Moorish Orthodox Church in America
Diocese of New Jersey
Saints Sergius & Bakkhus
Ongs Hat, Pemberton, New Jersey
The phenomenon of (widely and wrongly termed) "self-appointed" leaders, of spiritiual initiations and ordinations and "spectral consecrations" has a long and venerable history in Moorish Orthodoxy existing since the beginning, and are held in a degree of esteem no less than that of the "self-appointment" of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus as Paul the Apostle.
None but the Prophet, Noble Drew Ali, heard the Divine summons to take up the Mantle of Prophecy.
The reification of, firstly, the Temple of Moorish Science and latterly the Moorish Orthodox Church, stand as ratification of Noble Drew Ali's Divine commission. Prophets may indeed cry out, aloud but alone, in deep silence and dark solitude - but if they are truly Prophets they are not left alone for long. Their Divine consecration, imposed deep in the cave of hesychasm, is invariably and in the fullness of time ratified by the Community of Faithful, the Umma.
By just such a means, even today, do the clerics of Shi'a Islam in Iran attain the lofty ranks of Ayatollah and Hojatollislam, at the pinnacle of the hierarchy.
In his epochal Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, Peter Lamborn Wilson (p.144 et seq.) describes the means by which the Shaykh transfers his lineage, his apostolic authority (if you will) to the disciple:
"The Khadirian state of course consists of 'ilm laduni, knowledge direct from God, which moreover often causes its recipient to act in strangely paradoxical and even seemingly unlawful ways. No wonder Ibn Arabi spent much of his stay in Mosul in the company of "madmen" and "blameworthy ones" such as Abul Hassan Thabit ibn Antar al-hilli, called [by various chroniclers] "lying, stupid, gross, vain and slanderous," and who was moreover guilty of the "blasphemy" of composing an imitation of the Koran. Addas also mentions as a 'strange and curious matter' that Ibn Arabi lists fifteen disciples to whom he transitted the khirqa, and that fourteen of them were women (one of them his wife), and that eight of them were invested in dreams ...
It seems appropriate that Ibn Arabi passed on the Khadirian mantle to so many in dreams, for Khezr serves above all as the initiator of those who for some reason have no ordinary human master, those who depend for direct visionary experience to open them to the influx of tajalli, the "Divine irradiation." There have even existed in Sufism (and in recent times) orders of Dervishes who have no master but rather a 'teacher of dreams,' a go-between who can introduce disciples to the technique of seeking initiation in the Imaginal World.
The History and Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America (1992 revision by Bishop Ustad Selim and Sh. Arif Hussein Al-Camaysar of the 1986 edition) puts it as plainly as it can be put: "The anitnomian and egalitarian aspects ... have reinforced our position in relation to all organized religion, that of heresy. To symbolize this attitude, all Mors are encouraged to create new names and titles for themselves. The Moorish hierarchy is 'self-appointed.' All Moors are entitled to titles [and offices] because all Moors have authority.
Or, as the television commercial for the popular "Outback" chain of steakhouses has it, "No Rules, Only Right."
