Are there any Moorish Lit still being published? If so, please post info

-- Shaku Dionysus (shaksway@aol.com), January 17, 1998

Answers

Moorish Lit, you sez?

You may have got the impression that the 'Moors' here actually read and/or write. Entertain these delusions no longer! It has become evident after several years of close observation that one of two possibilities exist. Either there is no genuine Moorish Orthodox documentation, or (more likely) there are no genuine Orthodox Moors to write it. To be quite frank, the latter explaination seems the more probable. I have heard tales of a faraway Dreamtime, but they're keeping the revelations (and the secrets of Phalaris and rural white-boy buggery) to themselves. I guess you could read Hakim Bey (whoever THEY are, as multitudinous as Jabir, I say) but 'he's' too goddamn rational for my tastes. Pish-Posh with your structured thesises (as if we robotniks could comprehend anyway) and Esalen-esque yippie empowerment seminar jargon. And that 'Java' jive apparently couldn't be sold to Bantam or Del Rey (though apparently found some sympathy at Harper Collins), so we suffer with the failed-novelist utopian musings of zerowork yurt-dwellers. That's dandy, but when the firecracker up the ass of the Man is ensorceled from blackpowder into ex-lax, all the chaos in the world turns out to be just shit. People like these so-called Moors killed punk rock, beware their hookah-induced schemes!!! Their efforts at 'pornography' will inhibit your abilities to fornicate more than a 3D flicker portrait of Strom Thurmond over your headboard! My lust need not carry a passport to be valid in anyone's Interzone. Do not trust these Hoodoo Clerics and their imaginal mosques, masturbate energetically instead. Shaggy.

-- Shaggy al-Carcosa 671 (hanuman@netnitco.net), February 19, 1998.

Moorish Lit Answer

Semiotext(e)/Autonomedia, which published Hakim Bey's _T.A.Z._, also publishes at least one other book by the same author as well as other material likely to be of interest to the like-minded (e.g. Baudrillard, Virilio, Deleuze). You can contact them at:

Autonomedia P.O. Box 568 Williamsburgh Station Brooklyn, NY 11211-0568.

The writings of W. S. Burroughs, T. McKenna, etc. have something of a quasi-Moorish bent and (in my experience) are often referenced by people claiming affiliation with things Moorish (Orthodox, scientific, or what-have-you), but these books are not exactly Moorish in themselves. Other inspiration seems to come from Tantra, Zen, Sufi, and other Eastern philosophical traditions. But, if you are asking the question you are asking, you've probably read all these and want direction to literature expressly Moorish. There, I can't help you. There seems to be a lot on the internet, but mostly redundant and hard to find. My advice: Write your own. Or better yet, don't: Create a literature of practice.

I'll add a question of my own, though: Reference is often made to the sayings of Noble Drew, said to be collected in something like a Koran. Does anyone know if this is still in print?

N.M.

-- N. Mauk (nhmauk@midway.uchicago.edu), March 14, 1998.

the circle seven koran

the holy koran of the moorish science temple, aa the circle seven koran is indeed still in print, and is avail. from the african islamic mission, which has a web page, from which you can get an address to send in a money order or whatnot. it cost me $10 said and done about a year ago. there are also rumors that the circle seven is being slowly html-ized and put on the web, but it aparently isn't done, yet. salaam khan

-- osman malik khan (khagan1164@hotmail.com), March 25, 1998.