Spencer Dew, The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali

Abstract

American Religion 1, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 136–138 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.2.08 Book Review Spencer Dew, The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019) Emily Suzanne Clark Gonzaga University, Spokane, USA When I first dove into the primary sources on Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple of America I thought, “there really should be more work on this group.” Spencer Dew has done the field of American religion a huge favor with his book, The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali. This is a smart book that makes a significant contribution to a number of sub-fields within our discipline. Additionally, Dew’s achievement here encourages all scholars of religion to reflect on how our subjects understand their complex identities and how we as scholars interrogate the layers of those identities. In The Aliites Dew focuses on three religious communities that developed from the ideas of Noble Drew Ali: the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Nuwaubian Yamassee, and the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah. By attending to these three groups, who he terms the Aliites, Dew’s book is able to span much of the twentieth century and into contemporary America. The book’s central arguments focus on the ideas of the Aliites and how these ideas shape their negotiations with broader American culture. The main threads of Aliite thought Dew untangles are nationality, law, and citizenship. He illuminates how Aliites theorize racial uplift and racial (mis)identification. The self-knowledge that comes with recognizing their true nationality (rather than the identities forced upon Emily Suzanne Clark 137 them by broader American culture) leads to an understanding of Allah’s true law and salvation. God’s law will always be true, even if the everyday world does not abide by it. Aliites, therefore, live their identity by critiquing the discrepancies between the secular legal system and Allah’s law, even as they appeal to the power of the state to support their desired criticisms and corrections. This is because salvation comes with citizenship: citizenship meaning both the empowerment that comes with correct self-identification and engagement with a pluralistic, religiously diverse, democratic society. The book has a clever organization. Rather than tell a chronological narrative , Dew structures the book around how Aliites interpret the Great Seal of the United States. Aliite thinkers approach the seal in a variety of ways, most of which argue that it is deeply connected to their identity. With this organization, Dew tells a thematically-driven story, and each chapter continues to unpack Aliites’ understandings of racial identity, citizenship, sovereignty, and law. Aliite thought often is misunderstood by outsiders, such as police officers, judges, and legal activists. Dew is dedicated to understanding the Aliites on their own terms, rather than how outsiders see them. This is not an easy task, and Dew’s brief reflections on his authorial location in the Introduction demonstrate that he is not naïve about this. He is honest about the difficulty in studying Aliite thought and how his approach to the task developed over time, especially as he expanded the book beyond the Moorish Science Temple of America and included the two later groups, the Nuwaubian Yamassee and the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah. There are a lot of differences between the three Aliite groups, but as Dew informs readers early on, they all united through “Ali’s teachings on citizenship and law, privileging engagement with the state and the state’s legal system in order to achieve recognition and to transform society” (13). The book’s organization allows Dew to engage all three groups in each chapter, which allows readers to see that unifying strand of thought and observe how various Aliite communities engage with their specific historical, social, cultural, and legal contexts. Each chapter builds on the previous ones while also providing a stand-alone look at a specific element of Aliite thought. Rather than provide an overview of each chapter, I want to focus briefly on chapter seven, which examines “Aliite social experiments” and how they demonstrate the Aliite “project of...