The Black Box: The False Religion Of The Moorish Science Temple Of America

But biology and primary sources are clear: African Americans are not descendants of the Moors.

Y-DNA draws a sharp line: historical Moors = North African haplogroup E1b1b (E-M81), indigenous Berbers (Amazigh) and Middle Eastern Arabs; African Americans = Sub-Saharan E1b1a (E-V38), from West and Central African peoples like the Yoruba, Igbo, Akan and Fon - never Mediterranean Maghrebi populations.

Stealing Berber-Arab identity to claim the monuments of Spain ironically insults the verified greatness of Mali, Songhai and Benin.

The movement itself: founded 1913 by Timothy Drew, rebranded "Noble Drew Ali", who told Black migrants fleeing Jim Crow they were "Moors/Asiatics" who could escape oppression with a fake Moroccan nationality.

Its holy text, the Circle 7 Koran, has nothing to do with orthodox Islam: the first 19 chapters were copied nearly word-for-word from Levi Dowling's 1908 occult book "The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ" (esoteric teachings depicting Jesus studying in India and Tibet), and the rest plagiarized from the pamphlet "Unto Thee I Grant".

He received no divine revelation - he cut up American New Age books and stamped a holy seal on them. Medieval Europeans used "Moor" carelessly for anyone dark-skinned; turning a 500-year-old vocabulary error into genetic ancestry is false. We can admire Al-Andalus without falsely claiming to have built it.