When Noble Drew Ali made the above statement, he was talking about power over consciousness, not just books.
Literature shapes identity
“Literature” isn’t only novels or textbooks. Noble Drew Ali was pointing to everything a people read, recite, study, and accept as authoritative, including:
- History books
- Law books
- Religious texts
- Dictionaries and definitions
- School curricula
- Newspapers and records
- Court language and legal classifications
Who a people believe they are comes from what they are told they are—and that story is carried through literature.
Change the story → change the people.
Control the narrative, control the mind
If you replace a people’s original records with foreign definitions, you can:
- Rename them
- Reclassify them
- Redefine their status
- Strip them of history, nationality, and rights
Noble Drew Ali understood that colonization happens first on paper, not on battlefields. Once a people accept false records about themselves, they begin to self-police, self-limit, and self-identify according to those records.
That’s why he emphasized reclaiming:
- Proper names
- Proper nationality
- Proper history
- Proper law
Literature creates law and jurisdiction
In law, words create status, and status determines jurisdiction.
If literature defines a people as:
- Property → they can be administered
- Subjects → they can be governed
- Wards → they can be managed
- “Black,” “Negro,” “Colored” → they can be regulated under special codes
Then courts, contracts, and institutions will treat them accordingly.
Noble Drew Ali was warning that false literature produces false authority, and that people trapped in false records will be ruled by them.
Why Noble Drew Ali introduced new (old) literature
This is why he brought forward:
- The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America
- Lessons, cards, and proclamations
- Historical reminders of Moorish identity
- Re-education around nationality and law
He wasn’t inventing something new—he was restoring suppressed literature so people could remember who they were before foreign narratives replaced their records.
The deeper message
He was really saying:
You cannot free a people with chains on their mind.
And the chains are written in books, laws, and records.
Change the literature →
Change the definitions →
Change the status →
Change the destiny.
In short
Noble Drew Ali meant that true liberation begins with correcting the written record—because whoever controls the literature controls:
- Thought
- Identity
- Law
- Power