Dwight York

Dwight D. York (born June 26, 1945), also known as Malachi Z. York, Issa al-Haadi al-Mahdi, et alii, is an American criminal, black supremacist, pedophile, convicted child molester, musician, and writer best known as the founding leader of several black Muslim groups in New York, most notably the Nuwaubian Nation, a black supremacist, new religious movement that has existed in some form since the 1960s.

"My grandfather, As Sayyid Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi, the Imaam of the Ansaars in the Sudan until 1959 AD, upon looking into my eyes foretold that I was the one who would possess 'the light.'" He says he returned to the United States in 1957 at age 12 and continued to study Islam.

As an adolescent, he moved with his family to Teaneck, New Jersey.

York began founding several black Muslim groups in the late 1960s.

He founded numerous religious movements under various names between the 1960s and 1980s.

These were at first based on pseudo-Islamic themes and Judaism (Nubian Islamic Hebrews).

Later he developed a theme derived from "Ancient Egypt", mixing ideas taken from black nationalism, cryptozoology, Christianity, UFO religions, New Age, and popular conspiracy theories.

He last called his group the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, Nuwaubian Nation, or Nuwabians.

In the late 1960s York, calling himself "Imaam Isa", combined elements of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Nation of Islam, the Nation of Gods and Earths and Freemasonry, and founded a quasi-Muslim black nationalist movement and community.

In 1967, he was preaching to the "Ansaaru Allah" (viz. African-Americans) in Brooklyn, New York, during the period of the black power movement.

He later changed his name to "Imaam Isa Abdullah" and renamed his "Ansaar Pure Sufi" ministry to the "Nubians" in Brooklyn in 1967.

The group was considered to be part of the Black Hebrews phenomenon, under the name "Nubian Islaamic Hebrews" and "Nubian Hebrew Mission" as of 1969.

Unlike other groups, they were not Judeo-Christian but Judeo-Islamic.

This was also the period of Black Power among some African Americans.

York later traveled to Africa, to Sudan and Egypt in particular.

He met and persuaded members of Mohamed Ahmed Al-Mahdi's family to finance him to set up a cell of their organization in the United States.

This was to be a "west" or "American" political wing of Sudan's Ansar movement under Sadiq Al-Mahdi (also see Umma Party).

He began to develop the claim of his "Sudanese" roots in order to authenticate his American branch of the sect.

After York returned from a pilgrimage to (Egypt and Sudan), he invited Sadiq Al-Mahdi to the US.

He called it "Ansaar Pure Sufi", or the "Ansaaru Allah Community", c. 1970.

He instructed members to wear black and green dashikis.

In 1970 his group changed its name to the "Ansaaru Allah Community in the West".

Around 1990, York and the Nuwaubian Nation relocated to rural Putnam County, Georgia, where they built a large complex.

They came under scrutiny in the early 1990s, after they built Tama-Re, an Egyptian-themed compound for about a hundred of his followers in Putnam County.

Before York's trial, the community had been joined directly and in the area by hundreds of other followers from out of state, while alienating both Black and White local residents.

The community was intensively investigated after numerous reports that York had molested numerous children of his followers.

He and his group were originally based in Brooklyn, New York and some of them relocated to Athens, Georgia after his arrest.

"He was based in Coney Island for a time, and operated a bookstore and a printing press on Flatbush Ave. in the 70s. In the 80s he was based in Brooklyn, on Bushwick Ave. York's students are best remembered by New Yorkers as practitioners of orthodox Islam – members of certain New York Five-Percent Nation, Nation of Islam and Arab Islamic mosques still regard the Nuwaubians as a rival faction – but at different times they followed the paths of Christianity and Judaism. Operations relocated to Liberty, near the Catskills, around 1991, then to Georgia in 1993."

A 1993 FBI report described this group as a "front for a wide range of criminal activity, including arson, welfare fraud and extortion."

The group wrote:

"The women of the Ansaaru Allah Community focus on memorizing history as their Imam sees it, learning Arabic (many of them are quite fluent), incorporating Sudanese etiquette into their mannerisms and memorizing the Qur'an. They participate in the compilation of the various texts produced by the community and also work in the recording studio owned by the community. Other than this work, the women's main source of income comes from US government public assistance and monies earned by the men in various enterprises such as food shops, jewelry and merchandise stores, and street vending."

The New York Press reported on York:

York and his wife, Kathy Johnson, were arrested in May 2002.

York was convicted in 2004 of child molestation and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

He is serving a 135-year sentence.

In 2004, he was convicted on federal charges of transporting minors across state lines for the purposes of child sexual molestation, as well as racketeering and financial reporting violations.

York's case was reported as the largest prosecution for child molestation ever directed at a single person in the history of the United States, both in terms of number of victims and number of incidents.

According to a birth certificate issued in the United States, Dwight D. York was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Other sources give his birthplace as New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, or Takoradi, Ghana.

York says that he was raised in Massachusetts, and at the age of seven went to Aswan, Egypt, to learn about Islam.