Ancient Black Astronauts

Socialism and Democracy
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Ancient black astronauts and extraterrestrial

Jihads: Islamic science fiction as urban mythology
Yusuf Nuruddin
To cite this article: Yusuf Nuruddin (2006) Ancient black astronauts and extraterrestrial Jihads:
Islamic science fiction as urban mythology, Socialism and Democracy, 20:3, 127-165, DOI:
10.1080/08854300600950277
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Ancient Black Astronauts
and Extraterrestrial Jihads:
Islamic Science Fiction as Urban Mythology
Yusuf Nuruddin
Introduction
Science fiction motifs are prominent in the ideology of two inner
city alternative religious movements,1 the Nation of Gods and Earths
(NGE)2 and the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.3 Both organi-
zations have roots in heterodox interpretations of Islam and have an
enormous influence on the inner city African American youth sub-
culture which far exceeds their actual membership numbers.
Through hip hop4 and oral tradition, central elements of the ideologies
of the two organizations have been disseminated and circulated
1. The sociological terms “alternative religious movements” or “new religious move-

ments” are preferable to the older sociological term “cult” because of the pejorative
connotations associated with the colloquial use of the word.
2. See Yusuf Nuruddin, “The Five Percenters: A Teenage Nation of Gods and Earths,” in
Yvonne Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, eds, Muslim Communities in North America
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), pp. 109–132. The NGE is a splinter group which broke
off from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1964 under the leadership of Clarence 13X. The
organization is youth-oriented with a huge appeal to adolescents and young adults,
though there are many older members as well. The national headquarters is “The
Allah School in Mecca” located in Harlem. The NGE is widely responsible for disse-
minating the “Lessons” (catechism Q&A) or doctrine of the NOI, but reinterpreting
that doctrine in a very unique fashion. The males of the NGE refer to themselves as
“Gods” and the females are designated as “Earths” (comparable to designations in
other cultures such as Father Sky and Mother Earth, or God the Father, etc.). The
NGE is also known as Five Percenters, in line with their belief that 85% of the
people are enslaved and deceived, 10% are the slave-makers and deceivers, and 5%
are the poor righteous teachers who teach “the Truth that the Black Man is God”
and teach “Freedom, Justice and Equality to all the human family of the planet Earth.”
3. The Nuwaubian Moors are discussed at length later in this article.
4. See Hisham Aidi, “‘Verily There Is Only One Hip Hop Ummah’: Islam, Cultural
Protest and Urban Marginality,” Socialism and Democracy 36: Hip Hop, Race, and Cul-
tural Politics (July– December 2004), pp. 107–126.
Socialism and Democracy, Vol.20, No.3, November 2006, pp.127–165

ISSN 0885-4300 print/ISSN 1745-2635 online
DOI: 10.1080=08854300600950277 # 2006 Yusuf Nuruddin
128 Socialism and Democracy
throughout inner city communities from coast to coast. Because the

NGE (also known as Five Percenters) and Nuwaubian Moors are
rival organizations appealing to the same pool of potential recruits,
and because there are striking similarities or overlap between the
central tenets of their belief systems, there is a lively ideological dis-
course between the two organizations. Members of each organization
strive to demonstrate to potential recruits, via intense debate and dis-
cussion, how their belief system is correct and their rival’s system is
flawed. This debate and discussion spills over into the wider inner
city subculture, where non-members are free to pick and choose any
elements of either ideology, creating a syncretized and generalized
belief system, which I argue constitutes an urban mythology.
Urban mythology is a term of my own coinage. It should not be
confused or conflated with the folkorists’ terms “urban legends” or
“urban myths” which connote contemporary popular beliefs – often
“false, distorted, exaggerated or sensationalized” – which have been
circulated by rumor.5 I define urban mythology as narratives about
supernatural characters and events, generated by, and widely
disseminated amongst, oppressed peoples in contemporary urban
ghettos, which seek to explain the nature of the cosmic universe and
its relationship to the oppressive social environment, often in eschato-
logical terms.
The term supernatural characters refers to divine or heroic beings;
the narratives have a contemporary and urbane sophistication distin-
guished from the folklore of the rural south, and the narratives are
widely disseminated so that they no longer function solely as the ideo-
logy of a particular alternative religious movement but have become a
universal feature of the urban subculture – a mythic superstructure
generated by an economic base of poverty in the midst of affluence
and racially oppressive social relations. In their ideological context,
the narratives were approached by movement adherents with
varying degrees of literal and figurative understanding.6 As mythology
or mythic superstructure, the narratives are approached with even
wider latitude: e.g. as esoteric wisdom, as entertainment, as oratorical
content, as fabulation, as misguided anti-Christian belief, as a code to
establish fraternity and belongingness, and as a code for speaking
5. “Urban Legends,” Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend), June 15,

2006. The most prominent rumor is the false yet oft-repeated tale that pet baby
alligators – flushed down the toilet by disinterested owners – have survived,
grown to full adult size and now live and breed in the city sewer systems.
6. For example, some Five Percenters call their narratives myths and state that “A myth
is not the truth but it is a way to get at the truth.”
Yusuf Nuruddin 129
about race relations. Race relations are, of course, central to the

narratives which attempt to explain the reason for the present system
of white domination and black subordination. The explanations are
cosmological – involving myths about creation, a time of Edenic
bliss, the fall of (the black) man, and an eschatological re-ordering of
justice and righteousness in the cosmos. The myths are complex,
however, and defy any simplistic black hero/white villain dichotomy.
Most importantly, in the context of this present volume, the myths
incorporate science fiction scenarios as I shall later explore in depth.
Contextualizing urban mythology

Eurocentrism, the system of cultural hegemony imposed upon
global culture to consolidate and perpetuate a half-millennium of
Western conquest and colonization of peoples of color, is pervasive
and affects all aspects of culture including mythology. The classical
civilizations of Greece and Rome constitute the much vaunted cradle
of Western civilization; hence Greco-Roman mythology is valorized
throughout contemporary culture from curricula, to cinema to comic
books. To a lesser extent, Norse mythology is valorized in the same
venues, giving tacit recognition to the alternative Nordic or Ayran
model of white supremacy. Zeus, Jupiter, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Odin
and Thor continue to exert dominion in global haute culture and
popular culture, while Quetzalcoatl, Shango, Oshun, Ogun, Isis,
Osiris, Marduk and Enki – the gods of the Aztecs, the Yorubu, the
Ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and other non-Western
cultures – are marginalized, given perfunctory mention in multi-
cultural curricula, found in remaindered sales annex texts on world
mythology, exoticized as museum curios, or simply relegated to the
dustbins of history.7
If these ancient or time-honored myths of non-Western peoples have
been relegated to second-class status, it is reasonable to assume that
the contemporary mythology of non-Western peoples, especially the
mythology spawned in the African American ghettos, would not be
accorded any status recognition in the field of Folklore and Mythology.
Folklorists and scholars of comparative mythology are not apt to search
for parallels between the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) mythological villain,
7. The Yoruba and other West African deities, however, have a life of their own through-
out the Black Atlantic World (Africa and the African Diaspora) where Traditional
African Religions or African-derived religions, e.g. Voudoun, Shango, Macumba,
Candomble, are practiced.
Yakub, a big-headed scientist whose genetic engineering experiments

unleashed the “evil white race” upon the world, and Pandora, whose
curiosity unleashed plagues and ills upon the world. Race and class
factors above all seem to determine which narratives are labeled as
mythology and which are labeled as absurd or outlandish cult beliefs.
While there is no agreement on the definition of the term “myth,”
an excerpt from a definition by Mark Schorer is instructive: “Myths are
instruments by which we continually struggle to make our experience
intelligible to ourselves. A myth is a large controlling image that gives
philosophical meaning to the facts of ordinary life, that is, which has an
organizing value for experience.”8 In this definition, myth-making is a
continual process for humans, rather than a process which occurs only
in primitive or ancient classical societies. Urban myths are instruments
by which the poor and downtrodden struggle to make sense of their
oppressive inner city experience. Urban myths give philosophical
meaning to the quotidian facts of domination and exploitation.
William G. Doty, who researched over 50 definitions of the term
“myth,” categorized the essentials and offers the following comprehen-
sive working definition of “mythology”:
A mythological corpus consists of (1) a usually complex network of myths that

are (2) culturally important (3) imaginal (4) stories, conveying by means of
(5) metaphoric and symbolic diction (6) graphic imagery, and (7) emotional
conviction and participation, (8) the primal, foundational accounts (9) of
aspects of the real, experienced world, and (10) humankind’s roles and relative
statuses within it.
Mythologies may (11) convey the political and moral values of a culture and
(12) provide systems of interpreting (13) individual experience within a univer-
sal perspective, which may include (14) the intervention of suprahuman
entities as well as (15) aspects of the natural and cultural orders. Myths may
be enacted or reflected in (16) rituals, ceremonies and drams, and (17) they
may provide materials for secondary elaboration, the constituent mythemes
having become merely images or reference points for a subsequent story,
such as a folktale, historical legend, novella or prophecy.9
Doty elaborates upon each of these 17 aspects; a few of the elaborated

aspects are worthy of our consideration when conceptualizing urban
mythology. The most important of these is Doty’s assertion that
myths are (8) primal foundational accounts. Upon first glance, this
might seem to uphold the idea of mythology as a product of primitive
8. William Doty, Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals (Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, 1994), p. 10.
9. Ibid., p. 11.
Yusuf Nuruddin 131
society and contradict the notion of a modern urban mythology. What

Doty actually states is that “myths are primary stories of a culture, the
stories that shape and expose its most framing images and self
conceptions.”10 Urban myths then are the primary stories of an urban
or inner city (sub)culture.
The African American people were transformed from rural
peasants to an urban proletariat via the Great Migration, a period
beginning roughly in 1910 and continuing for decades with 1930,
1950 and 1960 cited by various social scientists as the dates when the
migration subsided. During the Great Migration nearly one half
million African Americans moved from the rural south to northern
cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago,
St. Louis and Los Angeles and a number of smaller industrial cities.
The urban mythology popularized by the Five Percenters, first
established in New York in 1964, and Nuwaubian Moors (est.
New York, circa 1970),11 has its roots in the narratives of the Nation
of Islam (est. Detroit, 1930), and its predecessor the Moorish Science
Temple (est. Newark, 1913). The point of emphasis here is that contem-
porary urban mythology has its origins in the myths of the black
religious “cults” which flowered in the urban north during the earliest
wave of the Great Migration. Hence these myths are the primary stories
of the urban culture, the narratives which arose simultaneously as a
black urban culture arose.
At least two more of Doty’s 17 aspects are worth close examination
or emphasis: myths may convey (11) political and moral values and
(13) individual experience within universal perspective. Part of the
resistance to ascribing mythological status to urban narratives might
be the notion that these narratives are after all merely political
metaphors rather than expressions of universal truths. Yet in his
discussion of point #13 Doty states that “myths highlight distinctions
between ‘my people’ (the immediate group: kin, socio-economic, or
geographical neighbors) and ‘them’ (those medially removed:
persons from another territory, enemies).” In his elaboration of point
#11, Doty states that: “While myths may well be cohesive in a mono-
focal society . . . they may be divisive in a polyfocal society such as
our own . . .”12 These explications serve to further confirm my thesis
10. Ibid., p. 25.

11. The Nuwaubian Moors were established originally under the name Ansar Pure Sufi
in 1967; the group reached sizeable proportions in 1969/1970 under the name
Nubian Islaamic Hebrews; it achieved high visibility under the name Ansaru
Allah Nubian Islaamic Hebrew Community in 1972.
12. Ibid, p. 29f.
that urban mythology is indeed a valid branch of world mythology.

I believe that understanding these narratives through lens of this para-
digm, urban mythology, will yield a new field of urban mythology
studies, as scholars begin to explore the mythemes in depth especially
from the perspective comparative mythology. Heretofore, these
narratives have been studied only as examples of religious ideology.
One seminal contribution of this paper to the field of African American
studies is a shifting of our perspectives. Cultural elements which
scholars may have overlooked, dismissed or considered only margin-
ally significant, absurd or “cultish” may in fact be central to the black
experience and critical to our understanding of urban subculture or
black popular culture.
Science fiction motifs in urban mythology

It is my observation that science fiction motifs are prevalent
throughout contemporary urban mythology. This is consistent with
the thesis of Alexei and Cory Panshen, who argue convincingly in The
World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence
that science fiction is the mythology of the contemporary world.
Mythology, the Panshens assert, fills a human need for imaginative
transcendence – a need to transcend boundaries of the normal world
by entering imaginative worlds of wonder, amazement and astonish-
ment. Yet ancient myths of “gods and ghosts, witches and wizards,
brownies and elves, ogres and angels, cyclopses and centaurs, giants
and jinns”13 were based on an idealistic worldview which affirmed
magical causation. Hence these myths gradually lost their power
during the centuries following the scientific revolution, when human
consciousness was reshaped by materialism, rationalism, empiricism,
13. Alexei and Cory Panshin, The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for
Transcendence (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1989), p. 3. The word “jinn,” which appears fre-
quently in this article, is of Arabic origin and has been transliterated variously as
djinn, jinn, jinni or genie, the latter being more familiar to Westerners through the
tale of Aladdin and His Magic Lamp, and as a root derivation of the English word
“genius” (one who is inspired by jinn or muses). The plural form is usually jinn
and less frequently jinns. In the Qur’an, jinn are described as beings made of “smoke-
less fire” and are considered to be spiritual entities. Jinn can be good or evil,
though Iblis or Shaytan (Satan) is considered to be a jinn (as opposed to a “fallen
angel”) and the ruler of all evil jinn. Some of the gods of the polytheists, who take
“possession” of their hosts, such as the orishas worshipped by the Yoruba, are con-
sidered to be jinn in the eyes of Muslims. Finally, the word has taken on a very
eccentric meaning among some, but by no means all, African American orthodox
Muslims who either euphemistically or literally refer to the white race as “the jinn.”
Yusuf Nuruddin 133
skepticism, quantification, science and technology. As a result of

this shift from an idealistic to a materialistic worldview affirming scien-
tific causation, a proto-science fiction literature gradually evolved,
reaching maturity and gaining ascendancy over ancient mythic
literature by the 19th century with the works of Jules Verne and
H.G. Wells.
The literature of science fiction with its robots, mutated humans,
spaceships and aliens provided imaginative transcendence in a
language that was consistent with modernity. Ancient myths told of
magical powers: wishing rings, enchanted swords, draughts of immortality,

caps of invisibility, seven-league boots, ever-filled purses, wells of wisdom,
runes, spells, curses and prophecies [and] mysterious realms with names like
Eden and Arcadia, the Forest Primeval, Valhalla, the Isles of the Blessed, and
the East of the Sun and the West of the Moon.14
The literature of science fiction also speaks of “transcendent powers,

beings and realms,” but they have been conceived of in scientific rather
than magical ways. Spaceships, time machines, and molecular tele-
porters transport us to transcendent realms, not to the Asgards or
Hades of ancient mythology but to planets in outer space,
30th-century scenarios, or parallel worlds. The Panshens also point
out that unlike both the genre of fantasy, which is incompletely
mythic because it “cling[s] to ancient images of transcendental possi-
bility which no longer appear plausible,” and the genre of mundane
fiction which is consistent with our contemporary worldview but
fails to transport us to unknown realms, the genre of science fiction
is fully mythic because it is consistent with our contemporary world-
view – our scientific knowledge – as well as transcendent.15
The genre of science fiction has its canon, its conventions and
its protocols. As John Clute and Peter Nicholls, compilers of The Encyclo-
pedia of Science Fiction, point out, “works of fiction which use science
fiction themes in seeming ignorance or contempt of the protocols” are
deemed invasive, or incompetent and unworthy of attention.16 Certain
overworked and unimaginative themes are referred to pejoratively as
space opera (a sci fi extension of the term soap opera).17 Stories with pre-
dictable religious themes, e.g. the “aliens revealed as Adam and Eve”
plot, or other plots which provide simple-minded science fiction
14. Ibid., p. 3.
15. Ibid., p. 4.
16. Peter Nicholls and John Clute, “Genre SF,” in John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds, The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. 483.
17. Brain Stableford, “Space Opera,” in Encyclopedia, pp. 1138–1140.
frameworks for Biblical myths are a special sub-category of the space

opera dubbed “Shaggy God stories.”18 The space opera category also
includes “hacky” outworn spaceship stories. UFOs – unidentified
flying objects – with extraterrestrial origin, the obsession of Hollywood
(e.g. ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), television (Roswell),
popular imagination (e.g. alien abductions) and religious cult (e.g.
Heaven’s Gate) are a special anathema to sci fi writers. Clute and Nicholls
note that “[m]ost genre science fiction writers are hostile to the notion of
flying saucers . . . the hostility is fueled by the infuriating public assump-
tion that science fiction writers are deeply interested in ufology.”19
However, Eric S. Rabkin, in “Science Fiction and the Future of
Criticism,” argues against the canonical definition of science fiction,
stating: “If we ask what science fiction is, we may find many
answers. One that I have promulgated . . . is that it is the branch of
fantastic literature that claims plausibility against a background
of science.”20 In this context, one might consider the fantastic genre
of heterodox anthropological (or pseudo-anthropological) literature
which attributes human origins to ancient astronauts, such as Zecharia
Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles series – a major source of inspiration (or
plagiarism) for Nuwaubian beliefs – as a branch of science fiction.
Because the Nuwaubian Moors have borrowed heavily from Sitchin’s
Earth Chronicles as a basis for their own myth-making, a careful explora-
tion of Sitchin’s ancient astronaut theme is necessary.
Ancient astronauts as a science fiction motif

Sitchin is not a science fiction author; he purports to write non-
fiction. His advocates describe his work as meticulous paradigm-
shifting scholarship which challenges our traditional views of about
astronomy, ancient mythology, religion, anthropology and pre-
history. Skeptics, on the other hand, state that “Sitchin, along with
Erich von Daniken and Immanuel Velikovsky, make up the holy
trinity of pseudohistorians.”21 Interestingly, Sitchin’s predecessors
Velikovsky (1895 – 1979) and von Daniken (1935 – ) do rate entries in
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. However, Velikosky – famous for
18. Brian Stableford, “Adam and Eve,” in Encyclopedia, p. 4, and “Space Opera,” in Ency-
clopedia, p. 1138.
19. David Pringle, Jenny Randles, and John Grant, “UFOs,” in Encyclopedia, p. 1254.
20. Eric S. Rabkin, “Science Fiction and the Future of Criticism,” Science Fiction and Lit-
erary Studies, PMLA, 119.3 (May 2004), p. 459.
21. Robert Todd Carroll, “Zecharia Sitchin and The Earth Chronicles,” The Skeptic’s Dic-
tionary, 2000 (www.skepdic.com/sitchin.html) (updated April 26, 2001).
Yusuf Nuruddin 135
his controversial, impressively documented but now discredited the-

ories, e.g. Worlds in Collision (1950) and Earth in Upheaval (1955),
concerning catastrophic planetary events which were allegedly
documented in legend, mythology, and religious scriptures – is
described as a “pseudoscientist.” Von Daniken is also ballyhooed
by the Encyclopedia. His best-known work, Chariots of the Gods
(1969) – a thesis about an alien space-faring race who visited earth
before and at the dawn of human civilization, creating monuments
such as the pyramids of Egypt and the statues of Easter Island – was
a huge commercial success despite serious scientific flaws, and it
spawned a host of even more dubious imitations. Debunkers soon
followed in hot pursuit, and Clute and Nicholls’ Encyclopedia states
that the vast publicity had a negative impact on science fiction; conse-
quently the notion of ancient astronauts became “an anathema,” in fact
“a taboo,” to sci fi writers.
Zecharia Sitchin “stands on the shoulders” of Velikovsky and von
Daniken. His complex cosmohistory contains both Velikovskian
planetary collisions and von Danikenian alien astronauts. In his Earth
Chronicles series which began with Twelfth Planet (1976), Sitchin utilizes
his purported wealth of archeological and linguistic knowledge to
provide unique interpretations of the Enuma Elish, the ancient
Sumerian clay tablets which are titled by their opening words,
“When the heavens above . . .” The Enuma Elish, also referred to as
The Seven Tablets of Creation or The Chaldean Genesis, contain the
Babylonian or Mesopotamian myth of creation. Mainstream archeolo-
gical scholarship interprets this myth as a description of a war
between the gods where order emerges from chaos. Sitchin uniquely
translates the Enuma Elish as a cosmic history which describes chaotic
events in the solar system leading to the formation of the planet
Earth. Sitchin states that the Sumerian cosmohistory revolves around
the existence of an alleged trans-Plutonian tenth planet – a Planet X
recently hypothesized or deduced by astrophysicists who state that it
would account for certain unexplained planetary phenomena (e.g.
orbital wobbles) – which was purportedly known as Nibiru to the
ancients, who counted it along with the sun, moon and other planets
as the 12th heavenly body or “12th planet” of the solar system.
Nibiru is an “intruder” planet in the solar system (a large foreign
meteoroid-like object which was pulled into the sun’s gravitational
field) with a resulting elliptical orbit which brings it close to the
inner planets once every 3,600 years. Because of this orbital path it
collided eons ago into a planet named Tiamen, a Saturn-sized planet
orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The collision destroyed Tiamen,
jettisoning fragments millions of miles towards the inward regions of

the solar system. The bulk of these fragments congealed, forming a
new smaller planet, Earth, while the remaining debris became the
many planetoids of the asteroid belt. The collision also caused the
newly formed Earth to be “seeded” by the Niburian life-forms, thus
life which evolved on Earth was genetically related to Niburian life.22
Sitchin’s cosmohistory fast-forwards billions of years to a time
period on Earth less than a half million years ago, when our planet is
inhabited by Homo erectus – a primitive species of human life. By this
time in cosmic history, the outermost planet Nibiru, in contrast, is
home to a technologically advanced humanoid species capable of
space travel. The Enuma Elish, as eccentrically deciphered by Sitchin,
reveal that circa 430,000 BC, these space-faring aliens from Niburu
landed on Earth, in the region of Mesopotamia/Sumer, some setting
up a colony in search of huge quantities of gold. Circa 250,000 BC,
the lower echelon aliens who were forced to labor in the gold mines
under horrid conditions revolted against the higher echelon alien
administrators. The Niburian colonizers – referred to in various
ancient Middle Eastern texts and scriptures as “the gods” or “those
who came down from the heavens” (e.g. Sumerian: Anunnaki;
Hebrew: Anakeim, Nephilim, Elohim; Egyptian: Neter) – in order to
quell the rebellion and prevent future uprisings decided to no longer
enslave their “compatriot” Niburians as mine workers, but to geneti-
cally engineer a permanent slave caste from the genes of the primitive
Earthlings. These genetic engineering experiments were conducted
under the direction of the Anunnaki’s chief scientist, Enki, and chief
medical officer, Ninhursag. An initial ape and human gene-splicing
experiment proved unsuccessful, but a splicing of Anunnaki (Sitchin’s
preferred term for the aliens) genes and Homo erectus genes created the
desired result – the race of humankind now known as Homo sapiens.
Though initially designed as a hybrid species which could not procre-
ate, the demand for mine workers was so great that the human
experiment was further refined until Homo sapiens were able to
biologically reproduce. Soon, there was a population explosion and
the excess numbers of human beings were expelled from the Anunnaki
22. Material on Zecharia Sitchin has been synthesized and paraphrased from the follow-
ing sources: www.sitchin.com; www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin;
www.crystalinks.com/sitchin.html; Carroll (n. 21); Jason Colavito, “Zecharia
Sitchin’s World” (www.colavito.tripod.com/lostcivilizations/id14html); Robert
Hafernick, “Sitchin’s Twelth Planet” (www.skeptic.com/essays/sitchin.htm);
“Popular Experts: Zechariah Sitchin,” World Mysteries (www.world-mysteries.
com/pex_2.htm).
Yusuf Nuruddin 137
colonies, such that they began to spread all over the earth. Unexpected
sexual attractions developed between the Anunnaki and the Earthlings,
such that – as recorded in the Hebrew bible – the “sons of gods” began
to lay with the “daughters of men.” Because the earth had been seeded
with Nibiru genetic material, in the Nibiru –Tiamen planetary collision
eons ago, Annunaki and Earthling genes were compatible and the
couplings proved fertile. The Anunnaki high council disapproved of
this miscegenation, and wiped out most of the Earthling population
12,500 years ago, via the great flood, as recorded in the Hebrew Book
of Genesis and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. However, some
humans were saved through the efforts of Enki, who looked favorably
upon his creation mankind. These flood survivors labored for the
Anunnaki for thousands of years not only in their mining operations,
but in the construction of their cities, their palaces (later revered by
humans as temples), and astronomical installations not only in
Sumer but in globally far-flung places such as Egypt, India, Central
and South America. Six thousand years ago, as the Anunnaki’s
mission on Earth was coming to a close, they decided to develop
their Earthling offspring to the stage of self-sufficiency or indepen-
dence. Beginning in Sumer and then proceeding to the other Anunnaki
centers above, the Anunnaki created a genetic strain of humans with a
high proportion of Anunnaki genes who would act as rulers of the
human race and intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki
(giving a new twist to the doctrine of the divine right of kings). This
royal bloodline of human monarchs was taught mathematics, architec-
ture, astronomy, etc., and the result was a sudden leap or advancement
in human civilization as witnessed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and
among the Mayans, Aztecs and Incans.
It is certainly a mesmerizing if quite incredible tale! Sitchin’s public
persona is that of an elder erudite scholar and his admirers are legion.
But as one critic observes, “Like von Däniken and Velikovsky, Sitchin
weaves a compelling and entertaining story out of facts, misrepresenta-
tions, fictions, speculations, misquotes, and mistranslations.”23
Islam and science fiction motifs

If Sitchin stands on the shoulders of Velikovsky and Von Daniken,
then the Nuwaubians stand on the shoulders of Sitchin – and the
Nation of Islam and Nation of Gods and Earths. Heterodox Islam,
especially African American heterodox Islam, offers much in the way
23. Carroll, The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

of science fiction motifs. By contrast, orthodox Islam, e.g. Sunni and

Shi’a belief systems, have very little cosmology which can inspire
works of Islamic science fiction. The rare exceptions may be (1) the
Qur’anic verses concerning those who slept for centuries in the caves;
the reduction of evil men into apes; and the jinn – beings of smokeless
fire; (2) the hadith concerning the Prophet’s night visit to the heavens on
the horse Baruq; his cracking of the moon with his finger; and Al Masih
ad-Dajjal – the one-eyed Anti-Christ; and (3) the Shi’a theory of
occultation.
Nevertheless, mythic literature and/or science fiction written by
and/or about Muslims need not rely upon Islamic cosmology. A
renowned contribution of Islamic civilization to the world’s corpus of
ancient mythic literature is The Thousand and One Arabian Nights.
Some of the stories in this collection, e.g. “The City of Brass” and
“The Ebony Horse,” might be considered proto-science fiction,
according to Clute and Nicholls.24 Modern Arabic literature (ca. 1960
onwards) boasts the science fiction genre in short stories, novels and
plays. Clute and Nicholls’ Encyclopedia provides a survey of this litera-
ture, much of which is relatively unknown to the West because it has
not been widely translated. Considerable Arabic science fiction litera-
ture has been written by authors who dabble in the genre. However,
there are dedicated science fiction genre writers, most notably:
Mustafa Mahmoud, an Egyptian novelist, short story writer and advo-
cate of UFOlogy, who is considered “the father of Arabic science
fiction”; Imran Talib, a prodigious Syrian novelist, short story writer
and literary critic of Arabic science fiction; and Ali Salim, an Egyptian
satirical dramatist.25 The range of their themes is hinted at by a
sampling of the translated titles of their works. These include
Mahmud’s Raising from the Coffin, The Man with a Temperature Below
Zero, and The Spider; Talib’s Planet of Dreams, There Are No Poor on the
Moon and Beyond the Barrier of Time; and Salim’s A Man Who Laughed
at Angels and Satan from Heliopolis.26 Science fiction literature has
been produced in many Arab countries; the diverse themes have
included life in 32nd-century Libya; the encounter of mysterious
aliens by a Palestinian hero living in the occupied territories; and
fantastic discoveries and excavations as in Salim’s plays. Outside the
Arab-speaking world, the most important Muslim science fiction
writer may be the Indian Anglophone writer Javed Akhtar. Islamic
24. Jaraslav Osla, Jr. “Arabic SF,” in Encyclopedia, p. 49.

25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., and Osla, “Mahmud, Mustafa,” in Encyclopedia, p. 768.
Yusuf Nuruddin 139
scripture is central to the plot of his novel Ultimate Revelations which

revolves around Rashid Khalifa’s heterodox mathematical code for
deciphering the Qur’an.27 The Qur’an is also central to the plot of
Western writer Chris Lawson’s short story, “Written in Blood”: a
Muslim doctor uses a microbe to write the Qur’an onto the unused
part of the human DNA.
Several other Western science fiction authors and filmmakers have
portrayed Islam and Islamic themes in literature and cinema. Frank
Herbert’s novel Dune, which was also adapted to film, is the
best-known work. The novel which symbolizes the dependence of
the West on oil and the resulting power struggles also contains vivid
analogies to Islam (the religion of Zensunni) and the Prophet
Muhammad (Paul Atreites). Recent sci fi novels, of course, have
themes based on the politics of current events (as seen through right-
wing Western eyes) – the global conflicts pitting the free Western
world against Islamic extremism and terrorism. Stereotypical Muslim
fundamentalism is replicated in outer space colonies or the earth’s
distant future in Louise Marley’s Terrorists of Irustan, Maureen
McHugh’s Nekropolis and Katie Waitman’s The Divided. In contrast,
the Muslims characters are either protagonists or figures rendered sym-
pathetically in space travel adventures such as Philip Jose Farmer’s
Unreasoning Mask, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and Sarah
Zettel’s Fools War. A number of alternative histories feature the
Islamic world or Muslim characters. Some examples are: Kim Stanley
Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt in which bubonic plague wipes out
Europe leaving China and the Islamic empire to vie for world supre-
macy; Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher
Columbus in which a multicultural team of time travelers from the
future (including a Muslim) travel back to 1492 in an attempt to inter-
vene in history by transforming Columbus from a greedy imperialist to
an international peacemaker; and Donald Moffet’s Crescent in the Sky
and A Gathering of Stars, a set of novels in which Islam has been
27. Rashad Khalifa, an Egyptian immigrant and US citizen, with a doctorate in biochem-
istry, computer analyzed the frequency of letters and words in the Qur’an for several
years and in 1974 claimed discovery of an intricate mathematical pattern involving
the number 19 throughout the text of the Qur’an as mentioned in verse 74:32. Based
on his numerical theories and other beliefs such as the rejection of hadith, he started a
sect, the United Submitters International, which was considered heretical. He was
assassinated in 1990. See “Rashad Khalifa,” Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Rashad_Khalifa) and “Welcome to Submission” (www.submission.info/
quran/appendices/appendix1.html).
spread throughout the known universe, and ambitious men seek to

become the first Caliph of an interplanetary Islamic empire.28
This is a short sample survey of Islam and science fiction: it does
not purport to be comprehensive. However, in any survey, one
would be remiss not to mention the hugely popular film series Star
Wars. As seen through the eyes of Muslim movie-goers, the series is
resplendent with Islamic symbolism: the Force which “penetrates all
things and binds all things together” is analogous to a pantheistic
Sufi understanding of the Islamic principle of Tawhid, The Oneness of
Allah; Obi Wan Kenobi is analogous to the Prophet Muhammad;
Luke Skywalker wields a laser beam weapon made of a Green Light,
and thus is analogous to an angelic being, Al Khidr, The Green One
or The Green Light; the Jedi Warriors train for years under their
eachers just as Sufi students – spiritual warriors – train under their
Shayhks; and it should come as no surprise that Darth Vader and his
forces of darkness represent Shaytan or Satan and his minions.
Islam and science fiction motifs in African American literature

African Americans have embraced orthodox Islam since at least the
1920s, but the largest growth and development of the African American
orthodox (Sunni and Shi’a) Muslim population took place after
mid-‘60s, and was no doubt influenced by the conversion of Malcolm
X/Al Hajj Malik Al Shabazz from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam.
The Islamic movement in America has attracted a disproportionate
share of intellectuals and artists. These black intellectuals and artists
have created an Islamic African American bohemian subculture.
Because a critical mass of intellectuals and artists have been partici-
pating in the creation of this bohemian subculture for only four
decades, and because literary production has been stifled by strains
of conservative religious thought, African American Muslim fiction
has not matured as rapidly as African American Muslim poetry,
visual arts, fashion design, and crafts such as jewelry design. Hence,
African American Sunni Muslims have produced little in the realm
of science fiction literature with one or two exceptions described below.
The African American novelist Stephen Barnes, who has not
publicly declared any religious affiliation, has produced two novels
Lion’s Blood (2002) and Zulu Heart (2003), which depict the saga of an
28. The information in this section on Islam and science fiction literature is summarized
from the following website: von Aurum’s Islam in Sci Fi (www.cs.rit.edu/maa2454/
SCIFI/sci_lit.php).
Yusuf Nuruddin 141
ongoing alternate history, in which events from the time of Ancient

Greece have been altered such that by the 1279 AH (1863 AD) when
the narrative of the first novel opens, much of the world is ruled by
Islam, Christianity is a minor sect rather than a world religion,
Europe is under the fearful sway of Viking slave-raiders, an Aztec
empire is powerful in Mesoamerica, and African Muslims have
colonized North America calling it Bilalistan, have pushed the indi-
genous Native Americans northward and have enslaved Northern
Europeans on plantations in the antebellum south.
The only work of science fiction by a known African American
Muslim author is the epic poem entitled Beyonder by Jalaluddin
Nuriddin of the legendary recording artists/poets ensemble The Last
Poets. Recorded on the vinyl album Delights of the Garden, in 1976,
Beyonder is a futuristic dystopian apocalyptic tale describing: the
ecological disasters – cataclysmic floods, typhoons, hurricanes, earth-
quakes, sweltering heat waves, swarming raids of rats and insects,
panic and hysteria, epidemic plagues and bacteria – which afflict
mankind during the earth’s final convulsions; man’s fear of divine
retribution – “sinners lamented/hypocrites repented/and a handful
of the righteous prayed”; and mankind’s last futile high-tech attempts
to escape its inevitable doom.
“In a subterranean retreat / they had all gathered to meet / The last
of men and jinn” (a racially coded phrase in which “men” are evidently
the subordinate people of color, and “jinn” are the white ruling elite),
“with utmost discretion / they huddled in session / to ponder the
predicament they were in.” In the ensuing dialogue, between the
leaders of men and jinn, the spokesmen for the men have decided
that this is, indeed, doomsday and they should to submit to the Will
of God and meet their final end without resistance. The leaders of the
jinn argue with the leaders of the men that only fools would give up
without fighting for a chance to survive. Believing that they are tempor-
arily safe in their underground shelter from the contaminated surface
atmosphere, the jinn wish to bide their time to plan an escape from
the doomed planet via launching a fleet of spaceships. Through their
mastery of science and technology, they will escape the dying planet
and conquer a new frontier “Come let us take our place / out there
in space / out there amongst the stars.” Since the earth is in violent
upheaval, no longer spinning on its axis, etc., the escape plot still has
uncertainty: “. . . the only thing that we don’t know / is will our
gravity let us go / and this is what we’ve got to find out first.” To aid
them in all of their machinations and calculations is their supreme
technological invention – an android – who can survey all the
conditions on the surface of the contaminated earth and relay

information to the underground command shelter. “We have
summoned the prefect / of ecological defect / whom we feel can
check our fall.”
His name is Sir Manikin

An android jinn
Programmed in the netherlands
He can deduct and deduce
Manufacture and produce
And is made in the likeness of a man
He has cunning and guile

And is versatile
And can adapt to any situation
Neither heat nor cold
Can affect his control
Or cause his deterioration29
“Amidst gasps and sighs” the android “suddenly materialized /

standing suspended in mid-air.” After introducing himself he
describes his composition:
I’m endowed with a microscopic brain

Developed from a sperm bank strain
Protected by a beryllium skullcap
Programmed with a complete history of mankind
By the designer of my mind
And made to indefinitely adapt
My anatomy is composed of titanium and platinum ore

With a cobalt 60 core
Located in the cavity of my diaphragm
An infinitesimally small amount
Relative to current critical mass count
Only .002 micro-milligrams
I am covered with a thin layer of diamonite mesh

In a skin-tone flesh
Molded with detailed precision
I can disappear in an inkling
And reappear on the twinkling
While photographing an infrared vision30
29. Jalaluddin Nuriddin, Beyonder, from The Last Poets, Delights of the Garden LP
(Douglas Records, 1977), liner notes.
30. Ibid.
Yusuf Nuruddin 143
Here is the supreme irony: mankind (“the jinn,” as code-word for

whites, are described eccentrically by some African American Muslims
as “mankind” – beings who are “kind of like man” but not true man)
has created a man (or “manikin” – kin of man), or at least a marvelous
copy of man – an android, who is even smarter, stronger and more
beautiful than the original. Mankind has technologically reproduced
himself. From an Islamic perspective, this is, of course, the height of
arrogance and folly, as it is an attempt to abrogate powers of creation
that belong to Almighty Allah alone.
The subordinated people of color will have nothing to do with this
last-ditch effort at survival. It was the misuse of science and technology
which brought about the environmental catastrophes to begin with, so
rather than depend on technology for salvation, the men simply want
to return to the corpse-ridden surface of the earth and face their
deaths in the toxic atmosphere swiftly. Against the advice and
warnings of the jinn, the men don suits with jet-propelled boots and
hurtle mile after mile to the surface from 12,000 feet below. Fearing
that the exiting men will allow contamination to seep in, the jinn call
upon Sir Manikin to intervene and stop their ascent. But Sir Manikin,
though he can move with lightning speed, arrives too late and finds
the souls of the men as well as the souls of his masters (the souls of
the jinn) with the Angel of Death – the Angel of Death who ultimately
destroys this android “tool of fools” as the Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet
blasts.
Islam in Afrofuturist literature

Barnes’s alternative history and Nuriddin’s epic poem can also be
classified as examples of Afrofuturism. Because Barnes’s work is the
only extant example of Islam in African American science fiction
novels, it may prove instructive to broaden the parameters to
examine Islam in Afrofuturist novels. Afrofuturism, though it includes
black science fiction or Afrocentric science fiction, is more broadly
defined as African American signification about “culture, technology
and things to come”31 (or, in the case of alternative histories, “things
that might have come” from a reconfigured past). Afrofuturist
literature is speculative fiction; it may treat African American issues
within the context of contemporary technoculture and “appropriate
images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future” or it
31. Alondra Nelson, “Future Texts,” Social Text, 20.2 (June 2002), p. 9. Nelson is para-
phrasing Mark Dery.
might “highlight an ignored strain” of AfroDiasporan culture –

“a techno-visionary tradition that looks as much toward science-
fiction futurism as toward magical African roots.”32 According to
Mark Dery, we must not look simply to science fiction to find
Afrofuturism. “It must be sought in unlikely places, constellated
from far-flung points.”33
Alondra Nelson cites Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo – which is
neither science fiction nor alternative history but a novel ostensibly
structured like a detective story – as the quintessential Afrofuturist
text. “Less a whodunit than an epistemological mystery,” the
hilariously satirical novel raises many profound historical, philoso-
phical, cultural and racial issues in its intricate plots and subplots.
Among the issues raised by Reed, and of chief concern in this essay,
is the question of an African American Muslim future. Nelson writes:
Reed has used the word necromancy to describe his project as a writer, defining
it as “us[ing] the past to explain the present and prophesize about the future. . . .
Necromancers used to lie in the guts of the dead or tombs to receive visions of
the future. That is prophecy. The black writer lies in the guts of old America,
making readings about the future.”34
Mumbo Jumbo’s two protagonists, Abdul Hamid Sufi, an African

American Muslim, and Papa La Bas, a voodoo hougan, a gris-gris
man, are united in their determination to stop a racist Wallflower
Order from containing the latest outbreak of the epidemic Jes
Grew – virulently contagious black culture (e.g. Jazz Age music and
dance) which causes civilized white people to shake their bodies like
primitive Africans. Yet Sufi and La Bas vie with one in a contest to
decide which is more “authentically black” and relevant to African
American survival – inner city Islam or African-derived religion, the
latter described by La Bas as “The ancient Vodun aesthetic: pantheistic
becoming, 1 which bountifully permits 1000s of spirits, as many as the
imagination can hold. Infinite Spirits and Gods.”35 Sufi castigates La
Bas and La Bas’s associate Herman:
(Sufi): The people will have to shape up or they won’t survive. Cut out this
dancing and carrying on, fulfilling base and carnal appetites. We need factories,
schools, guns. We need dollars. . . .
(Sufi continues, denouncing Jes Grew): Oh that’s just a lot of people twisting
32. Erik Davis, quoted in Mark Dery, Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0 (www.detri-
tus.net/contact/rumori/200211/0319.html).
33. Mark Dery, ibid.
34. “Future Texts,” p. 7.
35. Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (Garden City, NY: Double Day, 1972), p. 35.
Yusuf Nuruddin 145
they butts and getting happy. Old, primitive, superstitious jungle ways Allah is
the Way. Allah be praised. . . .
It’s you 2 and these other niggers imbibing spirits and doing the Slow Drag
who’s holding back our progress.
We’ve been dancing for 1000s of years, Abdul, La Bas answers. It’s part of our
heritage.
Why would you want to prohibit something so deep in the race soul? Herman
asks.36
In Afrofuturist terms, Reed speculates about the African American

future – will it be best served by a homegrown Islamic culture or by a
“neo-hoodoo” culture? Although Reed’s novel is set in the context of
the 1920s and Abdul Hamid Sufi is reminiscent of several early
Muslim figures (including Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish
Science Temple; Garvey’s Sudanese-Egyptian mentor Duse Muhammad
Ali; his inverted namesake Harlem labor leader Sufi Abdul Hamid; and
Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam), the character anticipates
Malcolm X and the questions which are raised resonate in today’s
debate between African American Islamists and Kemetic (Ancient
Egyptian)-influenced Afrocentrists.37 Reed’s necromancy prophesizes
that African-derived neo-hoodoo culture, as represented by La Bas (i.e.
Elegba, the Yoruba deity), must triumph in the end. Islam, even in its
inner city iterations, ultimately proves to be too foreign and antithetical
to the African American Jes Grew culture.
Reed’s Afrofuturist novel also provides us with a picturesque
portrait of Abdul Hamid who is at once an ex-convict, an autodidact,
a bibliophile, and a polymath:
Abdul Hamid, the noted magazine editor stands, his arms folded . . . He wears
a bright red fez and a black pin-stripped suit and a black tie emblazoned with
the crescent moon symbol . . .
Look I spent 9 long years in prison for stabbing a man who wanted to evict my
mother. 9 years in the clink and two of them in solitary confinement. It is then
that I began to read omnivorously . . . I applied myself. I went through bio-
chemistry, philosophy, math, I learned languages, I even learned the transli-
teration and translation of hieroglyphs . . . I had no systematic way of
learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a path
of knowledge there but lovingly knitted. I would devour the intellectual
scraps and leftovers of the learned. Everyday I would learn a new character
36. Ibid., p. 34.

37. See Yusuf Nuruddin, “African American Muslims and the Question of Identity:
Between Traditional Islam, African Heritage and the American Way,” in Yvonne
Haddad and John Esposito, eds, Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Athens,
GA: Scholar’s Press, 1998), pp. 267 –330, esp. pp. 281ff.
and learn how to mark it. It occurred to me that I was borrowing from all these
systems: Religion, Philosophy, Music, Science and even Painting and building
one of my own composed of their elements. It was like a Griffin. I had patched
something together out of my own procedure and the way I taught myself
became my style, my art, my process. . . . I am building something that
people will understand. This country is eclectic. The architecture the people
the music the writing. The thing that works here will have a little bit of jive
talk and a little bit of North Africa, a fez-wearing mulatto in a pin-striped
suit. A man who can say give me some skin as well as Asalamalaikum.38
The image of the African American Muslim self-taught omnivorous

reader (e.g. Malcolm X), whose learning style is described in African
American folk art terms – “quilting patches of knowledge together,”
is similar in many ways to the image of the genius in “mainstream”
science fiction literature:
The figure of the heroic and irreplaceable genius is recurrent in American SF. In
contrast to the “mad scientist” figure common to the horror story, the genius of
SF is usually seen as a benign figure. The figure is distinctive for the way he
tries to solve a deep problem in the ideology of capitalist democracy. The
genius is promoted as an egalitarian ideal free of issues of class and social back-
ground. At the same time it represents a fantasy of being transcendentally
superior to its world.39
Reed’s Afrofuturism provides us with a legendary prototype, one

which stands in opposition to the ideological “science” of Herrnstein
and Murray’s Bell Curve: the inner city high-IQ self-taught genius
and street-corner philosopher who aspires to uplift his people. This is
the prototype and on any street corner in any inner city one will
meet representatives of it, ranging from those who are true ghetto
geniuses to those who are merely street-corner public intellectuals.
Many of these organic intellectuals gravitate to orthodox Islam to
create an alternative bohemian Sunni Muslim culture. Many gravitate
to heterodox Islam and are adherents or ex-adherents to groups such
as the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, the Five Percenters
and the Nuwaubian Moors.
Heterodox Islam and science fiction motifs in black urban culture

While this Sunni science fiction such as Nuriddin’s Beyonder is
futuristic and looks to the end of time, to Judgment Day, heterodox
38. Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, pp. 33, 36 –38.

39. John Huntington, Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the Classic American
Science Fiction Short Story (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 45.
Yusuf Nuruddin 147
Muslim science fiction is concerned with origins, Genesis, the creation

which occurred “In the Beginning . . .” While Afrofuturism presents us
with the image of the benign genius, and while some of the more
outstanding members of heterodox Muslim groups often fit that proto-
type, their mythology is centered around the actions and consequences
of a singularly mad scientist – a sinister black man named Yakub, who
lived 6,000 years ago when black people, the Original People, were the
only race on the planet Earth and lived like gods in a technologically
advanced utopia.
Yakub had a super intellect and thirst for knowledge. He began school at age
four and displayed a penchant for scientific inquiry. Known as the “big-
headed scientist” on account of his unusually large cranium which symbolized
his vanity as well as his mental powers, he earned degrees from all of the
colleges and universities in the land by the age of eighteen. Though one of
the preeminent scholars of the Nation of Islam, his greatest achievement took
place outside of school when he was just six years old. While toying with
two pieces of steel, he learned the secret of magnetism, that opposites attract.
The larger lesson for Yakub was that if he could create a race of people comple-
tely different from the Original People, that race could attract and dominate the
Black Nation through tricknology – tricks, lies and deception. The essence of
the black man, which consisted of a black and brown germ, was the key to
creating such a race. If he could simply graft or separate these germs until
none of the original black genetic code was left, he would be able to create a
species of man, called “mankind,” who would rule the earth forever.40
Yakub, who craved power, enlisted some 60,000 followers into his
scheme. His movement preached a doctrine of wealth and luxury for
all who would join. Because the movement created dissent and
trouble in the Holy City of Mecca, the capital of the black empire,
Yakub and all of his followers were exiled to the island of Pelan (also
known as Patmos) in the Aegean Sea. Here Yakub was finally able to
realize his depraved childhood ambitions. He set up genetic engineer-
ing laboratories – and wantonly using many of his own followers as the
guinea pigs, he carried out a program of selective breeding and
genocide (infanticide of babies of unwanted pigmentation), which
involved separating the brown germ (i.e. genes or genetic code) from
the black germ, until he created the brown (South Asian) race.
Continuing to utilize this formula of eugenics and extermination,
Yakub and his team of scientists separated the germ for red pigmenta-
tion (i.e. Amerindian racial characteristics) from the germ for brown
pigmentation (i.e. South Asian racial characteristics), and so forth,
40. Claude Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), p. 49.
successively grafting the red race (Amerindians), then the yellow race
(East Asians), and finally Yakub’s desired creation, the white race
(Caucasians). This entire process of “grafting” or genetic engineering
took 200 years, and Yakub who lived to the grand age of 150 had
died in the interim; but his followers had carried on his experiments
successfully, creating a master race which was physically weak,
spiritually and morally depraved, yet intellectually cunning. By
manipulating this race of evil-doers, Yakub had intended to become
the ruler of the earth. His ambition was thwarted by his own mortality
but this weak and wicked race, Yakub’s grafted devils, were destined to
dominate the Original Black Race for the next 6,000 years.
This is the core of the central myth of the Nation of Islam and their
splinter group the Five Percenters, though there are very rich narratives
that both lead up to and continue the story of Yakub and his “grafted
devils.” Before exploring some of the connecting narratives, it may
prove useful to compare the parallels in the Yakub myth with Biblical
narratives, the saga of Sir Manikin, and narratives of the Nation of
Islam’s predecessor, the Moorish Science Temple of America.
Claude Clegg has pointed out that the myth of an ancient but
scientifically and technologically ultramodern utopian civilization is com-
parable to the Biblical narrative of Eden – a Garden of Paradise. The rise
of a dissenting group, fueled by boredom and led by the evil genius
Yakub, is comparable to the appearance of the serpent in the Garden.
The resulting actions of Yakub and his expulsion from the Holy City of
Mecca are comparable to the Fall of Man, and the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from the Garden.41 The rise of an evil master race spells the
downfall of the planet’s original utopian black civilization.
Jalaluddin Nuriddin’s epic poem, Beyonder, supplies interesting
contrasts and parallels with the Yakub myth. Some of the same
motifs are present, yet they are inverted. In Beyonder, we are in the
near future rather than the distant past. The world leaders and their
scientific and military elite – a ruling cabal of white capitalist racist
patriarchs – faced by environmental disasters of monumental
proportions, an earth in ecological upheaval, create an android as
mankind’s savior. This has Qur’anic as well as (perhaps unintended)
Biblical allusions. The Qur’anic verse (22:74) is a warning to idolaters
that the false gods whom they call upon cannot even create so much
as a fly even if all the gods of the polytheists met together for that
express purpose. It also connotes that the power to create life belongs
to the Creator alone. The android then is mankind’s highest conceit,
41. Ibid., p. 50.

Yusuf Nuruddin 149
a high-tech bioengineering cybernetic marvel, a combination of

machinery, computer programming and human cerebral genetic
material (“a microcosm brain developed from a sperm bank strain”),
a bionic man, a cyborg, more man than robot, and more superman
than man. The genius theme, seen in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
and the myth of Yakub, is repeated in Beyonder; Sir Manikin’s micro-
cosmic brain is programmed with the complete history of mankind,
he is nearly omniscient. From a Christian perspective (probably
unintended by the Muslim author) the analogy is that mankind has
created their own savior-god, a cyborg Christ to save them not from
spiritual perdition but from physical doom. Again, from these mono-
theistic perspectives, it is the height of folly, the ultimate futile act of
a materialistic culture gone astray.
These concerns are echoed in Rastafarian Afrofuturism,42 notably
the work of the Reggae group Steel Pulse. In the lyrics to “Wild Goose
Chase” (on the Earth Crisis LP), the Reggae group laments with irony
that they once believed the destruction of creation would be nuclear
war and radiation, that they thought Judgment Day would come
when they drop the neutron bomb . . . but now instead they see that
mankind is unleashing even greater follies upon itself which ultimately
will lead to self-annihilation – “mass producing test tube babies” and
the “cloning of cats to have dogs” (i.e. genetic transfer across species,
etc.). These narratives question the ethics and the wisdom of genetic
engineering, cloning, android experimentation, etc. The Steel Pulse
refrain interjects “Don’t they know they’ll falter?!” This is not similar
to the neo-conservative religious backlash against stem cell research
but it is a lament that Western capitalistic science – propelled by
individuals seeking wealth, fame and glory; corporations seeking
profits; and nations seeking power and domination – races ahead
with blinders on, unaware or unmindful that even in high-tech labora-
tories, human or mechanical error is inevitable, and that genetic acci-
dents or unintended consequences of monumental proportions are
bound to happen, unleashing a Pandora’s box of destructive life-
forms upon humanity. The tale of Yakub is one which seeks to
explain the origin of racial oppression, and which reduces the status
or mystique of the oppressor by revealing his less than noble
42. Mark Dery considers both NOI beliefs and Rastafarianism as examples of Afrofutur-
ism (the term which he coined). In Black to the Future: Afrofuturism 101 he writes:
“The Rastafarian cosmology, like the Nation of Islam’s, with its genetically engin-
eered white devils and its apocalyptic vision of Elijah Muhammad returning on a
celestial mothership, is a syncretic crossweave of black nationalism, African and
American religious beliefs, and plot devices worthy of a late-night rocket opera.”
beginnings,43 but it is also a cautionary tale about the abuse and misuse
of science. Finally, there is even a linear connection between the tale of
Yakub and the tale of Sir Manikin: the evil black power-seeking genius
Yakub creates the white race in order to gain dominion over the world
but is thwarted by his own death; the white race eventually rules over
the Original Black Man and other people of color; the white ruling
class, in the height of its tyrannical rule over the peoples and natural
resources of the earth, creates ecological havoc unleashing pandemics
and natural disasters that threaten the survival of humanity; the white
ruling class putting its faith in science and technology creates Sir
Manikin the android as their savior; Sir Manikan fails.
The tale of Yakub has older roots than the Nation of Islam. The myth
of Yakub, which has been disseminated coast to coast throughout the
black urban subculture by the Five Percenters and by oral tradition
and Hip Hop lyrics, has its origins in Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish
Science Temple, founded in 1912 during the earliest stages of the
Great Migration from the rural south to the urban north. Rather than
myths, the narratives of the Moors were legends (narratives of events,
which while fanciful or not completely verifiable, take place within the
realm of history and the realm of possibility). The Moors claimed that
they were the descendants of the “ancient Moabite kingdom now
known as Morocco, which existed in northwest Amexem, which is
now known as northwest Africa.” On more solid historical ground,
they claim that Moors (i.e. West Africans) arrived in America in the
pre-Columbian era. Ivan van Sertima, the anthropologist, and a
number of historians have amassed evidence that Africans including
Egypto-Nubians and Malians arrived in Mesoamerica and intermarried
with the indigenous Amerindians, constructing together the Olmec civi-
lization, the “morning” or earliest civilization of Mesoamerica which
pre-dated the Mayans, Aztecs and Toltecs. The archeological wonders
of the Olmec civilization are huge granite heads with very recognizable
African features.44 The Moorish Scientist legend intertwines with these
facts, speaking of Yakubites rather than Olmecs, descendents of a
Moor named Yakub, who landed on the Yakutan (i.e. Yucatan penin-
sula). Veering off into the realms of mythology, the Moors stated that
the huge stone heads meant that the Yakubites evolved into a race of
43. According to the narrative, Yakub’s grafted devils are later exiled into the caves of
Europe where they went savage for two millennia before being rescued and rehabi-
litated for their mission to dominate the earth.
44. See Ivan van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient
America (New York: Random House, 2003).
Yusuf Nuruddin 151
scientific geniuses with large heads (as depicted in the massive sculp-
tures) and small bodies. Here we see the genius motif again in
perhaps its earliest formation. It is this legend of Yakub, the big-
headed scientist, which found its way into the NOI mythology.45
As greatly transformed by the NOI, the myth of Yakub became a
Fall of Man myth; the NOI also had its Creation myth. The Creation
myth of a self-generated god, arising as an embryonic Atom from the
emptiness and Triple Darkness of Space, is similar in some respects
to the Ancient Egyptian Heliopolitan Cosmogony. One might infer
either that the creator of the NOI cosmogony had knowledge of the
Heliopolitan cosmogony, or that the ancient and urban Creation
myths both draw from a common archetype. Rival theogonies later
arose in Hermopolis, Memphis (the famed Memphite theology), and
Thebes, but according to the cosmogony of the priests of the city of
Heliopolis the universe began as a watery chaos called Nun, out of
these primordial waters the sun-god Ra or Atum emerged. By his
own power he generated twin deities Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture)
who in turn gave birth to Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). Geb and Nut
gave birth to Osiris (order) and Seth (disorder) and their consorts Isis
and Nephtys. These nine gods formed the Divine Ennead or group of
nine.46 Interestingly, and perhaps not by coincidence, the Nation of
Gods and Earths (NGE) or Five Percenters, who call themselves
45. See Nuruddin, “African American Muslims and the Question of Identity” (n. 37),
p. 277f. Several credible witnesses attest to the fact that photographs exist
showing Farrad Muhammad (W.D. Farrad) and Elijah Muhammad, the founders
of the NOI, in attendance at Moorish Science meetings led by Noble Drew Ali.
46. C. Scott Littleton, ed., Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Story-
telling (London: Duncan Baird, 2002), p. 12. There is no single generally accepted
account among the Greeks either. Hesiod’s Theogony (eighth century BC) is one of
the earliest accounts. According to Hesiod, the universe evolved out of an enormous
shapeless darkness known as Chaos. The goddess Nyx (Night) was the first of the
offspring of Chaos to give birth to other elements. According to one Orphic tradition,
however, uncreated Nyx (“Night”) existed first and was regarded as a great black-
winged bird hovering over a vast darkness “without form and void” Though
unmated, she laid and egg whence golden-winged eros (“Love”) flew forth, while
from the two parts of the shell, Ouranos and Gaia (“Heaven and Earth”), were
created. And these brought into the world Okeanos (“Ocean”) and Tethys
(“Nurse”). These in turn begat Kronos, Rhea, Phorkys and the other Titans; and
. . . Kronos and Rhea . . . begat Zeus and Hera. According another Orphic tradition,
it was Chronos (Time) who constructed the cosmic egg from which was born Phanes
(who took on many forms, including that of Eros). In this version Nyx was the
daughter and consort of Phanes–Eros and all creation resulted from their union.
See, in addition to Littleton, William Sherwood Fox, Greek and Roman Mythology
(Boston: Marshall Jones, 1928).
“gods,” speak of the first nine followers of their founder Clarence

“Puddin’” 13X as the First Nine Born.
Whereas Big Bang theorists date the origin of the universe from 10 to
20 billion years ago, the theogony of the NOI dates the birth of self-gen-
erated black god “Allah,” who self-generated from the empty and
motionless blackness of space, at 76 trillion years ago. From the
primordial womb of space a rotating atom came into being, signaling
the beginning of time, developing into a cosmic embryo, not unlike the
Space Child in the film finale of Stanley Kubrick’s and Arthur Clarke’s
2001 Space Odyssey. A growing infant black anthropomorphic deity devel-
oped in the incubator that would later be known as the earth. As his
mental powers and self-awareness developed he realized that he was
“Allah, the Supreme God,” and that he had the power to create. He
then proceeded to create other gods like himself in his own image, and
discovered light and fire and kindled a ball of gas which he called the
Sun. “The other gods emulated him and threw spheres of flame (stars)
into the darkness, some of which traveled to the outer edge of the infinite
universe . . . Allah created a wreath of stars 600 million miles from Earth –
his home and favorite celestial body” to separate his home from the rest of
the heavens. This is essentially Clegg’s rendition of the NOI’s Creation
myth with some minor embellishments of my own.47
The NGE (Five Percenters) present a more complex picture of the
creation. First of all, the Triple Darkness of Space is also referred to
as the Essence. When Five Percenters speak of death they talk about
(the spirit of) the dead person returning to the Essence. There is the
notion that all things come from the Essence and all things return to
it. Metaphysically, the Essence is an impersonal imperishable Absolute,
an infinite inexhaustible Ground of Being. While this Essence or triply
dark space is a Void, it is not formless; the Triple Darkness of Space is
actually composed of three separate dimensional planes. Second, the
self-manifested god who arises from this Essence, while anthropo-
morphic, is decidedly cerebral, i.e. the Cosmic Man is essentially a
Cosmic Mind, and this Mind is presented in science fiction
terminology:
The Birth of the Original Mind came forth from an Atom which created itself
rotating at the speed of 24 billion miles per second (the speed of thought), cov-
ering an oblong area of 76 quintillion miles in diameter.48
47. Clegg, Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, p. 42.

48. Excerpts from Supreme Wisdom: “The Teaching of the Mind and Its Creations.” Re-
printed in Insight: A Digest of the Nation of Gods and Earths (March and June 1995).
Supreme Wisdom is a publication of the Nation of Islam.
Yusuf Nuruddin 153
The account goes on to say that the rotation of the atom was actually the
rotation of the first, then the second, then the third of the three planes of
Darkness, each rotation at the speed of 24 billion miles per second, each
throwing off energy to the next plane until the energy formed a Atom
of Light. “As these levels of darkness continued their rotation, the
speed of their rotation produced a thick shell of intense heat which sur-
rounds the darkness of space. The heat is billions and billions of volts of
electricity.”49 This shell is the brain-casing of the Cosmic Mind at the
center of the universe which evolved from the Atom of Light.50
Here the Ancient Egyptian analogies are more clearly in line with
the Memphite Theology than the Heliopolitan Cosmogony. Atum,
“he who came into being of himself,” creates the other gods of the
Divine Ennead through physicality. In one part of the Pyramid Texts
it states that “he took his penis in hand and ejaculated through it” to
produce the twins Shu and Tefnut. In another part, it states that he
“sneezed out Shu and spat up Tefnut.”51 In the Memphite Theology
(also known as the Shabaka Texts), Ptah, the supreme artisan and
divine blacksmith, is a self-created primordial fire like the Atom of
Light (though he does not arise from any primeval waters or space),
and his own creative actions are cerebral. Ptah is a god who creates
other gods and celestial wonders through intellectual contemplation,
thinking things into existence, rather than via divine masturbation or
any other physical means (such hurling spheres of light across the
heavens – though one could argue, perhaps, that the “hurling” took
place via telekinesis or levitation).52 This Cosmic Mind, “Allah,” as
portrayed here would be decidedly distinct and transcendent in
relation to the subsequent gods (the Original People) who were cast
in his image, just as the Judeo-Christian God created “man in his
image and likeness.” That these gods were made in his image is
perhaps an analogy for the faculty of mind or intelligence with
which they are endowed and the dark complexion of their bodies
49. Ibid.
50. This dome-casing shell which also protects the universe is similar to the dome in the
shape of a gourd or half-calabash which protects the universe according to the
mythology of the Fon people of Dahomey.
51. Littleton, Mythology, p. 12.
52. It should be noted that Ptah is associated with authoritative speech; he created with his
heart (which the Egyptians believed to be the seat of the intellect) and his tongue. In
Christianity there is a similar concept of authoritative speech or Logos as the Son is
the “Word” of the ever-coexistent Persons of the Trinity (though the Biblical text also
uses the language of sexual creation; i.e. “only begotten Son”). In orthodox Islam,
authoritative speech is also evident, as Allah is described in the Qur’an as creating
simply by uttering the command “Be”: “He merely says ‘Be’ and it is.”
reflecting the Triple Darkness of Space. The Cosmic Mind, too, offers
the original prototype for theme of genius which runs through urban
mythology.
The pseudoscientific narrative of the creation of an atom of light
from the high-speed rotation of the three spatial planes is a superfi-
cially plausible narrative of cosmogenesis. As a rational causal
model or explanation for cosmic evolution, it is not far removed
from the popular science narrative of the Big Bang, a layperson’s
narrative which is detached from the supporting evidence of empiri-
cal astrophysics. The popular science Big Bang narrative simply
states that in the beginning all matter was compressed into an
immensely dense and extremely high temperature point of singular-
ity (i.e. a primeval atom) which exploded and expanded producing
a tremendous burst of light and gases, some of which congealed into
solid matter as the intense temperatures cooled. The seemingly
absurd notion of the Triple Darkness of Space is no less mystifying
than contemporary scientific concepts of dark matter 53 and dark
energy 54 – terms which “serve mainly as expressions of our ignor-
ance,” much like the marking of early maps with Terra Incognita.55
The NOI and Five Percenters would argue, in fact, that these scien-
tific concepts are merely confirmations of what they have been
saying all along.
The NOI/NGE Creation Myth is followed by myths about
primordial man in a state of bliss that are comparable to the Biblical
narratives about the Garden of Eden. Though these gods had
command of the universe, and had created other inhabitable planets
with intelligent life, their favorite abode was the earth which became
their habitat. They settled in the best part of earth which was the
continent of Asia (although other accounts say that the entire earth
was known as Asia). According to Clegg, the black gods or Asiatic
Black Men shaped the planet to their liking, especially by creating
mountains. This was accomplished by utilizing modern technology –
“motorized bombs tipped with drills and packed with dynamite to
53. Matter particles of unknown composition, which do not emit or reflect enough light
to be detected directly, but whose presence may be inferred from gravitational
effects on visible matter such as anomolies in the rotational speed of galaxies.
54. Energy whose composition is unknown, which accounts for approximately 70% of
the total density of the current universe and which “causes the expansion of the uni-
verse to deviate from a linear velocity–distance relationship, observed as a faster
than expected expansion at very large distances.”
55. “Dark Matter,” Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark _matter), quoting David
Cline, from a 2003 article in Scientific American.
Yusuf Nuruddin 155
borrow into the earth and blast up mountains as high as six miles.”56
Here the NOI mythology has familiar rings with both Greek and
West African Yoruba mythology. Mountains, of course, were powerful,
majestic, magical places in Greek mythology. Mount Olympus in
particular was the home of Zeus and the principal gods in the Greek
pantheon; other mountains were used as the Thrones of the Titans.
The mountain are created using elements associated with two of the
most prominent West African orishas, Ogun, the god of iron (metal
drill), and Shango, the god of thunder and lightning (blasting power
of dynamite).
Many other aspects of the Primordial Bliss myths resonate or are
wholly borrowed – with a twist – from other mythological systems,
as in the case of Nation of Gods or Asiatic Black Men being divided
into Thirteen Tribes. Clegg sates according to the NOI that the religion
of the Original People was Islam and that their disposition was right-
eousness. According to the NGE/Five Percenters, however, Islam is
not defined as a religion but described variously as the culture (way
of life) or the nature (righteous disposition) of the Original Man, or
the order of the universe. In short, this was a conception of Islam, not
as a codified system of beliefs and practices, but as a the natural state
of harmony of the macrocosmic universe and a state which men and
women sought to replicate in their microcosmic world of personal
conduct and social relationships. Islam as so defined was identical to
the Ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at 57 – the law of harmony,
balance, order, truth, righteousness, and justice that governed nature,
personal conduct and social relations.
The narrative of the Nation of Islam also states that history of
the Original Man occurred in 25,000-year cycles, and that these
cycles of destiny were prophesized via clairvoyance by a group of
24 god-scientists who acted as scribes and wrote down the coming
events of each cycle. There are mythological narratives associated
with these cyclic historical eras. The myth of Yakub was the narrative
that dominated the most recent cycle of history, but the previous
cycles were also replete with defining narratives. In a very early
cycle, a previous renegade scientist attempted unsuccessfully to
blow up the earth; but the resulting explosion hurled a huge part of
56. Clegg, Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, p. 42.

57. Symbolized by the goddess who bore a scepter in one hand, an ankh (“crux ansata”)
or sign of life in the other, and wore a feather in her hair. The judgment of the dead
was rendered by this feather which was placed on a scale to weigh the heart of the
deceased, to see if it was light as a feather and worthy of paradise, or heavily bur-
dened with sin.
earth into space, and it went into orbit around the earth and became
known as the moon. In the process one of the Thirteen Tribes was
completely annihilated leaving only Twelve. Another narrative
involves a cycle of history which witnesses the rise of false religions,
Buddhism and Hinduism, among one of the Twelve Tribes. In yet
another cycle, the leader of the Tribe of Shabazz – which had
become the most prominent of the Twelve Tribes and had constructed
a lavish civilization centered in Egypt and across the Red Sea in
Mecca. – took his people into the unexplored jungles of Africa. His
plan was to expose them to life in the wilds for millennia in order
make them physically stronger and resilient and to build character,
as they had become indolent from luxurious idyllic life on the Nile.
The Tribe of Shabazz adapted to the climate and environment of the
African wilds, but their phenotypes changed as a result. The Tribe’s
straight hair was turned coarse and kinky, and its fine features were
deformed into thick lips and broad noses.58
There is also an Eschatological or Judgment Day narrative about
apocalyptic events which will come in the form of a rash of earth-
quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters followed
by the appearance of the Mother Ship, a stealth bombing space ship
manned by black gods which will rain destruction over America.
The stories of these cycles and events make for an entire mythology
replete with tales that rival the mythologies of ancient peoples. These
tales, no longer the exclusive esoteric knowledge of the NOI or the
Five Percenters, are the urban myths that I learned as a teenager in
Brooklyn in the 1960s and which are continually being told and
retold throughout urban America. These tales are being challenged,
however, by a new set of stories.
Brother from another planet: rival urban myth-making

In Ancient Egypt, the priesthood in rival centers of political and
sacerdotal authority of Ancient Egypt (e.g. Hermopolis, Memphis
and Thebes) created rival gods and cosmogonies to compete with the
original Heliopolitan cosmogony. In the inner city, a rival heterodox
Islamic sect, the Nuwaubian Moors, created a mythology to compete
58. The NOI, for all their bold proclamations of blackness, exhibited certain aspects of
internalized racism in their doctrine. There was a level of psychic discomfort
with, or even hatred for, Africa and African ancestry because of all the Western
pejorative stereotypes of the continent and its peoples. Hence the Lessons of the
NOI speak of the Asiatic Black Man rather than the African Black Man, and
African hair texture and facial features were denigrated.
Yusuf Nuruddin 157
with the NOI/Five Percenter mythology. The Nuwaubian Moors have

been through several identities and name changes.59 They surfaced first
in Brooklyn, New York in 1967 as an Islamic group named Ansar Pure
Sufi but established their presence on the map or achieved their first
fame as the Ansaru Allah Nubian Islaamic Hebrews Community
circa early 1970s.60 Under this identity the Community was character-
ized by a unique combination of Islamic heterodoxy and orthopraxy,
i.e. their doctrine was similar in many respects to the black supremacist
doctrine of the NOI, but their dress code and ritual observance of
Islamic practice were strictly in adherence with orthodox guidelines.
Claiming guidance from all the monotheistic scriptures – the Taurat
(Torah), Zabur (Psalms), Injil (Gospel) and Qur’an – they also observed
the Sabbath. Centered in a large commune with several neighboring
real estate holdings in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, the Ansars
or Nubians dressed in white turbans and jalabeahs or thobes and
peddled their wares – jewelry, incense, oils and religious literature –
on the streets and subways of New York. They had a ubiquitous pre-
sence in New York in the 1970s and early 1980s. They became a perma-
nent fixture of the urban landscape during that era, and they began to
spread far and wide to establish communities and a presence in other
major cities. Their doctrinal literature – over 150 booklets with provo-
cative titles and controversial contents, such as Are the Scriptures Tam-
pered With?, Science of the Pyramids, The Pale Man, Christianity: The
Political Religion, Polytheism: The Worship of the Canaanites, The Lost
Children of Mu and Atlantis, Secret Societies Unmasked, The True Story of
Cain and Abel, and Was Christ Really Crucified? – was self-described as
“the most dynamic books in history.” These booklets were highly
59. Some of the many identities and faces include: Ansar Pure Sufi, Nubian Islamic
Hebrews, Ansaru Allah Community of Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Sons of the
Green Light, United Muslims in Exile, Nubian Village, Holy Tabernacle of the
Most High, Holy Tabernacle Ministries, Shoshoni Tribe, Right Knowledge, the
Ancient Egyptian Order, the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and the Yamassee
Native American Moors of the Creek Nation.
60. Ansaru Allah is transliterated Arabic for Helpers of Allah. Nubian refers to the black
Nilotic empire to the south of Egypt, the first empire in recorded human history. The
community traced its roots and its leader’s (concocted) genealogy to the Sudan
(present-day Nubia), specifically to the Sudanese Mahdi movement led by Muham-
mad Ahmad against the British in the 19th century. Islaamic with the double “a” was
the group’s unique transliteration. Competing with Black Hebrew Israelites, the
group identified itself as representing the true legacy of the Hebrews; they used
the crescent with the six-pointed Star of David as their symbol, observed the
Sabbath and read the earlier scripture Torah in addition to the Last Testament, the
Qur’an.
prized and sought after by a wide spectrum of African Americans and

Latinos – the skeptics, the merely curious, the knowledge-thirsty and
the spiritual-seekers. They would animatedly debate and discuss the
doctrine with the Ansars sometimes for hours.
The doctrine built upon the central NOI Yakub narrative concern-
ing the origin of the white race. In the Yakub narrative, after Yakub’s
grafted devils were created on the island of Pelan, they went into the
Holy City of Mecca, the capital of the Original Man’s civilization, delib-
erately stirring up “trouble and confusion among the righteous people
by telling lies and using tricknology.” In contemporary political termi-
nology they used a “campaign of disinformation to de-stabilize the
government” of the Meccans. They were successful in their bid to
cause the Original People “to fight and kill one another,” but the
Meccans soon rallied together against the foreign “devils” deporting
them and exiling them to “the caves of West Asia which is now
called Europe.”61 In the caves of Europe, the white man “went
savage for two thousand years” (i.e. lived like cavemen) until
rescued by a Prophet Musa, who taught him civilization “and some
of the forgotten tricknology that Yakub had taught, which is devilish-
ment, telling lies, stealing and how to master the Original Man.”62
Clegg points out that this narrative “is a figurative portrayal of the
defeat of Satan by the forces of God and his banishment from
heaven” (Revelations 12:7– 10). As an example of urban mythology
which seeks to explain oppression, the narrative effectively under-
mines the status of the oppressor. It “flips the script” of the stereotype
of African Americans being descendants of savages in Africa so that it
is now the oppressor who descended from savage cavemen
(Neanderthal man, etc.) in the wilds of Europe.
The Ansaru Allah Community doctrine, especially as elaborated in
their booklets, The Pale Man and The Sons of Canaan, sought at once to
both corroborate and correct the NOI/NGE caveman narrative – in
much the same way that the rival Memphite Theology of Egypt did
not supplant the Heliopolitan Cosmogony but reconfigured it and
coexisted with the original. Using the Biblical narrative of the Curse
61. The NOI/NGE Lessons state that trouble-makers were stripped of all their belong-
ings, “everything except their language,” run out of Mecca and forced to march
across the hot Arabian desert 2,200 miles to the caves of Europe, walking every
step of the way. Upon arrival the evil-doers were bound by ropes in the caves like
prisoners, to insure that they would not escape.
62. Nuruddin, “African American Muslims and the Question of Identity” (n. 37), p. 305f,
n. 17.
Yusuf Nuruddin 159
of Ham (Genesis 9:20 – 27),63 verses from Leviticus about leprosy

(13:9 – 17), verses from the Holy Qur’an (18: 9– 26) about people who
fell asleep in the caves for centuries with a dog as their companion,64
an explanation of Mendelian genetics with distorted conclusions, and
the pseudoscientific theory of Lemarckian heredity, the Ansar doctrine
contended that the peoples of the scriptures were black, that Canaan,
the son of Ham, was cursed by Noah with leprosy – a disease that
turns the skin white, and that the “sons” (descendants) of Canaan
inherited this leprosy-induced albinoism and lived in the caves of the
Caucasus Mountains where they engaged in bestiality and interbred
with canines (“man’s best friend”), which made their bodies hairy.
Photos of hirsute carnival sideshow freaks were provided as
“evidence” of this cross-species interbreeding.
The two stories of the savage cave origins of the white oppressor –
the NOI/NGE version and the Nubian version – coexisted and both
became standard urban mythology for thousands of inner city
African Americans who were not affiliated with any of these organi-
zations, but who were heavily influenced by their mythology.
Hounded by Sunni Muslim groups who insisted that the Nubians
with their white supremacist doctrine, which was in contention with
the true universalist message of Islam, were not Helpers of Allah’s
cause but hinderers and imposters, the Nubians retaliated against
Sunni doctrine and slowly began to undergo a metamorphosis invol-
ving successive adoption and integration of many “dispensations”
(religious beliefs), occult philosophical and esoteric beliefs, and con-
temporary cult beliefs, fads and fashion. In their incarnation as Nuwau-
bian Moors, the group by 1993 had relocated its main base from
Brooklyn to a 476-acre compound replete with impressive and colorful
faux pyramids called Tamar-Re, “The Egypt of the West” in Eatonton,
Georgia. By this time they were embracing a philosophy whose main
tenets contained elements of the Moorish Science Temple teachings,
Freemasonry, Afrocentric Kemeticism (glorification of Kemet or
Ancient Egypt as an ancient black utopia), the Black Indian movement
63. The descendants of Ham or Hamites are generally believed to be black and the curse
of Ham is cited by white supremacists as a justification for enslaving blacks, since
Ham’s son Canaan was cursed to be a “servant of servants.” White Southern
folklore speculates that Ham was guilty of performing fellatio on his drunk and
naked father, Noah, who cursed him with big lips (a punishment to fit the crime)
and blackness. The Ansar doctrine “flips the script.”
64. The context of the verses in this chapter of the Qur’an was a set of questions put to
the Prophet Muhaammad by Christians and Jews in Mecca who wished to test his
knowledge about esoteric or hidden Christian and Jewish traditions.
(a movement among African Americans who claim their Native

American ancestry), and Sitchinism (the ufology theories of Zecharia
Sitchin). This eclectic doctrine of the group is called Right Knowledge –
shorthand for “Right Knowledge, Right Wisdom and Right Overstand-
ing [Understanding].” The Nuwaubians claim that their name derives
from Nuwaubu, a hieroglyphic language left to them by their ancient
ancestors. They claim that very word “Nuwaubu” essentially means
“right knowledge and right wisdom” or “sound right reasoning” –
which leads to right understanding. Right Knowledge competes with
Five Percenter teachings for the minds and hearts of the young (and
not so young) who are attempting to make sense of their impoverished,
degraded and powerless position in society.
Another 150 or so booklets have been published by the group in
its various incarnations since it dropped the Ansaru Allah identity.
In several of these new booklets, most notably in Scroll #80 The
Man from Planet Rizk and Scroll #82 Mission Earth and Extraterrestrial
Involvement, the leader Malachi York65 claims to be a channel for
Right Knowledge, an extraterrestrial from Rizk, the “8th planet of the
19th Galaxy of Illyuwn,” “a galactic being whose name is Yanuuwn”
who was seeded on the planet. As a seeded entity and avatar,
Malachi York was “pre-coded to awaken at a certain time, his DNA
structures were genetically designed to go off like a time bomb in
order to accommodate the Light Being, the Ether Being” seeded into
his human body. Borrowing imagery from Rashid Khalifa (the math-
ematical power of 19 in the Holy Qur’an) and doctrines of the NOI/
NGE (e.g. the birth of the Allah; the 24 god-scientists), the galactic
being Yanuuwn is described as “over 76 trillion years old,” and the
19th of the 24 Elders who were known as Guardians of Light or
Keepers of the Secret. Yanuuwn was known in ancient times as
Melchisedek, Michael the Archangel, and Murdoq (in Sitchinism,
Murdoq was the Sumerian god associated with the 10th planet
Nibiru). York adds his own modifications to Sitchin, since only he
not Sitchin has Right Knowledge. Niburu, according to York, is a
planet-ship which was launched out from the planet Rizk with one of
its routine trips, a circuit which lasts nearly 25,000 years (the NOI/
NGE cycle of destiny) with a crew of 144,000 – 24 of whom were the
65. Dwight York has had many aliases during his community’s transformations: Al
Imam Isa Al Haadi Al Mahdi, Rabboni Y’shua bar el Hadi, Dr. York, Malachi
York, Nayya Malachizodoq-El, Amunnubi Rooakhptah, and Maacu Chief Black
Eagle Thunderbird. He is now serving 137 years behind bars for child molestation,
a charge which his believers adamantly believe was concocted by the government to
destroy the group. Defectors from the movement believe otherwise.
Yusuf Nuruddin 161
elite Elders – to search for rare minerals (gold, silver, platinum,

uranium) in our solar system. An electrical storm on Neptune caused
this planet-ship to veer off course, and Nibiru crashed into the planet
Maldek, also known as Vulcan (a nod to Star Trek fans), breaking that
planet up and sending the remainder hurling out of the solar system.
There it became the Lost planet and part of the Zeta Reticulli Galaxy.
Nibiru, still veering off course, then came perilously close to Tiamat
(Earth). The alarmed people of Tiamat, led by Kingu, the head of
their Defense Force, launched an attack of 11 ships against Niburu.
In a counterattack, Nibiru launched its seven War Ships. In the
course of the battle that followed with Neptunian ships also in
pursuit of the Nibiru ship, the Tiaman was blown up and the remain-
der of it was sent hurling into a different orbit, the earth’s current orbit.
One of the ships also bored a hole through the center of Tiaman
creating a Hollow earth (a hole through which Caucasian people
would eventually emerge).
Interviewed Nuwaubians66 add more details to the story:
17 million years ago, before the first intergalactic battle, black
people’s ancestors, variously known as Elohim, Annunaki, angels or
Riziquians, existed in the 19th galaxy on the eighth planet Rizk. The
Milky Way, which we live in, is the 18th galaxy. Riziquians means Pro-
viders, those who provide for the All – meaning all forces in existence.
They are the workers for the Most High God, and they are gods also but
not as great as the Supreme God. The planet Rizk was a part of the
Original Tri-Solar System which was made up of three suns and 12
planets. The 12 planets had a moveable throne known as Nibiru, a
spaceship made out of different crystals, gems and jewels. It had tiny
microscopic solar panels, the size of pin-heads, which can convert
light into energy enabling the ship to travel at the speed of light. The
ship makes its routine route every 24,900 years which gives us the revo-
lution known as the precession of the equinox. The ship went on its
voyages in search of gold. Gold was needed to repair the layer of the
Riziquian atmosphere which would be comparable to our ozone
layer on earth. It is the layer which protects the planet Rizk from the
ultraviolet radiation of the triple suns. The layer had been destroyed
by the being known variously as Tarnish, Iblis or Shaytan (Satan).
Shaytan was the leader of the 200 fallen angels, the “disagreeables”
whom the Most High allowed to live on the planet Rizk. However,
when conditions on Rizk became rough and hard, the Most High had
66. Interviews conducted in Toledo in September 2004 and January 2005. Names are
confidential.
to ask Shaitan to move off the planet or to a smaller part of it. Shaitan
refused and instead set off major bomb, an atomic explosion like an
H-bomb, which destroyed the Riziquian layer. The Riziquian scientists
were able to repair the layer with gold, but there wasn’t enough gold on
Rizk, so they sent out the movable throne ship Nibiru to mine the gold
on the earth, where there were ample supplies. Colonies were estab-
lished on the earth and transportation centers were set up on the
earth’s moon and on Mars. Human beings in the form of Homo
erectus already inhabited the planet. Two Riziquians (Niburians –
since they were from the movable throne ship Nibiru), Nergal and
Ninti,67 spliced the genes of Homo erectus with their Riziquian genes
and preoduced Homo sapiens. The Riziquians thought that as angels
they shouldn’t have to work mining gold in caves, so they created a
primitive being in their likeness to do it. Sitchin portrays the Annunaki
(Niburians) as disagreeable or shaytanic, which is why he gets the story
wrong. The Annunaki (Riziquians, Niburians) guarded over their crea-
tion, Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens originally had psychic abilities – clair-
voyance, intuition, psychometry and telepathy – but after man’s early
wars and fratricide (Cain and Abel), the Annunaki decided that
humans were no longer worthy of using our higher senses until we
had evolved, so they removed the barthery gland responsible for
these higher senses from the hippocampus area of our brains. Yakub,
who created one of the four branches of the Caucasian race, was born
with two brains. The other branches of the Caucasian race were the
Amorites who were descended from Canaan, the Fulgurites, and the
Albarians who came from another planet. The two brains endowed
Yakub with the genius to perform major scientific gene-splicing experi-
ments with pigs, dogs and other animals in the Hollow regions of the
earth in order to create the pale man. But shortly after he was done
with his experiments, one of his brains exploded and he died.
Right Knowledge as mythology/mythology as right knowledge

The above narrative extracted from booklets and interviews
represents just the tip of the iceberg of the continuing narratives of
ancient ancestral astronauts and extraterrestrial holy wars that consti-
tute Right Knowledge, the theology/mythology issued from Malachi
York, Yunuuwn, the brother from the planet Rizq. This theology and
esoteric history is compiled in a nearly 1,700-page book of “scripture”
67. Sitchin says Ninhersag and Enki were the gene-splicers. Perhaps this is what the
interviewee meant to say, or perhaps the tape transcriber misheard.
Yusuf Nuruddin 163
called The Holy Tablets. The Tablets contain (1) seemingly endless sagas,
written in faux Biblical style, about mythical events such as Shaytan in
reptilian form being defeated and bound on the planet Titan by
Murdock/Melchisidek, (2) seemingly endless faux genealogies of the
heroes and villains in these cosmological sagas, (3) full-page illustrated
likenesses of these heroes and villains interspersed throughout the text,
(4) opening pages as in a family bible for recording marriages, births,
deaths, special events, and (5) constant testimony that Malachi York,
e.g. Murdock, Melchisidek, Yunuuwn, is “the awaited one.”
A critique of Right Knowledge as a messianic belief system or an
ideology with adherents is not in the purview of this essay. There are
thousands of people outside of the Nuwaubian movement who are
not necessarily believers in the messianic mission of Malachi York,
yet who have nevertheless embraced Right Knowledge as a mythology.
It is a mythology-in-the-making that is gaining ground with the
mythology of the NOI/NGE. In many ways these rival mythologies
intermesh with and incorporate one another, as in the case of the
Nuwaubians’ embellishment that Yakub was a “big-headed” scientist
because his cranium contained two brains. The various myths of a
given small-scale society thus form, as Edmund Leach puts it,
“a corpus. They lock in together to form a single theological – cosmolo-
gical – [juridical] whole. Stories from one part of the corpus presuppose
a knowledge of stories from other parts. There is implicit cross-
reference from one part to another.”68
The term “Right Knowledge” implies that the system of
Eurocentric cultural hegemony has provided the downtrodden, the
disenfranchised, the dispossessed with wrong knowledge – misinfor-
mation and disinformation which has been disseminated deliberately
in order to delude the masses and perpetuate their oppression. There
is no revolutionary movement; the legacy of inner city struggle of the
‘60s was buried by interminable battles between nationalists and
Marxists over the salience of race versus class and the unresolved
question “Which Way Forward?” In the absence of a revolutionary
movement, mythology will continue to thrive. Hence some will
contend that urban mythology is the expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering, the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of
a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions, the opium of the people.
Others will see that the mythology of the NOI, NGE and
Nuwaubians – the urban mythology which has spread across the
68. Gregory Nagy, “Can Myth Be Saved?” in Gregory Schremmp and William Hansen,
eds, Myth: A New Symposium (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 244.
inner cities of America from coast to coast – is indeed right knowledge

and right wisdom, which leads to right understanding. Certainly it is a
counter-hegemonic discourse which offers a trenchant social criticism
of racial oppression, in language so simple that even a child can under-
stand. It describes the rudiments of the system which we live under. As
expressed by the Nuwaubians under the aegis of the AnsaruAllah
Community, black people are under the “spell of Leviathan.” The
word refers to both a Biblical monstrous sea-serpent and a Hobbesian
social contract – which black people didn’t sign onto – granting rule to
a sovereign race and class. We’re inside “the belly of the beast” is the
way the Panthers expressed it.
Urban mythology breaks the spell of Leviathan, empowering the
oppressed by deconstructing the dominant ideology, the ruling ideas
that have been spread by the ruling class. Psychologically it empowers
the people by undermining the status and legitimacy of the oppressor
and elevating the status of the downtrodden. Those who argue that
these myths, rather than being examples of right knowledge, are
simply false consciousness have misunderstood the nature of myth:
“As we explore the world of myth, we should remember that we are
journeying not through a world of falsehood but through a marvelous
world of metaphor.”69 The psychologist Carl Jung, in expounding on
the fact that mythology is an expression in symbols and images of
the most basic level of the human psyche, wrote:
It is possible to live the fullest life only when we are in harmony with these
symbols; wisdom is a return to them. It is a question of neither belief nor knowl-
edge, but of the agreement of our thinking with the primordial images of the
unconscious.70
This explains why the telling of the stories elicits expressions

of glee and why the listener will invariably heartily give the narrator
a pound (slap him five) for “blessing” him with the wisdom.
The stories resonate regardless of the listener’s level of education –
though, of course, their impact may be impeded by cultural
indoctrination.
The title of this volume is Socialism and Social Critique in Science
Fiction. Urban mythology, with its attendant science fiction motifs, is
the people’s social critique. Although individual geniuses, individual
69. David Adams Leeming, The Worlds of Myth (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990), p. 8.
70. Carl Gustav Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1947),
p. 129.
Yusuf Nuruddin 165
literary myth-makers, and priests, such as W.D. Farrad, Elijah Muham-

mad, Clarence 13X, Jalaluddin Nuriddin, Ishmael Reed, and Dwight
Malachi York, may convey these myths through literature, ultimately
they are articulating the collective strivings of their people. As mythol-
ogy scholar David Leeming explains:
A question that inevitably arises in connection with mythology is that of
authorship. Who wrote the myths or, more accurately who told them?
Almost invariably the answer must be the people themselves. The myth, like
its close relative the fairy tale, has its origins in the collective “folk” mind.
Perhaps it was the individual priests or shamans who gave some specific
form to the “primitive” speculations, concerning the reason for spring, the
origin of earth, and the nature of death; but the essential similarities within
those various forms, irrespective of chronology and geography indicate a col-
lective authorship, the human mind wrestling en masse with mysteries,
attempting to make the earth conscious of itself.71
Urban mythology is the mythology of the wretched of the earth – the

wretched of the inner cities. It is their scathing social critique of
the existing political and economic arrangements. Outsiders (i.e. those
who have never felt the weight of oppression), who find the urban
mythology absurd or humorous, juvenile or irrelevant, should heed
Leeming’s words: “Myths are not to be regarded lightly . . . They are
sometimes funny, occasionally bizarre, but they must always be taken
seriously.”72
71. Leeming, The Worlds of Myth, p. 7.

72. Ibid., p. 5.

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Socialism and Democracy

ISSN: 0885-4300 (Print) 1745-2635 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20

Ancient black astronauts and extraterrestrial

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1. The sociological terms “alternative religious movements” or “new religious move-

Socialism and Democracy, Vol.20, No.3, November 2006, pp.127–165

throughout inner city communities from coast to coast. Because the

5. “Urban Legends,” Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend), June 15,

about race relations. Race relations are, of course, central to the

Contextualizing urban mythology

Yakub, a big-headed scientist whose genetic engineering experiments

A mythological corpus consists of (1) a usually complex network of myths that

Doty elaborates upon each of these 17 aspects; a few of the elaborated

society and contradict the notion of a modern urban mythology. What

10. Ibid., p. 25.

that urban mythology is indeed a valid branch of world mythology.

Science fiction motifs in urban mythology

skepticism, quantification, science and technology. As a result of

magical powers: wishing rings, enchanted swords, draughts of immortality,

The literature of science fiction also speaks of “transcendent powers,

frameworks for Biblical myths are a special sub-category of the space

Ancient astronauts as a science fiction motif

his controversial, impressively documented but now discredited the-

jettisoning fragments millions of miles towards the inward regions of

Islam and science fiction motifs

23. Carroll, The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

of science fiction motifs. By contrast, orthodox Islam, e.g. Sunni and

24. Jaraslav Osla, Jr. “Arabic SF,” in Encyclopedia, p. 49.

scripture is central to the plot of his novel Ultimate Revelations which

spread throughout the known universe, and ambitious men seek to

Islam and science fiction motifs in African American literature

ongoing alternate history, in which events from the time of Ancient

conditions on the surface of the contaminated earth and relay

His name is Sir Manikin

He has cunning and guile

“Amidst gasps and sighs” the android “suddenly materialized /

I’m endowed with a microscopic brain

My anatomy is composed of titanium and platinum ore

I am covered with a thin layer of diamonite mesh

Here is the supreme irony: mankind (“the jinn,” as code-word for

Islam in Afrofuturist literature

might “highlight an ignored strain” of AfroDiasporan culture –

Mumbo Jumbo’s two protagonists, Abdul Hamid Sufi, an African

In Afrofuturist terms, Reed speculates about the African American

36. Ibid., p. 34.

The image of the African American Muslim self-taught omnivorous

Reed’s Afrofuturism provides us with a legendary prototype, one

Heterodox Islam and science fiction motifs in black urban culture

38. Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, pp. 33, 36 –38.

Muslim science fiction is concerned with origins, Genesis, the creation

41. Ibid., p. 50.

a high-tech bioengineering cybernetic marvel, a combination of

“gods,” speak of the first nine followers of their founder Clarence

47. Clegg, Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, p. 42.