» ‘0. 8 11:45 In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan an... : x 4a books.google.n! } Q < 7 thing we desire and some of this earth we can call our own.”*5 The Nation of Islam was not the first faith to claim Islam as the African Americans’ “original” and “natural” religion. It was preceded by another urban-based nationalist religion, the Moorish Science Temple, which helped pave the way for the Nol. Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Gospel Noble Drew Ali (1886-1929) presented himself as a prophet, or “an Angel of Allah,” sent to bring “the everlasting Gospel of ALLAH.”?¢ Born Timothy Drew in North Carolina, he migrated to Newark, New Jersey, to work as an expressman. According to legend, he made a pilgrimage to North Africa where he studied with Egyptian Islamic scholars and received permission from the King of Mo- rocco to teach Islam in the African American community. Other legends claim that his father was a Moroccan and his mother a Cherokee, who both were initiated into the Modernist Islamist Salafi movement of the famous Jamal al-Afghani during his later visits to the United States in the early 1880s.?” In 1913, Ali resumed a Moorish identity and established the first Adept Chamber of the Moorish Science Temple of America (MST) in Newark. Following the slow but steady growth of his following, new temples were founded in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and some sites in the South before 1925, when Noble Drew Ali moved to Chicago and established a headquarters and what later became the largest Moorish chapter. The Moorish Science Temple combined the legacy of Marcus Garvey with the notion of Islam as the old-time religion of the black man. Its spokespersons rejected all terms previously used for the African nation in America. In act 6 of the Divine Constitution, the Prophet instructs his followers that “they are not Negroes, Colored Folks, Black People or Ethi- opians, because these names were given to slaves by slave holders.”?* They should now openly declare their true identity as “Moorish Amer- icans,” “descendants of the ancient Moabites,” later known as Morro- cans.?° The Moabites were part of the divine “Asiatic nation,” the original inhabitants of the earth and progenitors of all nonwhite nations.*° The physical part of man was created in the Garden of Eden in the Holy City of Mecca in the land of Canaan. Seeking new land, the Moabites migrated into Africa and received permission from Pharaoh to settle in the northwest, where they founded the great Moroccan empire.** Before long the Moorish civilization flourished. Prior to the giant earthquake that created the Atlantic Ocean, the dominion of the Moroccan Empire included all of Africa and extended across Atlantis into present-dayao 10% 11:45 In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan an... : x 4a books.google.n! } Q < 7 North, Central, and South America.*? As long as the Moors remained faithful to their ancient heritage, Allah blessed them with prosperity. Generations later, the Moors lost their racial consciousness, which ulti- mately caused their downfall: “Through sin and disobedience every na- tion has suffered slavery, due to the fact that they honored not the creed and principles of their forefathers. That is why the nationality of the Moors was taken away from them in 1774 and the word negro, black and colored, was given to the Asiatics of America who were of Moorish de- scent, because they honored not the principle of their mother and father, and strayed after the gods of Europe of whom they knew nothing.”** But the time of suffering is soon to end. The tribulations experienced are but material reflections of a spiritual battle. The original Asiatic man has throughout history been in constant struggle with the Devil, who resides in man as his lower self.** To assist man, the love of God manifested in flesh in the Moorish prophet Jesus.** His crucifixion marks the beginning of the end for the Devil. Jesus was then reincarnated in the prophet Mu- hammad, who in 1453 succeeded in partially fettering and then decapi- tating Satan.** To complete the cycle of racial redemption, God chose “North America to make his headquarters in the West.”*” Noble Drew Ali is Jesus Christ and the prophet Muhammad reincarnated, the third and final carnal manifestation of Allah, sent “to redeem men from their sinful ways; and to warn them of the great wrath which is sure to come upon the earth.”%* In 1927, the Moorish Science Temple published the Holy Koran, which is not to be confused with the Holy Qur'an of the orthodox Muslims. The Holy Koran of Noble Drew Ali is a pamphlet of sixty-three pages. The first chapter deals with the “creation and fall of man.” Man is a “thought of Allah,” infinite, eternal, and uncreated as his Owner. This is the true ontology of “spirit-man.” Man is a seed of Allah holding in himself the attributes of Allah, with true divine potential. For a seed to grow and unfold it must be planted in soil. The same applies to the seed of God. The cosmos is divided into three stages of divine emanations with decreasing speeds of vibration: the plane of spirit, the plane of soul, and the plane of things made manifest. Creative Fate gave to spirit-man a soul and a body of flesh, that he may function on all three cosmological planes. Man must learn a multitude of lessons on each plane to realize his divine potential: “Perfected man must pass through all the ways of life, and so a carnal was full manifest, a nature that sprang forth from fleshy things. Without a foe a soldier never knows his strength, and thought must be developed by theao ‘DY 11:46 In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan an... : x 4a books.google.n! } Q < 7 exercise of strength. And so his carnal nature soon became a foe that man must fight, that he may be the strength of Allah made manifest. ... When man has conquered carnal things his garb of flesh will then have served its purpose well and it will fall; will be no more.”*® Emancipated, the soul-man has to struggle on the soul plane to complete his victories. “Unnumbered foes” will seek to destroy him, and these have to be de- feated. But now Allah is leading, so there is no doubt of the outcome. The soul coming this far cannot fail: “When man has conquered every foe upon the plane of soul the seed will have full opened out, will have unfold in the Holy Breath. The garb of soul will then have served its purpose well and man will need it never more, and it will pass and be no more and man will then attain unto the blessedness of perfection and one with Allah.”*° The student of esoteric Christianity will perhaps recognize the anthropology described above. The introductory chapter of the Holy Koran is taken verbatim from an introductory text of the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, written by Levi H. Dowling (1844-1911) and pub- lished in 1907.41 The only deviation is that the word “God” has been replaced by “Allah.” According to Ewa S. Dowling, “scribe to the Messenger,” Levi studied etheric vibration and meditated for forty years before he received his commission from Visel, the Goddess of Wisdom or the Holy Breath, “to be the message bearer for the coming age.”#? Levi’s mind was capable of tuning in “the Akashic Records,” which register every thought and deed on an etheric plane. Collecting and translating these Akashic impres- sions, Levi learned about the redeeming gnosis, the cosmic cycles of ages, and the Christ made manifest in each age. According to the religious philosophy of Levi, our solar system completes a grand cycle in 26,000 years by passing backward through the zodiac. Each sign corresponds to an age of approximately 2,100 years. Man was given his carnal hide in the Taurian age, Abraham lived in the Arian age, Jesus of Nazareth lived in the Piscean age, and the world is now about to enter the Aquarian age. Aquarius is an air sign, and the age to come is preeminently a spiritual age in which the lessons of the gnostic master Jesus the Christ can be fully comprehended by the masses. The Christ of the Piscean age said, “I came to show the possibilities of man; what I have done all men may do, and what I am all men shall be.”** By tuning in the thoughts, words, and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, Levi could tell the complete and true history of his life and career. Jesus was not always the Christ but received his Christship by virtue of an exem-ao ‘DY 11:46 In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan an... : x 4a books.google.n! } Q < 7 plary life of meditation and advanced spiritual studies. Mary and Eliz- abeth, the chosen mothers of the long promised sons, had been educated by spiritual masters in a sacred grove in Zoan, Egypt. They transmitted this esoteric knowledge to their sons, Jesus and John, who thereafter re- ceived educations relating to their different tasks. John was brought to the temple of Sakara in Egypt where he “became a master mind and learned the duties of the harbinger.”** In the meantime, Jesus traveled through India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, Greece, and Egypt. He studied with Brah- manic priests, Lamas, Magians, and other religious masters before going to Sakara to complete his studies in the Temple of the Brotherhood. There Jesus passes six Brotherhood tests before he received the highest degree, “the Christ,” and left the temple as a redeemer.*® The work of Jesus the Christ as described by Levi is, as noted, at odds with the version of the New Testament. The Christ is foremost a mastermind, a teacher of Gnosis, showing man how to conquer his lower self, the necessary victory before man can enter the plane of soul. The teachings of the Christ were too advanced to be fully understood by the masses of his age but will come to fruition with the coming Aquarian age. As noted by Abbie Whyte, a large part of the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ was plagiarized by Noble Drew Ali.** Nineteen chapters, close to half of the Holy Koran, are copied from the work of Levi. However, this is not acknowledged by Noble Drew Ali, who instead refers to an esoteric Muslim tradition: “The reason these lessons have not been known is because the Moslems of India, Egypt and Palestine had these secrets and kept them back from the outside world, and when the time appointed by Allah they loosened the keys and freed these secrets, and for the first time in ages have these secrets been delivered in the hands of the Moslems in America."*” With the exception of a few necessary alterations, the lessons are plagiarized verbatim from the Aquarian Gospel. Concepts such as “God” or “church” are replaced with the counterparts perceived to be more Islamic: “Allah” and “temple.” The Moorish Science Temple taught that Jesus, like all other manifestations of Allah, was black. A passage in the Aquarian Gospel indicating another race for the principal actor is consequently altered. Mary and Joseph return to Jerusalem to seek their missing youngster and ask the guards, “Have you seen Jesus, a fair-haired boy, with deep blue eyes, twelve years of age, about these courts?”*° When this event is related in the Holy Koran we are simply told that “Mary asked the guards had they seen Jesus, a little boy about twelve years old.”** Another feature of the Moorish edition is its selective character.