OFFICIAL CRITIQUE OF THE MOORISH SCIENCE TEMPLE OF AMERICA (2024) By Halisi Olugbala Uhuru, Revolutionary Intercommunalism Black Panther Party

First and foremost, I write this critique of the MST of A with respect for the sincere and dedicated members of the Moorish Science Temple who have done great works for our people in raising consciousness, and building institutions to further our struggle for self-determination. This critique is not intended to disrespect the Moorish Science Temple or the Prophet Noble Drew Ali, but to bring truth to light, and to challenge those sincere and dedicated Moors to update, revise and correct some of the incorrect notions and strategies that have persisted in the Temple, in efforts to make the Temple a more effective force of consciousness raising and institution-building in our communities.

However, this critique will show why the Moorish Science Temple of America is incorrect in their historical claims that the so-called ‘’African Americans’’ are descendants of the Moors from Morocco; that the Moors of Morocco are descendants of the Biblical Moabites; that the word ‘America’ is a bastardized form of ‘‘Al Morocco’’ or ‘‘Al Mauritania’’; that the Moors are the indigenous aboriginal people of the Americas; and that Islam is, and has always been, an Afrikan way of life and religion. This critique will also show why the Moorish Science Temple of America is incorrect in their political claims that Afrikan people in America are oppressed because of a lack of declaring a ‘’free national name’’; and why the Moorish insistence on respecting the government, constitution, and laws of our oppressor, enslaver, and colonizer, is, and can only be, a betrayal of our interests as an oppressed people seeking liberation, independence, and restoration.

1. Are we, the so-called ‘’Black’’ people of America, descendants of the    Moors from Morocco (Northwest Afrika), and who exactly were the Moors?

Answer: The term ‘’Moor’’ was a generic term first used by Europeans to refer to any of the Muslim people of color in the Maghreb region of North Afrika, consisting of Arabs, Berbers, and Afrikans (Black people), or any mixture of the three.

Before the advent of Islam in North Afrika, no one was referred to as a Moor. The Arabs brought Islam into North Afrika when the Arab Muslim armies swept through Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and northern Mauretania in the 7th and 8th centuries, killing, colonizing and enslaving the Afrikans and Berbers who were already living in those lands, forcing many of the Afrikans to flee their homes, traveling south of the Sahara desert. To this day, all of North Afrika is Arab land, and all of Afrika south of the Sahara, or ‘’sub-Saharan Afrika’’ is Black land.

The male Afrikan children whom the Arabs captured were forced to fight in their armies as slave soldiers, and the Afrikan women were raped or taken as wives to the Arab men, producing mixed Afro-Arab children who were raised up to be, and think of themselves as, Arabs. If you check the World Almanac (any year) and look up the ethnic groups in Mauritania, it will list: ‘’White Moor (Arabs and Arab-speaking Berbers), and ‘’Black Moor’’ (Arab-speaking slaves or descendants of slaves to the White Moors).

In the year 711 AD, these white and black Moors left Mauretania and conquered Spain under various dynasties, such as the Umayyad Dynasty, the Almoravid Dynasty and the Almohad Dynasty. They also began to open up trade relations with the Afrikan nations and kingdoms in the Sahel region of West Afrika directly below the Sahara desert. They first traded in salt and gold. Salt came from Saharan mines controlled by the Moors, and gold came from the West Afrikan mines controlled by different West Afrikan nations in the Sahel and forest regions. The Afrikan peoples and kingdoms of the sahel middle-manned the trade in gold and salt between the sahara, sahel, and the forest, and became prosperous because of it.

Contact with the Muslims of North Afrika (Moors) led to a few large West Afrikan nations adopting Islam, such as the Fulbe (Fula, Fulani), Mandinka, Hausa, and Wolof nations, and the Arab Muslims of North Afrika encouraged them to wage jihad (Islamic Holy War) against non-Muslim Afrikans (called ‘’kafir’’ by the Arabs), so that the Arabs of North Afrika could get the West Afrikan Muslims to sell their non-Muslim Afrikan captives to them as slaves, which is permissible in the Arab’s Islamic religion. This is how the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade began in the 7th century, and it continued until the European Slave Trade supplanted it.

The European Slave Trade is the slave trade that was responsible for bringing Afrikan people to North America, South America and the Caribbean Islands as slaves. It began in 1441 when Portuguese enslavers kidnapped 12 West Afrikans off the Senegambian coast and took them back to Portugal as slaves. The European Slave Trade ended in 1888 when the former Portuguese colony of Brazil in South America abolished its enslavement of Afrikan people, being the last country to do so.

During the 447 years of European enslavement, 12.5 million Afrikans were taken from Afrika as slaves. 2 million of these Afrikans died on the slave ships during the Middle Passage. 5 million Afrikans were trafficked to the Caribbean islands as slaves. 4.5 million Afrikans were trafficked to South America as slaves. 250,000 Afrikans were trafficked to Central America as slaves, and 400,000 Afrikans were trafficked here to the United States as slaves. The rest were taken to Europe or to different European settlements and colonies along the coast and coastal islands of West Afrika.

Today, there are approximately 45 million so-called ‘’African Americans’’ here in the U.S., and we are all descendants of the original 400,000 West Afrikans who were brought here as slaves, and very few, if any, of these Afrikans were Moors, or even from anywhere in North Afrika.

The European Slave Trade was predominantly centered in the coastal regions and hinterlands of West Afrika, south of the Sahara, from Senegal in the north of this region to Angola in the south. Proof of this fact can be found in all the financial records, shipping logs, personal journals, and records of the slave trade, and in the fact that the slave forts and castles built by the Europeans to hold our people before putting us on the ships are still standing on the West Afrikan coast as national heritage sites. It is a part of the school curriculums and oral traditions in West Afrika that their people were taken as slaves to foreign lands, i.e., the Americas. The only other region of Afrika where the European Slave Trade was operating out of was in Mozambique in southeast Afrika, where the Portuguese established a trading post, and trafficked about a half a million Afrikans from there to their colony in Brazil.

The region of West Afrika that our people were taken from is separated from North Afrika by the largest desert in the world – the Sahara. There is no record, either by Europeans or Afrikans, of the European Slave Trade operating out of any of the countries of North Afrika. In fact, it was the Moors of Morocco who, in 1591, invaded and destroyed the Songhai Empire (1464-1591), the greatest and most powerful West Afrikan empire in history, thereby weakening West Afrika’s ability to resist the European Slave Trade.

We are not descendants of the Moors of northwest Afrika, i.e., Morocco; we are descendants of the nations of West Afrika, such as the Wolof, Mandinka, Mende, Akan, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba, Igbo, Bakongo, Mbundu, etc. Any ancestry DNA test will reveal to us that our bloodline is West Afrikan.

2.   Are the Moors of Morocco descendants of the Biblical Moabites?

Answer: The Moors of Morocco have written detailed records of exactly who they are and where they came from, and no, that record does not describe them as being descendants of the Moabites, and neither does the Bible say so.

The Moors of Morocco have recorded that they are Arabs who originally came from Yemen at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and that they migrated to Morocco in the 7th and 8th centuries.

3.   Is the word America a bastardized form of the word, ‘’al Morocco’’ or    ‘’al Mauretania’’?

Answer: No. America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a European explorer who was said to have explored the continental land masses we know of today as North America and South America.

4.   Are the Moors, or so-called ‘’Black’’ people of America, the indigenous    aboriginal people of America?

Answer: No. Prior to the coming of the Europeans to the Western Hemisphere in 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed here, this land was populated with the many nations of people we know of today as ‘’American Indians’’ or ‘’Native Americans’’. None of these American Indian nations claimed to be Moors, and they practiced a cultural and spiritual way of life completely different from the Moors of  Morocco.

There is some evidence that could suggest that some West Afrikans have traveled to the Americas by boat prior to Columbus, but it is not conclusive, but even if so, no evidence suggests that any large number of Afrikans settled here or established nations here.

So-called ‘’white’’ and ‘’black’’ peoples are not indigenous to this land. Our people were brought to this land as slaves from our true homeland of West Afrika. To claim this land as our own is to continue the theft of the Native’s land that began with, and is perpetuated by, the white man.

5.   Is Islam the ‘’natural’’ or original religion and way of life for    Afrikan people?

Answer: Islam was first propagated by the prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah in the 600’s AD in Arabia. The prophet Muhammad was an Arab from the tribe of Quraish, and the Arabs at this time already had a tradition of buying and kidnapping Afrikan slaves from East Afrika. In fact, one of Muhammad’s companions and the first mezzuin (caller to prayer) was an Ethiopian slave named Bilal whom Abu Bakr, another of Muhammad’s companions, bought and freed by trading a younger and stronger Ethiopian slave for him.

Islam was created in the context of Arabian social, moral, and religious reform. It was created by Arabs, and it’s holy book, the Quran, is only valid if written in Arabic, and Muslims are expected to pray in Arabic and assume Arabic names, and Islam claims the Arabian city of Mecca as its Holy Land. For all intents and purposes, Islam is an Arab religion, and is not the original religion of Afrikan people.

Afrikan religions are based on Ancestral Communion and Animism. We prayed to the spirits of our Ancestors, and honored the spirits of Nature.

Islam was brought into Afrika by Arab invaders, colonizers, and enslavers. First, Islam spread through conquest, and then once Islam and Arab people were rooted in North Afrika, Arabs spread the religion to West Afrika through trade, and then the converted West Afrikan Muslims themselves spread the religion through war and conquest (Jihad) against other Afrikans.

6.   Was, or, is, the lack of a ‘’free national name’’ the reason why our    civil rights were not, and are not, respected?

Answer: It is claimed by the Moorish Science Temple of America that until we declare our ‘’free national name’’, or nationality, as ‘’Moorish Americans’’, we will not be recognized by the U.S. government, or any government in the world, which is why we are not protected by the rights enshrined in the Constitution of the U.S.

This claim overlooks and refuses to acknowledge the blatant fact of racism, white supremacy and exploitation as the motivating factors behind our oppression, and places the blame on us, instead of on the society and ruling class that is oppressing us.

When the Europeans brought us here as slaves, we were free and recognized members of our nations in West Afrikan. We had our own nationalities, names, languages, history, cultures, and religions. The Europeans enslaved us, took us from our land, and stripped us of our freedom and ‘’free national names’’, and labelled us negroes, niggers, coloreds, and blacks.

They built a nation for themselves called the United States of America, and wrote a Constitution guaranteeing it’s citizens certain rights and privileges, and we were never intended to be a part of it. We were slaves to the Americans. That’s it. This was the reason for the 3/5th’s clause and the fugitive slave clause written into the Constitution, and it’s the reason for the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision in 1857, which settled the issue of our citizenship once and for all, determining that no ‘’Negro of the African race’’, whether born free or enslaved, can ever be a citizen of the United States. In short, we were never intended to be citizens of the U.S., and the rights of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had no bearing on our people.

When chattel slavery ended in 1865, the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to our people and all those born in the United States regardless of race, and the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote, were passed as measures by the Republican Party to bring us into the U.S. body politic, so that with our vote, the Republican Party would continue to rule over the southern Democrats, thereby keeping power in the hands of the northern Unionists and industrialists, something needed at that time in order to secure the economic rule of the industrial capitalists, who were represented by the Republican Party, against the defeated agrarian slave-owning capitalists, who were represented by the Democratic Party.

A 12 year period of Reconstruction followed the end of slavery in 1865 in which the Union Army forced the south to respect our newfound rights, and as a result, we voted in overwhelming numbers, sending our people to congress, and we built many schools, businesses, and hospitals for our people. Once the rule of the industrial capitalists was secured, the north, in efforts to reconcile their relationship with the south, betrayed our people once again, and pulled all the Union troops out of the south in 1877, leaving our people defenseless against white terrorist groups and politicians aiming to re-enslave us and reestablish white supremacy in the south.

Our people were massacred all throughout the south. Thousands were lynched. Our communities were attacked; and our churches, schools and businesses were burned to the ground. We were forbidden to vote by the threat of KKK violence. Our politicians who were already in power were killed or chased out of town. New laws called ‘’Jim Crow’’ laws were created all over the south to control every aspect of our lives, strip us of our dignity and human rights, and to establish white supremacy.

In 1913, at the time of the prophet Noble Drew Ali’s founding of the Canaanite Temple, which preceded the MST of A, our people lived under the terror of Jim Crow and Klan rule in the south, and severe racial discrimination and poverty in the north. We were not oppressed and exploited because we failed to call ourselves Moorish Americans. We were oppressed and exploited because we lived in a racist, capitalist country that wanted to preserve white supremacy, and Black inferiority and exploitation.

The 14th Amendment granted us U.S. citizenship as a birthright. Our nationality at that point, from the U.S. perspective, was thereby American. The Constitution already declared us free and protected, but the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and white racism made our constitutional rights meaningless; not a name or the lack thereof. We must not blame the victim, and learn to see things as they truly are.

America is not our home, it is the land of our enslavement and bondage, and we have just been stuck here ever since. The American government is not and has never been our friend. This government and rich ruling class is the main source of our oppression because it refuses to right it’s wrongs against our people, destroy the capitalist system that has, and is, continuing to exploit us, and create a just society whereby we are able to exercise self-determination and reap the full fruits of our labor. This is the only way that we will be free here in America.

Morocco is not our home or our ally. We must remember that Morocco established a treaty of peace and friendship with America at a time when America held our people as slaves, because Morocco also held us as slaves at that same time.

Yes, we must reject the false labels imposed on our people as slaves, and return back to the sacred ways of our Ancestors, but we cannot do so upon falsehoods. We must accept and embrace the truth that we are Afrikans, Afrika is our true home, and the Afrikan Way is the only true way of our people. We are descendants of the tribes and nations of West Afrika, and if we truly want to reconnect with our roots, then we must set our eyes and hearts on our West Afrikan homeland and culture. But no culture in and of itself will liberate us from the oppression and exploitation of the American ruling class, or it’s armed goons. Only a proletarian-based socialist revolution will bring about the true liberation of our people and all oppressed and exploited people around the world.

Dare to Struggle! Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!