Nuwaubian Nation

thumb|300px|Flag used by the Nuwaubian Nation, featuring a [[Star of David and an Ankh]]

The Nuwaubian Nation, Nuwaubian movement, or United Nuwaubian Nation () is an American religious organization founded by Dwight York circa 1967. Since that point the group has repeatedly changed its name, teachings and practices. Scholars of religion have characterized it as a new religious movement and a black nationalist group.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nuwaubian beliefs are eclectic and have changed over time. York—who promoted his teachings through writings called "scrolls"—initially claimed to be the grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, the 19th-century Sudanese Mahdi. He later claimed to be an extraterrestrial named Yaanuwn. Although it has promoted references to "Allah" and "God", its teachings are materialistic, dismissing the existence of a spiritual realm. Race is a key part of its black nationalist worldview, which focuses on African Americans especially. White people are regarded as having a fundamentally separate origin. The group is millenarian, with York prophesying that an apocalypse in the 2000s would see the righteous 144,000 be saved. Many of the movement's teachings revolve around the use of Nubic, a language which York developed.

York had a background in Sunni Islam but established his own group, initially called the Ansaar Pure Sufi, in Brooklyn, New York City around 1967. By 1969 the group had been renamed the Nubian Islamic Hebrew Mission in America and in 1973 it became the Ansaaru Allah Community. Establishing a Brooklyn commune with its own security force, the group presented itself as being Islamic but faced much opposition from other Muslim organizations in the city. Over coming years it integrated ideas from New Age and UFO religions, with York announcing that he was an extraterrestrial. In 1992 York transformed his movement into the Holy Tabernacle Ministries, increasingly foregrounding Jewish themes. The following year, it became the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and relocated to Georgia, where it began claiming to be a Native American nation and established Tama-Re, an Ancient Egypt-themed compound and tourist attraction. The movement also incorporated sovereign citizen concepts. In 2004, York was convicted of child molestation, racketeering, and financial reporting violations, and sentenced to 135 years in federal prison. Although Tama Re was demolished and group membership declined, the movement has survived as the United Sabaeans Worldwide.

Over the course of its history, the Nuwaubian movement has attracted thousands of followers, with estimates suggesting that core support has peaked at around 500 members in any given period. It has also exerted an influence on a number of African-American musicians. The movement has faced much criticism from US law enforcement, journalists, the anti-cult movement, Muslim organizations, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have varyingly accused it of being a black supremacist hate group, cult, and criminal enterprise.

Definition

Over the course of their history, the Nuwaubians have operated under various different names, with the sociologist of religion Susan Palmer referring to this phenomenon, in its various institutional forms, as "the Nuwaubian movement". Similarly changing have been its use of symbols and the clothing worn by its members. Another sociologist of religion, David V. Barrett, noted that the group's development was "complex and (certainly for outside observers) muddled". The Nuwaubian movement draws influence from the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and the Quran, in addition to elements from UFO beliefs, Black Freemasonry, the writings of Edgar Cayce, and US Patriot movement conspiracy theories.

Palmer believed that the movement's teachings became more eclectic in their influences as it aged.

Although the various changes that the movement has undergone throughout its history mean that the Nuwaubian Nation defies easy categorization, scholars of religion have classified it as a new religious movement. The movement emerged within the context of American black nationalism, with the scholar of religion Kathleen Malone O'Connor arguing that it was best understood in "the black prophetic, millennial, and messianic traditions of the Moorish Science Temple,[...] the Nation of Islam[...] and the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths". Palmer also described it as part of a broader "Black cultic milieu", through which it interacted with Rastafari, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Hebrew Israelites. From the late 1960s through to the late 1980s, the movement presented itself as a Muslim group—although its interpretation of Islam would be considered heretical by mainstream Muslims—while in the early 1990s it was often characterized as going through a Jewish phase. The organization also amalgamated ideas from the sovereign citizen movement and was classified as a Moorish sovereign citizen group. Members of the movement used typical sovereign citizen tactics, such as refusing to produce driver's licenses when arrested for traffic violations.

In 1999, the Nuwaubians launched their own local publication, The Putnam News, and the following year fielded candidates, associated with the Republican Party, for the Putnam County elections. This contributed to local fears that the Nuwaubians were attempting a political takeover of the area, akin to that which the Rajneesh followers had allegedly done in Oregon. Local newspapers gave the Nuwaubians overwhelmingly negative coverage, while various journalists and attorneys who were deemed hostile to the group reported receiving death threats, property damage, or being stalked.

Amid these tensions, the Nuwaubians pursued links with the African-American community more broadly; in 1999, they invited prominent community leaders Al Sharpton and Tyrone Brooks to visit Tama Re and speak on their behalf,

Beliefs

Nuwaubians refer to their ideas as "Right Knowledge", "the Knowledge", or elsewhere as "Nuwaubu," "Nuwaupu," or "Wu-Nuwaubu". These beliefs stem from the teachings of Dwight York, who is known among Nuwaubians as the "master teacher".

York produced over 400 published writings, referred to as "scrolls", which have been issued under his various nom-de-plumes. York had appropriated and adapted elements from various other black new religions, such as the Nation of Islam.

From these earlier doctrines, York developed his own particular synthesis. While drawing elements from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he has maintained that these religions' sacred texts have been adulterated that that his teachings are returning them to their pure form.

Palmer described York adopting a "cryptic style of teaching", one also characterized by a strong emphasis on joking and humor, and on mocking and criticizing better-established religions.

In his teachings, he claimed that he wanted to awaken black people from their "sleep" or ignorance of reality, commenting that "I have devoted my visit to this planet to the resurrection of the mentally dead, which I affectionately refer to as mummies." He maintained that the "Spell of Kingu" had been cast over the African American people by the US government, media, popular culture, and the Christian churches. In many of his talks, he encouraged people not to take his word for things, but to do their own research.

Theology

The Nuwaubian worldview was described by Palmer as a form of "radical materialism". They reject the notion of a transcendental spiritual realm separate from the material one, believing the former a lie promoted by Christian churches to keep African-American people docile. For the Nuwaubians, as with the Nation of Islam before them, gods are therefore viewed as physical beings. York interpreted the Hebrew word Elohim, but which he preferred to spell "Eloheem", as being not a singular entity but a race of "angelic beings" who visited the Earth.

Rather than seeing the terms "Allah" and "God" as synonyms, as is typical, York distinguished between them. He interpreted the word "God" as an acronym encompassing three words in the Kufic language he developed—"Gomar Oz Dubar"—meaning "wisdom, strength, and beauty". He then presented these as traits possessed by the black man, meaning that, while black men are not Allah, they are God for they symbolize divinity within the world. The scholar of religion Michael Muhammad Knight suggested that this theological view represented York's negotiation with the theology of the Nation of Islam, which does maintain that black people are gods.

Nuwaubians therefore perceive themselves as having an inner divinity, a doctrine that is shared widely among black new religions of North America, including among the Rastafari, Nation of Islam, Five-Percenters, and Black Hebrews.

York also taught the existence of Iblis (Shaytan), an oppositional figure in Islamic theology.

Race and black nationalism

Race is a consistent theme in York's writings, which are steeped in black nationalism. York regarded "Nubia" as the true name for Africa, and thus often referred to African Americans as "Nubians". Another term he used for Nubia was "Nuwauber" and in reference to this he called his followers "Nuwaubians".

Palmer rejected the applicability of the term "black supremacist" to these teachings. The Nuwaubians seek racial separatism, rather than acceptance and absorption into white-dominated society.

Palmer noted that the Nuwaubians' views on race were "complex and shifting", with the spiritual assessment of different racial groups changing throughout York's writings.

The origins of racial difference

In York's various writings he offered competing etiologies for human racial diversity. During the AAC period of the movement's development, York claimed that there were three races of humanity: the Nubians or Cushites (black Africans), the Amorites (white Europeans, West and South Asians), and the Edomites (East Asians). Of these, the Nubians were presented as the original race, descended directly from Adam and Eve. At that point York also claimed that Native Americans were not a distinct race but the product of ancient interbreeding between Cushites and Edomites. He sometimes used the term "Canaanite" synonymously with "Amorite" but in other instances used "Canaanite" for what he regarded as a "sub-tribe" of white Amorites who had raped Nubian women and thus produced offspring with darker skin but straight hair; these, he identified as the peoples of West and South Asia.

York provided a different account of racial difference in his 1996 work Extraterrestrials Among Us. Here he claimed that black people are the descendants of extraterrestrials from the planet Rizq, a group he called the "Annunaqi Eloheem". He maintained that these extraterrestrials had to flee Rizq after it was threatened by rays from its three suns: Utu, Apsu, and Shamash. He described this species as being green-skinned, "beautiful angelic beings", but that as these extraterrestrials entered the Earth's atmosphere, the magnesium in their melanin was replaced by iron, changing the color of their skin to dark brown. He further maintained that they settled in ancient Egypt and established ancient Egyptian civilization. White people, York claimed, instead descend from lizard-like "reptoids" while those he deemed racially Mongoloid came from the Terros.

York claimed that genetic tampering by extraterrestrials had resulted in humanity losing many its innate capacities, such as telepathy and clairvoyance.

He maintained that various extraterrestrial species reside on Earth, concealed underground, but that they sometimes breed with humans. One such species that he claimed lived underground were the Deros, an obese species whose half-human offspring are similarly obese. Another of the subterranean species were the Teros; York claimed that when they bred with humans, the resulting offspring had Down syndrome. In his text Is God an Extraterrestrial?, York claimed that a new race was emerging, the Neutranoids, who lacked clear racial traits and were the puppets of forces wishing to undermine Earth's racial diversity.

White people

In Nuwaubian discourse, white people are referred to as "Palemen" or "Amorites". They are often framed negatively; in his 1990 publication The Paleman, York writes that "The Pale race are a race of Jinn, Devils." In a recorded lecture, York openly described himself as a "racist" and insisted that "White people are devils, and always was, always will be." As part of this view, he characterized Judaism and Christianity as "religions of the Devil".

Among York's early writings, he maintained that white people are the result of the Curse of Ham; in this he reversed a longstanding white supremacist claim in US society that the Curse of Ham resulted in formation of black people. York attributed white people's pale skin to leprosy, a notion that may have derived from two Black Hebrew figures who wrote in the 1920s, Clarke Jenkins and Father Hurley. York further claimed, in The Paleman, that Native Americans and Asians all have Down syndrome, which he claimed was a side-effect of leprosy. In an alternative account of York's, white people are described as the offspring of fallen angels who, after falling to Earth, mated with the wicked women of Nod. As part of this perspective, whites are presented as lacking the soul or spirit of Allah and are thus driven by instinct, lacking in compassion. Elsewhere, York claimed that white people arose from the albinos born to Adam and Eve, and that they were labeled "Cain", which he then claimed was a shortened form of the racial term "Caucasian".

In contrast to the generally negative assessment of white people, the Nuwaubians have maintained that a few whites, known as "white angels", have the remnant of a soul and were sent to Earth to help black people. Examples that these practitioners cite are those European Americans who helped run the Underground Railroad to get enslaved African Americans away from the southern states. The Nuwaubians add that through these actions, these white individuals may grow a soul, at which their skin will also darken. Palmer observed various Nuwaubians who had little problem engaging in a friendly manner with white individuals.

Cosmogony and mythology

thumb|right|York claimed that in Sudan he had a vision of [[Khidr (pictured), with the latter also being the figure Melchisedek.]]

York promoted his own myth regarding the origins of the black man.

In his earlier writings, York claimed that the name of Adam – the first man in various Abrahamic mythologies – derived from the Hebrew Ah-Dam, meaning 'black mud', which he took as evidence that Adam was a black man. Subsequently, from 1992 York changed his claims and began insisting that Adam came not from black mud but from brown dust. By the 1990s, York was maintaining that "Adama" was the first man created by the Eloheem, 49,000 years ago. He maintained that both Adam and Eve were formed at the junction of the Blue and White Niles in Sudan. They then went to the Garden of Eden, which was located at Mecca, but after being cast out of the Garden they returned to Sudan, which thus constitutes the cradle of humanity.

York's teachings maintain that the descendants of Cain waged an ancient war on Salaam, a technologically advanced society that existed on land now beneath the Red Sea. Salaam was centred at a capital city named Mu and ruled by Khidr/Melchisedek. Once Cain's descendants destroyed Mu, the Red Sea rose and submerged Salaam, cutting off Africa from the Arabian peninsula. York stated that this break between the two continents was alluded to in Elijah Muhammad's NOI story regarding how the moon broke from the Earth; York insisted that Elijah Muhammad's tale was allegorical, with the moon symbolizing Asia and the Earth symbolizing Africa.

York stated that after Noah was seen naked by his son Ham, the former cursed Ham's son Canaan, whose descendants would suffer albinism. This is one of York's various accounts for the origins of white people. In York's mythology, Canaan and his sister-wife then fled to the Caucasus Mountains, where they had 11 sons. York claimed that their descendants became increasingly animalistic, walking on all-fours and engaging in cannibalism. He further maintained that the white Amorite women began copulating with dogs and other animals, explaining the development of straight hair textures among their descendants.

In York's writings, it is claimed that both Abraham and Moses were sent by Allah to civilize the white Amorites. York stated that Abraham attracted a group of white followers, who falsely believed themselves to be his descendants and became the "pale Jews". York maintains that the claim, made by that "pale Jews", that they are descendants of the ancient Israelites is false; instead he says that the only true living descendants of the Israelites are the Ethiopian Beta Israel.

York's teachings also claim that the Buddha was a prophet sent by Allah to the Amorites living in the Indian subcontinent.

York stated that Abraham's son Ishmael was the first Arab. However, York maintains that, of Ishmael's sons, only Kedar preserved his racial purity; he thus presented his Nuwaubians as the descendants of Abraham via Ishmael and Kedar. York claimed that Kedar's descendants were racially Nubian and were the true Arabs. He contrasts these against what he considers false, "pale Arabs", who tricked the true Arabs, scattering them out of Arabia, kidnapping them, and selling them to European slave traders. York's teachings thus de-centre the "pale Arabs" of Arabia as the natural authorities in Islam and instead centers Sudan as the true heartland of Islam.

Jesus and Muhammad

According to York, Jesus was the biological son of the angel Gabriel, who had had sex with Jesus' mother Mary.

In his 1980 book Was Christ Really Crucified?, York claimed that Jesus escaped crucifixion and then traveled throughout Africa and the Middle East. This was an idea that probably derived ultimately from Levi H. Dowling's Aquarian Gospel of Jesus.

In York's view, the Islamic prophet Muhammad was a black Nubian, something that has been concealed by pale Arab Muslims.

York taught that the Buraq, an animal that Muhammad allegedly rode into the heavens in Islamic belief, was actually a fleet of spaceships. He maintained that these ships will one day ascend to Earth to gather the 144,000.

For York, the first three Caliphs who succeeded Muhammad were all usurpers.

In his view, Muhammad's "unmistakably black" daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali had to flee persecution by the "pale Arab" Abu Bakr.

Millenarianism

The Nuwaubians are a millenarian movement. During the movement's earlier, more Islam-centred phases, York claimed that Shaytan's rule over the Earth would end in the year 2000. He maintained that in preparation, there needed to be born 144,000 Nubian children who would "rapture" their parents when that occurred.

In 1990, York claimed that white people would continue suffering the symptoms of leprosy – in which he included sun blisters, asthma, eczema, and AIDS – as the sun became hotter and the ozone layer thinner. He added that this would culminate in 2000, when Shaytan's rule on Earth would end and the white people would be forced to flee into underground caverns to escape the sun, allowing black people to rule the surface.

York maintained that on May 5, 2000, a series of catastrophes would befall the Earth. He further claimed that on August 12, 2003, spaceships will arrive to begin to arrive to rescue the 144,000 righteous people; these rescues, he thought, would continue until June 26, 2030. As part of this, he described how a "Mothership" would land on the pyramid that the Nuwaubians had erected at Tama Re. He varyingly referred to this spaceship as the "Motherplane", "Nibiru", and "the Crystal City". he associated this with the Merkabah described in Ezekiel 1. York said that these "worthy souls" will go to "the Crystal City" before returning to the Earth to "save the planet" a thousand years later. When these prophecies events failed to come about, it led to some defections from the Nuwaubian movement.

Morality and gender roles

York emphasised that his Nuwaubians should not follow the moral conventions of mainstream American society on issues such as sexuality, stating: "we are Africans. We have our own laws, morality, customs, rules, regulations." In York's publication, Sex Life of a Muslim, he recommended the practice of oral and anal sex, and the drinking of semen, advice contravening that of mainstream Islam. In the lecture "Does God Exist According To Our Time" he also defended incest given its practice among the royal families of ancient Egypt. There is also one letter in which York noted that in many African societies women marry and have children at a young age, a statement which US criminal prosecutors subsequently highlighted as evidence that York endorsed sex between teenagers and adults.

York maintained that a woman's appropriate social role was as a wife and mother. In his publication Hadrat Fatima Part 2, York claimed that ideally a man should have four wives: a domestic wife, a companion wife, an educated wife, and a cultured wife. While the AAC advocated polygamy, in practice only the movement's senior leaders had multiple wives. York himself, one of his wives reported, had at least 50 wives. Generally, marriages within the movement were informal, with no wedding ceremony. York would sometimes choose marriage partners for his followers, with some accounts maintaining that in some instances he deliberately picked incompatible personalities for his own amusement. Birth control and abortion were condemned as tools of a white conspiracy to reduce the black birthrate.

During the AAC period, most women lived separately from their male partners, in distinct women's quarters. If a man proved successful in fundraising for the group, he was rewarded with a sexual assignation with his female partner, inside the "Green Room" decorated with images of the Garden of Eden. York used his followers' wives as concubines, something designed to test their loyalty to him. With these various women, York had around 100 children.

Children in the Ansaaru Allah Community were not taught English, but instead Hebrew, Arabic, and Nubic, the language that York invented. Interracial marriage is condemned as treachery to one's race.

Practices

Question and Answer sessions

During the AAC period, the movement's ministers oversaw "Question and Answer" sessions at its various bookstores, usually on Sunday afternoons.

These sessions were a space for followers to engage in speculative discussions. Ministers in attendance often serve to raise questions and encourage debate among the attendees, rather than to provide coherent answers.

Language

Like other black nationalist new religions that arose in the 20th century, the Nuwaubian movement emphasised the deconstruction of the English language. They use words as a means of empowerment, focusing on the sounds of the words and the rhythms of the syllables. In understanding the meaning of the words, they reject standard philology and linguistics; Palmer noted that the Nuwaubians instead employed "word play, erroneous semantic links or make-up definitions" in their understanding of language. She described an example at a Nuwaubian meeting where the speaker maintained that the word "exact" derives from "eggs-act" and pertained to how an egg can break. Elsewhere, York claimed that the term "gospel" came from "ghost spell".

Nuwaubians often greet each other with the Nubic term "Rahuawabbat".

They often use the term "overstanding" for "understanding," a change borrowed from Rastafari, and similarly "overtaking" for "undertaking".

Calendar and festival

York also established his own calendar, which marked the year 1970 as the Nuwaubian year 1 A.T. ("After the Truth"). During the movement's Jewish-oriented phase in the early 1990s, its members observed Jewish Shabbat regulations, resting between sunset on Friday and the sunset on Saturday. During this period, the movement also celebrated a range of Jewish festivals, including Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hannukah.

Organization

During the movement's AAC period, much of the organization was run by York's various wives, who oversaw its finances, publishing output, and administration.

There are various fraternal orders within the broader Nuwaubian movement.

Press and media

York's followers established stalls in various cities from which they sold their leader's writings as well as incense and oils. Knight noted that in doing so, the Ansar became a "well-known presence" in various cities of the northeastern United States. The group also established a chain of bookstores, referred to as the Original Tents of Kedar until 1993, after which they were renamed All Eyes on Egipt.

The Nation also issued DVDs of York's speeches.

Demographics

Knight noted that over the course of its history, the Nuwaubian movement had thousands of members. By 2000, the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors had some 500 adherents. Palmer suggested that there were "two levels of membership" within the movement. These included the long-term core, who stayed with York over the various transitions his movement underwent, and the short-term group, who often involved themselves with the AAC but later moved into more mainstream forms of Islam. Different factors might have appealed in attracting converts; for some, the main appeal was likely the movement's black nationalist message, while others probably joined because they were looking for the "real Islam".

Based on her visits to Tama Re in 2004, Palmer concluded that at that point older Nuwaubians tended to be blue-collar workers who lacked formal education and sometimes had criminal pasts, while the younger followers were more "upwardly mobile", possessing university degrees and professional jobs.

During the Nuwaubian phase of the group's history, one of its spokespeople stated that they also had white and Asian followers as well as black ones.

Reception and influence

Palmer termed the Nuwaubians "one of the most significant Black Nationalist spiritual movements in America, if only in terms of its longevity". In 2000, O'Connor observed that the group "contributes strongly to the current trend of Afrocentrism in African American social and cultural discourse". According to Palmer, the shifts and changes in direction that the movement underwent were "even more rapid and extreme" than in other new religions like the Children of God, Church of Scientology, and Rajneesh Foundation. Knight observed that for outsiders to the movement, the Nuwaubian group's defining features were its "eclectic references and seemingly incoherent self-identification".

The Southern Poverty Law Center accuse the Nuwaubians of expressing "black supremacist ideas", and of being a hate group.

Journalistic coverage has been overwhelmingly negative, with group members generally taking a hostile view of journalists. Two hostile books on the group were also published, The Ansar Cult in America (1988) by Muslim cleric Bilal Phillips and Ungodly by journalist Bill Osinski. There has also been academic interest in the group, initially by those in Islamic studies but subsequently predominantly by those in new religious movement studies.

The white Canadian scholar of religion Susan Palmer subsequently investigated the group; she was welcomed to its meetings, was allowed to participate in some rituals, and permitted to chat informally with various Nuwaubians.

Sunni Muslims deem York a blasphemer and a fake Muslim.

In 1994, Ghazi Y. Khankan, director of the New York office of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, commented about York and his group based on their history in Brooklyn. He said, "It's a cult, in my opinion, and in Islam there are no cults. They consider their leader a prophet, which means they have deviated from the Islamic way." Palmer believed that the substantial opposition faced by the Nuwaubians was influenced by the anti-cult movement, racism against African-Americans, and York's own provocative behavior. The Nuwaubians' critics in the anti-cult movement labeled it a cult. For them, York is a stereotypical "cult leader," a charlatan and con artist. They maintain that the substantial changes that York brought to the Nuwuabian movement was evidence for fraudulence, with York adopting different marketing strategies in his attempt to attract black youth. Critics similarly often emphasise York's role as a plagiarist who borrowed heavily from earlier writers.

Influence upon hip-hop

As "Dr. York", the movement's leader was a vocalist and music producer in Brooklyn before he left the area. During this time, his Nuwaubian teachings affected hip hop and Black culture in New York. Journalist Adam Heimlich of the New York Press suggested the following were influenced by York: Jaz-O, Doug E. Fresh, Afrika Bambaataa, Posdnuos from De La Soul, Prodigy from Mobb Deep, and MF Doom/KMD.

In indie hip hop, there are Nuwaubians who perform what they call Nu-wop, such as Daddi Kuwsh, Twinity, Nefu Amun Hotep, 9thScientist, Scienz of Life, Ntelek, Jedi Mind Tricks, Aslaam Mahdi, 720 Pure Sufi, Tos El Bashir and The Lost Children of Babylon.