that there is no God but Allah‚”) - - represented the basis of Muslim belief.
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FAME, FORTUNE, AND POLYGAMY
Such matters appeared to be of little concern to Drew and his followers in October 1928, when the first national convention of the Moorish Science Temple took place in Chicago. By this time, Drew’s movement boasted more than 100,000 followers, and his annual salary was listed at $36,000, a fortune at the time.9 The Prophet received additional stipends for his living expenses, including the mortgage payment for his luxurious trappings on Chicago’s south side, and the salaries for his chauffeur, maid, butler and other domestic attendants. He kept several wives, a host of concubines, and fathered, at least, twenty children.10 When he tired of one wife, he would quietly “divorce‚” her and “marry another.‚” He also kept four women at the same time and paid for each to live in separate homes
MURDER AND MADNESS
On March 12, 1929, Claude Greene Bey, Drew’s personal chauffeur, staged a coup by pronouncing himself the Grand Sheikh, stripping Drew’s headquarters of all files and furniture, and setting up a rival temple at the Unity House on the north side of Chicago, where he began to call for assassination of all whites and all Moors who objected to his leadership. Drew imported some thugs, including Ira Johnson Bey, from Pittsburgh to quell the rebellion. Three days later, Greene was shot and stabbed to death in the alleyway behind Unity House.11
Drew, while hosting a party to celebrate Greene’s demise, was arrested as an accessory to homicide. Released on bail, Drew hastily promoted David Ford-el, a.k.a. Master Fard Muhammad, as the acting head of the movement on July 20, 1929. It was not a prudent move. Fard was a criminal with 58 aliases. He had served three years in San Quentin before gaining release on May 27, 1929.12 He purchased a one-way ticket to Chicago, where he joined the Moorish Science Temple.
One month later, Noble Drew Ali was found dead at his home. The cause of his death has never been determined. Several of his followers speculated that he died as a result of injuries sustained in beatings from the police; others insisted that he had been murdered by his rivals. An autopsy was never conducted and a full-scale police investigation never conducted.
What do we file this information under?
FYI Origins of black muslim communities in US
One of the five pillars of Islam: Lie big; lie often.
I hadn’t really been aware of this earlier history leading into the Nation of Islam.
Nor did I realize that the Koran refers to blacks as “raisin heads,” although I knew that Muslim Arabs generally look down their noses at Muslim Africans.
Interesting! There is so much US history we don’t know. I was surprised to find out in the 1800’s that my Cherokee ancestors were Masons.
One fascinating thing is how often and for how long, Moors have been thought to be Negroes when they were in fact closer kin to the Irish.
According to the article, it was the Hadith and not the Koran that used this term. The Koran and the Hadith are two different things. The Hadith contains writings about episodes in the life of Mohammad. Muslims do not claim inerrant inspiration for it as they do the Koran, but from what I've read, the Hadith provides much of the source material for the practice of Islam and Muslim reverence for the Hadith is only behind the Koran.
Ping to read and Bookmark.
So?
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moors/
The service closes with three of four members stepping up to the podium to read pages of the Holy Koran out loud and give their interpretation. Parts of Drew’s book are taken from obscure Christian texts; the bulk of it is lifted almost word for word from The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, published in 1908 by an esoteric Ohio preacher named Levi Dowling. It describes Jesus’s travels in India, Egypt, and Palestine during the 18 years of his life the New Testament doesn’t account for—proof, Moors say, that Jesus and his followers were Asiatic...
Er... is this gentleman aware that the banana is not a native to the Americas and was not growing anywhere near the Mississippi before the arrival of the white man?
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