A Century of African-American Islam

Attendees of the 1928 Moorish Science Temple Conclave in Chicago. Noble Drew Ali is in the front row center. Photo Credit: Wikipedia 

The year 2013 marks the centenary of the reported founding of the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey. That was the very earliest form of an indigenous African-American Islam, one completely distinct from normative Islam, the 1,400 -year-old religion from Arabia founded by Muhammad. From this movement came Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. The century divides into two main eras: inventing a new religion (1913-1975) and moving toward normative Islam (1975-2013). Timothy Drew (1886-1929), an American black who called himself Noble Drew Ali, founded the Newark temple and then, in 1925 another, better verified organization, the oddly named Moorish Science Temple of America. His ideas derived mainly from four unlikely sources—pan-Africanists, the Shriners, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and white racists.

Black Islam