Moorish Orthodox Church of America
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The Moorish Orthodox Church of America is a syncretic, non-exclusive, and religious anarchist movement originally founded in New York City in 1965 and part of the burgeoning psychedelic church movement of the mid to late 1960s in the United States.
Influences
The Moorish Orthodox Church of America incorporates a vast array of liturgical and devotional traditions ranging from Moorish Science, the Five Percenters, the Episcopi vagantes movement, Nizari Islam, Sufism (particularly from the Sufi Order Ināyati, Shadhili, Alevi-Bektashi and Uwaisi traditions), varying degrees of Theosophical mysticism, Hermeticism, Oriental Orthodoxy, the League for Spiritual Discovery, Western esotericism, Neoplatonism, Tantra, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and Vedanta. These influences have been brought into the Church by early founding members, and have been added to over the last 40 years. Thus the list of spiritual influences grows as the Church has aged. The Church has historically exhibited strong anarchist, socialist, and utopian political orientations. These include the works of Charles Fourier, Abdullah Ocalan, Noel Ignatiev, Hakim Bey, Friederich Nietszche, Murray Bookchin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Karl Marx, Pierre-Joseph Prudhon, Max Stirner, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, the Industrial Workers of the World, and John Henry Mackay. Combined influences also include Brethren of the Free Spirit, English Dissenters, William Blake, and Ivan Ilich.
History
Notable members
- Muhammed al-Ahari
- Hakim Bey
- Sultan Rafi Sharif Bey
- Carey Harrison
- Warren Tartaglia
- Bill Weinberg
- David Hanson (robotics designer)
- Nick Herbert (physicist)
- Michael Muhammad Knight
- Thom Metzger