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This chapter grounds Noble Drew Ali's understandings of pluralism and democracy in the political and social scene of 1920s Chicago. Expanding on Ali's understanding of American democracy, this chapter argues that Ali's system, by universalizing difference, leveled it. Two other Aliite religions (the Nuwaubian Yamassee and the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah) are introduced as well, sharing with the Moorish Science Temple of America an understanding of American secularism as, in fact, a sacred order, designed by Allah.

Noble Drew Ali preached a distinctive theory of "nationality," telling his followers that rather than "negro, black, or colored," they were actually Moorish. Recognition of this true identity would guarantee acceptance as full citizens of the USA, Ali taught, insisting that not only was this the case for all ethnic groups (all "nationalities") within the US, but that this was part of Allah-God's plan for humanity, wherein each "nationality" had its own distinct religion and prophet, flag and culture.

Turning to the constellation of stars on the Great Seal of the US, this chapter argues that sovereignty is a matter of tense, ever-shifting relations between multiple levels of sovereignty, a fact played out in Aliite theory and practice as well. Examining Aliite theories of and claims to sovereignty, focusing first on the sovereignty that is manifest through law by collective political negotiation as citizens, then turning to Aliite imagination of and appeal to international law, this chapter shows how Aliites identify "true law" as the ultimate level of sovereignty within a lived reality of layered and negotiated sovereignties. Such an understanding of ideal law as always above the legal (as enforced by the state) helps Aliites negotiate not only the multiple, contradictory, claims about sovereignty made in American law and politics but also to balance faith in “rule of law” with an often unjust and oppressive rule of the legal.

Moorish Science Temple of America nationalization ceremonies—patterned off of the naturalization ceremonies that incorporates immigrants as new citizens of the United States—are understood as legally marking one’s reclamation of Moorish nationality and, thus, transforming participants from outsiders, excluded from the American political process, into full citizens of the USA. For Aliites, citizenship is more than mere legal status; it is a process of world transformation, world salvation, a responsibility to participate in the struggle to instantiate true law on earth. This concluding chapter locates Aliites faith in such universal and eternal All-Law as a faith in alternity, in an otherwise possibility to the dangers of state systems and aw enforcement.

Gilded Age Orientalism was a protean and plastic phenomenon. No part of United States popular culture expressed Orientalism more than a uniquely American secret society known as the Shriners, or the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America, founded among whites in 1872 and among African Americans in 1893. Intent on having a good time and expressing their masculinity irreverently, the Shriners seldom took their own legends very seriously. Blacks interpreted the Orientalist myth at the heart of Shrinerdom differently than their white peers. The most common attitude in white Shrine literature is one of overwrought reverence for Islam and the Orient, whereas Black Shriners used the mystique of the Orient to advance the causes of racial uplift and civil rights. Black Shriners directly inspired the religious pioneer Noble Drew Ali and new twentieth-century Black Muslim movements.