The Moors are yet another Cult founded by a Charismatic figure, or Cult of Personality who merged historical events, religious dogma, and group dynamics to form a new religion, “community,” or “nation."
If you take a look at the Black community since the end of the Reconstruction Era, you will find many such cults, and messianic figures emerged, some were transient, others have held on and morphed over the decades, like the Moors.
Oppressed and abused peoples are particularly vulnerable to cults or cultist groups, especially groups that promise them new glory, or a return to a former glory.
The cults often accomplish many "positive” things like helping people overcome addiction, giving them a sense of belonging and pride, allowing them to see their oppressors as “Devils,” or “sub-human,” which is particulary valuable to an oppressed people who had been conditioned to see their oppressors as divine, holy, or innately superior.
The down side is that these cults are self limiting because they bind their followers to many irrational views and practices, they also separate the followers from the greater community in unhealthy and corrosive ways. Most cults teach that our ultimate salvation/liberation rest in the hands or actions of a God, a prophecy, or some Great Man instead of our collective, practical, and ongoing organization and resistance.
I think the Moorish Ideology ranges from the benign to the absurd, just like most other Religious and Cultist Ideologies. You will find individuals who take the teachings of Noble Drew Ali and use them for self-improvement and even to organize to improve aspects of the community, then you have some Moors that use the ideology to attack others, to attack Africa, and disrupt efforts for Pan-African unity. Then there is the whole Sovereignty BS which has disrupted many followers lives, and even lead to the incarceration of some Moors.
I would encourage those who are interested in the history and historical lessons the experience of the Moors has to teach us today, to avoid the cults and study the historical record and the ligitimate and honest historians. There is a wealth of insight in that history for Africans, but I don’t think we need to play dress-up and play pretend whenever we find an attractive era in our history. The Moors are not the only ones guilty of this; but I’ll just stick to talking about them because I’m sure this response will piss off enough people without roping any other Cults and their followers into it. LoL!
