Noble Drew Ali

Religious leader

• Born: January 8, 1886
• Birthplace: North Carolina
• Died: July 20, 1929
• Place of death: Chicago, Illinois

Ali was the founder and leader of the Moorish Science Temple of America, a religious movement that began in 1920’s Chicago. The Moorish Science Temple helped establish a tradition of unorthodox Islam in America out of which grew later black religious movements such as the Nation of Islam.

Early Life

Noble Drew Ali was born Timothy Drew on January 8, 1886, in a rural county of North Carolina to a Cherokee mother and “Moorish” father. Very little information exists regarding his childhood or early life, and many of the biographical details provided by his followers are didactic and unverifiable. In light of his later claims to Islam, it has been speculated that Ali was exposed to the religion while he was living in the South, perhaps on the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas. Ali probably spent the early part of his life in the rural South before deciding to join the Great Migration of African Americans that began in the years preceding World War I. It is possible that Ali, like many other African Americans, was eager to escape the oppressive segregation of the South and was excited by work opportunities in the industrial cities of the North.

Life’s Work

Ali is said to have started out as a street preacher. After building a following, he set up the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913. Membership in his movement purportedly reached thirty thousand over the next decade, and temples were founded in northern centers such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, as well as in various cities throughout the South. Ali achieved his greatest success in 1925, when he officially established his headquarters in Chicago. Operating out of Unity Hall, a structure located at 3140 Indiana Avenue on Chicago’s South Side, Ali twice had his organization officially incorporated by the state of Illinois, first in 1926 as the Moorish Temple of Science and then again in 1928 as the Moorish Science Temple of America.

Adopting the name Noble Drew Ali, the religious leader assumed his role as holy prophet of the Moorish Science Temple. He oversaw many of the organization’s ventures, including the publication of its newspaper, the Moorish Guide, which served as the prophet’s mouthpiece and reached at least a dozen states; various business dealings, such as the sale of herbal products that were purported to have healing and cleansing powers; and the lobbying of political figures. Members of the Moorish Science Temple were distinguished by their assigned surnames “Bey” or “El” and wore ceremonial dress that typically included a fez (a felt, conical cap with a flat top and tassel). Moors sometimes represented their movement in public venues through demonstrations such as the parade led by Ali through the South Side of Chicago in October, 1928, in honor of the Moorish National Conclave.

Ali taught that all people were members of the human race and rejected customary racial terms such as “negro,” “black,” and “colored.” He also believed, however, that African Americans and whites had distinct historical origins and separate sacred destinies that corresponded to complex genealogies. Ali contended that African Americans actually were “Asiatics” of Moroccan heritage who had descended from the ancient Moabites. Ali insisted that once a people determined who they were and from where they came, they should also be able to determine what their religion ought to be. Since blacks were Asiatics, they were rightfully Muslims and therefore should no longer practice Christianity or serve the same gods worshipped by whites.

Unlike Marcus Garvey, Ali did not support emigration to Africa; rather, he taught that Asiatics must separate themselves from their oppressors along both racial and religious lines, generally refraining from interracial relationships, in order to rediscover their true birthright, live in divine prosperity, and dwell together peacefully with Europeans in America. Notably, the Moorish Science Temple paid respects to both the Moroccan and the American flag, and each member of the Moorish Science Temple was issued an identification card that formally affirmed both American citizenship and Moorish identity. Ali outlined many of his religious principles in the Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple, a volume published in 1927 that served as the sacred text of the movement but is distinct from the Qur՚ān of orthodox Islam.

As the Moorish Science Temple’s wealth and influence grew, so did its internal strife. Ali accused some spiritual leaders of embezzling temple funds and exploiting the sale of various products and literature issued by the prophet. Although Ali made repeated attempts to reassert control over the movement, the leadership split into factions. In May, 1929, Sheik Claude D. Greene, one of the leaders of a rival faction, was murdered. Ali was accused of the homicide and sent to prison to await trail, although it is unclear whether he was in Chicago at the time of Greene’s killing. Ali died on July 20, 1929, only a few weeks after he was released on bond. The cause of his death is unknown.

Significance

Ali served as the spiritual leader of one of a number of black religious groups that shaped the urban religious landscape of the early twentieth century by challenging conventional notions of the relationship between racial identity and sacred destiny. The Moorish Science Temple laid the foundation for a number of variant forms of Islam that would follow. In fact, when the Moorish Science Temple splintered after the death of Ali, a man known within the temple as David Ford-El claimed to be the reincarnation of the prophet. There is historical speculation that Ford-El broke away from the Moorish Science Temple when his claim of leadership was rejected and formed his own religious movement in Detroit under the name Wallace D. Fard. Fard’s organization would ultimately grow to be the Nation of Islam, perhaps the best-known Black Muslim group in the United States.

Bibliography

Curtis, Edward E., IV. “Debating the Origins of the Moorish Science Temple: Toward a New Cultural History.” In The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions, edited by Edward E. Curtis IV and Danielle Brune Sigler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Curtis provides a brief but informative overview of scholarship on the Moorish Science Temple, particularly with regard to the origins of the movement and its teachings.

Fauset, Arthur Huff. Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North. 1944. Reprint. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. One of the earliest and most renowned studies of the Moorish Science Temple, this groundbreaking text is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the early 1940’s.

Gomez, Michael A. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. A lengthy but thorough study that situates Ali within a long tradition of Black Muslim leaders, tracing the lineage of Islam from the slave trade through the lifetime of Malcolm X.