Ali, Noble Drew (8 Jan. 1886-20 July 1929), religious leader, was born and raised in poverty in rural North Carolina. The names of his parents are not known, but he grew up with the name Timothy Drew. Although he had very little formal education, he studied the teachings of Islam and claimed to have traveled in the Middle East in the early part of the twentieth century. He also said that he had been given the title Ali during a visit to Mecca (in modern-day Saudi Arabia). He came to prominence in 1912 when he asked President Woodrow Wilson to return the Moorish flag that he believed was hidden in a vault in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ali argued that black people within the United States were descendants of the Moabites of Old Testament times and that Morocco, not sub-Saharan Africa, was their homeland. Although, he believed, they had lived in freedom and practiced Islam prior to the American Revolution, they were enslaved by the Continental Congress in 1779, and the Moorish flag they had once carried was taken from them. Ali maintained that black Americans had forgotten that their true religion was Islam and as slaves had been forced to adopt Christianity instead.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 13:19:25 +0000
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