Ben-Ishmael Tribe
Encyclopedia
The Ben-Ishmael Tribe, also known as the Tribe of Ishmael, was a largely poor, white, Protestant family in Indianapolis
, Indiana
during the late 19th century. Records of the family show that the Ishmaels originally hail from Cumberland County
, Pennsylvania
, and the Tribe's namesake served in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The Ishmaels, known locally for abstaining from the wage labor economy in Indianapolis, received attention from eugenics
advocates starting in 1877 with the Reverend Oscar McCulloch, and his assistant James Frank Wright. Following McCulloch’s published report in 1888 regarding the Tribe of Ishmael, eugenicists such as Charles Estabrook and Harry Laughlin used the family to argue for sterilization laws called the Indiana Plan. The family name was also invoked during Congressional hearings that led to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924
. After mostly slipping out of national consciousness for much of the 20th century, the history of the Ishmael tribe was radically reinvented by Hugo Prosper Leaming in an essay called The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive “Nation" of the Old Northwest. Leaming argued that the family was not simply a poor white Christian
family, but actually a Muslim
tri-racial sect of whites, Native Americans
and runaway slaves. Much of Leaming’s narrative was refuted by the extensively researched 2009 book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael by Nathaniel Deutsch, a professor of Literature and History at the University of California, Santa Cruz
.
to become the minister of the Protestant
Plymouth Church. Due to a surging population and an economic crisis known as the Panic of 1873
, McCulloch entered Indianapolis during a period of widespread poverty. Many of the urban poor in Indianapolis at the time were migrants from Kentucky
, Tennessee
, Virginia
and other regions of the Upland South
. Among these migrants were a family with the surname of Ishmael, who became the subject of a decade-long study for McCulloch. McCulloch recorded in his diary that he was aware of Richard Louis Dugdale
’s study on “The Jukes
,” which helped to form his belief that poverty was a hereditary matter, not simply an environmental one. In July 1888, McCulloch, the president of the Indianapolis Benevolent Society, went public with his finding on the Tribe of Ishmael in a speech entitled The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Buffalo, New York. In this speech, McCulloch compared the family to the Sacculina
, a crustacean parasite
with an “irresistible hereditary
tendency...[which is] a type of degradation through parasitism, or pauperism
."” These human parasites, McCulloch stated, were draining the city of Indianapolis of its resources and exacerbating their own problems by receiving charity. McCulloch put the number of families in the study at thirty, with the Ishmaels being the “central, the oldest and the most widely ramified family.” It appears likely that McCulloch also chose to publicize the Ishmael family due to the name's association to the Orient
, of which McCulloch had studied intensely. The family was described as “tow-headed” or white blond, aside from a “half-breed” (half Native American) mother. The Ishmaels were explained to have “wandering blood,” causing them to “‘gypsy’, or travel in wagons east or west.” In addition, the Ishmaels were known for “licentiousness which characterizes the men and women,” and their lifestyle was encouraged by “almost unlimited public and private aid.” McCulloch claimed that the Ishamel clan had a criminal record of mostly prostitution
, thieving
, larceny
, and even murder
, while making up three-fourths of the hospital cases in Indianapolis. This grim picture was summed up by McCulloch’s claim that “they underrun society like devil grass. Pick up one, and the whole five thousand would be drawn up.” Due to the “force of heredity,” each generation would likely repeat this life of crime and immorality unless the state intervened. McCulloch’s solution was three-fold. McCulloch recommended that the government of Indianapolis “close up official out-door relief… check private and indiscriminate benevolence, or charity, falsely so called... [and] get hold of the children.” From this case study, McCulloch laid the groundwork for a national obsession with the Ishmael family. Nowhere was the impact of the Ishmael family felt more than in the field of eugenics.
, Nams, Dacks and Wins. In order to complete these studies, field workers from the Eugenics Record Office
would interview members of a community that knew individuals of the given family and examine the family's public records. Eventually pedigree charts were made to determine whether character flaws such as laziness could be deemed hereditary. Between 1915 and 1922, Charles Estabrook, a noted eugenics researcher from the Eugenics Record Office resumed the study of the Ishmael family and was given access to the unpublished notes of McCulloch's assistant, James Frank Wright. Estabrook, like McCulloc and Wright, focused his study, called The Tribe of Ishmael, on the supposed licentiousness and immoral behavior of the Ishmaelite family, as well as their annual “gypsying.” Estabrook concluded that:
Such family history studies of supposedly degenerate family were one of several reasons for the passage of eugenic sterilization laws. In 1907, Indiana was the first state to pass a law regarding compulsory sterilization
. Known as the Indiana Plan, this law banned the feebleminded, the insane, chronic alcoholics, and other undesirables
from marrying. According to Thurman Rice, who published Racial Hygiene: A Practical Discussion of Eugenics and Race Culture, “To a considerable extent the pre-eminent position taken by the State of Indiana in the matter of eugenical legislation in 1907 can be traced back to his [McCulloch’s] studies.”
In addition, Harry Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office
, invoked the Tribe of Ishmael to caution against unchecked immigration. Laughlin gave a speech in front of the Eugenics Education Society in London
, England
and said that England had provided America
with “some of the finest stock in the world.” However, “we have received also some degenerate stock from the same nation. We should have sorted the human seed more carefully at the border.” Laughlin mentioned the Ishmaels saying “I do not know why they call these people the Ishmaels, but they are very numerous, and we can imagine a significant connotation for the name. America is suffering very much from them, but is waking to its danger. We shall have to provide some practical plan for getting rid of this stock.” Testifying before a House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Laughlin explained “degenerate families…so common there much be something wrong with them,” such as the Jukes and the Ishmaels. After hearing such testimony, the United States Congress eventually passed the Immigration Act of 1924. In 1933, the story of the Tribe of Ishmael was put on display at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago
as a warning about unfit family breeding and the face of the undeserving poor.
minister name Hugo Prosper Leaming radically reinvented the family's history in his essay The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive "Nation" of the Old Northwest. Leaming was fascinated by the Ishmael clan, and his reinvention of their narrative coincided with his own radical reinvention, as he too claimed a tri-racial ethnicity and adopted a Muslim faith. Often lacking evidence, Leaming (later known as Hugo Prosper Leaming Bey, a reflection of his new found Muslim identity) wrote that the family was “a tightly knit nomadic community of African, Native American, and ‘poor white descent,’” while selectively quoting from the family histories written by McCulloch and Wright. Leaming proclaimed that previous Ishmael campsites formed the “nuclei of present-day black communities, and Ishmaelites of the diaspora participated in the rise of black nationalism
, perhaps even contributing memories of African Islam to the new Black Muslim movements.” To back up this assertion, Leaming chose sections of documents regarding the Tribe of Ishmael to make it appear the family regularly engaged in polygamy
, went on pilgrimages similar to the Muslim Hajj
, had matriarchal "queens," and avoided alcohol
- all for religious reasons. In addition, Leaming claimed that before Noble Drew Ali, Master Wallace Fard Muhammad
, Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X
, there was Ben Ishmael, an "earlier Islamic saint or Imam," in America. Leaming simultaneously speculated that the "Ben-Ishmael" family name was actually derived from Arabic to mean "ابن اسماعيل" (Ibn Ismail) or "Son of Ishmael," an Islamic reference to Muslims' supposed lineage through Ishmael
, son of Abraham
, via Mohammed. Leaming’s reinvention of the Ishmael story as a diverse, crypto-Muslim tribe, bridging the gap of "African and American Islam," and comprising a "lost-found nation in the wilderness of North America," was discredited by Nathaniel Deutsch in the book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. Deutsch concluded that although much of the fascination with the Tribe of Ishmael has roots in American interest in Islam
and the Orient
, there is no reason to believe the Ishmael family was anything but a poor Christian family targeted by eugenics researchers.
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
during the late 19th century. Records of the family show that the Ishmaels originally hail from Cumberland County
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Cumberland County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is one of three counties comprising the Harrisburg–Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2010, the population was 235,406.-History:...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, and the Tribe's namesake served in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The Ishmaels, known locally for abstaining from the wage labor economy in Indianapolis, received attention from eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
advocates starting in 1877 with the Reverend Oscar McCulloch, and his assistant James Frank Wright. Following McCulloch’s published report in 1888 regarding the Tribe of Ishmael, eugenicists such as Charles Estabrook and Harry Laughlin used the family to argue for sterilization laws called the Indiana Plan. The family name was also invoked during Congressional hearings that led to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act , was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already...
. After mostly slipping out of national consciousness for much of the 20th century, the history of the Ishmael tribe was radically reinvented by Hugo Prosper Leaming in an essay called The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive “Nation" of the Old Northwest. Leaming argued that the family was not simply a poor white Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
family, but actually a Muslim
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
tri-racial sect of whites, Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
and runaway slaves. Much of Leaming’s narrative was refuted by the extensively researched 2009 book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael by Nathaniel Deutsch, a professor of Literature and History at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
.
The “Discovery” of the Tribe of Ishmael
In 1877, Oscar McCulloch moved to Indianapolis from Sheboygan, WisconsinSheboygan, Wisconsin
-Airport:Sheboygan is served by the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport, which is located several miles from the city.-Roads:Interstate 43 is the primary north-south transportation route into Sheboygan, and forms the west boundary of the city. U.S...
to become the minister of the Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
Plymouth Church. Due to a surging population and an economic crisis known as the Panic of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
, McCulloch entered Indianapolis during a period of widespread poverty. Many of the urban poor in Indianapolis at the time were migrants from Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and other regions of the Upland South
Upland South
The terms Upper South and Upland South refer to the northern part of the Southern United States, in contrast to the Lower South or Deep South.-Geography:There is a slight difference in usage between the two terms...
. Among these migrants were a family with the surname of Ishmael, who became the subject of a decade-long study for McCulloch. McCulloch recorded in his diary that he was aware of Richard Louis Dugdale
Richard Louis Dugdale
Richard Louis Dugdale was an American merchant and sociologist, best known for his 1877 family study, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity....
’s study on “The Jukes
The Jukes family
The Jukes family was a New York hill family studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The studies are part of a series of other family studies, including the Kallikaks, the Zeros and the Nams, that were often quoted as arguments in support of eugenics, though the original Jukes study, by...
,” which helped to form his belief that poverty was a hereditary matter, not simply an environmental one. In July 1888, McCulloch, the president of the Indianapolis Benevolent Society, went public with his finding on the Tribe of Ishmael in a speech entitled The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Buffalo, New York. In this speech, McCulloch compared the family to the Sacculina
Sacculina
Sacculina is a genus of barnacles that is a parasitic castrator of crabs. The adults bear no resemblance to the barnacles that cover ships and piers; they are recognised as barnacles because their larval forms are like other members of the barnacle class Cirripedia...
, a crustacean parasite
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...
with an “irresistible hereditary
Heredity
Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
tendency...[which is] a type of degradation through parasitism, or pauperism
Pauperism
Pauperism is a term meaning poverty or generally the state of being poor, but in English usage particularly the condition of being a "pauper", i.e. in receipt of relief administered under the poor law...
."” These human parasites, McCulloch stated, were draining the city of Indianapolis of its resources and exacerbating their own problems by receiving charity. McCulloch put the number of families in the study at thirty, with the Ishmaels being the “central, the oldest and the most widely ramified family.” It appears likely that McCulloch also chose to publicize the Ishmael family due to the name's association to the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
, of which McCulloch had studied intensely. The family was described as “tow-headed” or white blond, aside from a “half-breed” (half Native American) mother. The Ishmaels were explained to have “wandering blood,” causing them to “‘gypsy’, or travel in wagons east or west.” In addition, the Ishmaels were known for “licentiousness which characterizes the men and women,” and their lifestyle was encouraged by “almost unlimited public and private aid.” McCulloch claimed that the Ishamel clan had a criminal record of mostly prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, thieving
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
, larceny
Larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the wrongful acquisition of the personal property of another person. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law. It has been abolished in England and Wales,...
, and even murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, while making up three-fourths of the hospital cases in Indianapolis. This grim picture was summed up by McCulloch’s claim that “they underrun society like devil grass. Pick up one, and the whole five thousand would be drawn up.” Due to the “force of heredity,” each generation would likely repeat this life of crime and immorality unless the state intervened. McCulloch’s solution was three-fold. McCulloch recommended that the government of Indianapolis “close up official out-door relief… check private and indiscriminate benevolence, or charity, falsely so called... [and] get hold of the children.” From this case study, McCulloch laid the groundwork for a national obsession with the Ishmael family. Nowhere was the impact of the Ishmael family felt more than in the field of eugenics.
Importance to the American Eugenics Movement
The story of the Tribe of Ishmael was one of a number of family history case studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other notable studies included the Jukes, KallikaksThe Kallikak Family
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental...
, Nams, Dacks and Wins. In order to complete these studies, field workers from the Eugenics Record Office
Eugenics Record Office
The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States was a center for eugenics and human heredity research in the first half of the twentieth century. Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H...
would interview members of a community that knew individuals of the given family and examine the family's public records. Eventually pedigree charts were made to determine whether character flaws such as laziness could be deemed hereditary. Between 1915 and 1922, Charles Estabrook, a noted eugenics researcher from the Eugenics Record Office resumed the study of the Ishmael family and was given access to the unpublished notes of McCulloch's assistant, James Frank Wright. Estabrook, like McCulloc and Wright, focused his study, called The Tribe of Ishmael, on the supposed licentiousness and immoral behavior of the Ishmaelite family, as well as their annual “gypsying.” Estabrook concluded that:
“The individuals in this large group of feeble-minded folk are continuing to mate like to like, and are reproducing their own kind. Some few branches of the Tribe have mated into better stocks, but these are so few that they are hardly noticeable. The few placed in orphans’ homes and new environments have in some cases done better, but this has not changed the whole mass to any extent. The greater portion are still the cacogenic folk as now found by McCulloch and are breeding true to the type. These germ plasms have now spread through the whole middle west and are continuing to spread the anti-social trait of their germ plasm with no check by society. The story of the Tribe of Ishmael is but another picture of the Kallikaks, the Nams and the Jukes.”
Such family history studies of supposedly degenerate family were one of several reasons for the passage of eugenic sterilization laws. In 1907, Indiana was the first state to pass a law regarding compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
. Known as the Indiana Plan, this law banned the feebleminded, the insane, chronic alcoholics, and other undesirables
Desire (emotion)
Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. Desire is the fire that sets action aflame. The same sense is expressed by emotions such as "craving" or "hankering". When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the...
from marrying. According to Thurman Rice, who published Racial Hygiene: A Practical Discussion of Eugenics and Race Culture, “To a considerable extent the pre-eminent position taken by the State of Indiana in the matter of eugenical legislation in 1907 can be traced back to his [McCulloch’s] studies.”
In addition, Harry Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office
Eugenics Record Office
The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States was a center for eugenics and human heredity research in the first half of the twentieth century. Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H...
, invoked the Tribe of Ishmael to caution against unchecked immigration. Laughlin gave a speech in front of the Eugenics Education Society in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and said that England had provided America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with “some of the finest stock in the world.” However, “we have received also some degenerate stock from the same nation. We should have sorted the human seed more carefully at the border.” Laughlin mentioned the Ishmaels saying “I do not know why they call these people the Ishmaels, but they are very numerous, and we can imagine a significant connotation for the name. America is suffering very much from them, but is waking to its danger. We shall have to provide some practical plan for getting rid of this stock.” Testifying before a House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Laughlin explained “degenerate families…so common there much be something wrong with them,” such as the Jukes and the Ishmaels. After hearing such testimony, the United States Congress eventually passed the Immigration Act of 1924. In 1933, the story of the Tribe of Ishmael was put on display at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
as a warning about unfit family breeding and the face of the undeserving poor.
Reinventing the Tribe of Ishmael
The Tribe of Ishmael was largely forgotten in American culture, until 1977, one hundred years since their initial "discovery," when a UnitarianUnitarian Universalism
Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a...
minister name Hugo Prosper Leaming radically reinvented the family's history in his essay The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive "Nation" of the Old Northwest. Leaming was fascinated by the Ishmael clan, and his reinvention of their narrative coincided with his own radical reinvention, as he too claimed a tri-racial ethnicity and adopted a Muslim faith. Often lacking evidence, Leaming (later known as Hugo Prosper Leaming Bey, a reflection of his new found Muslim identity) wrote that the family was “a tightly knit nomadic community of African, Native American, and ‘poor white descent,’” while selectively quoting from the family histories written by McCulloch and Wright. Leaming proclaimed that previous Ishmael campsites formed the “nuclei of present-day black communities, and Ishmaelites of the diaspora participated in the rise of black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
, perhaps even contributing memories of African Islam to the new Black Muslim movements.” To back up this assertion, Leaming chose sections of documents regarding the Tribe of Ishmael to make it appear the family regularly engaged in polygamy
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
, went on pilgrimages similar to the Muslim Hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
, had matriarchal "queens," and avoided alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
- all for religious reasons. In addition, Leaming claimed that before Noble Drew Ali, Master Wallace Fard Muhammad
Wallace Fard Muhammad
Wallace Fard Muhammad was a minister and founder of the Nation of Islam. He established the Nation of Islam's first mosque in Detroit, Michigan in 1930, and ministered his distinctive religion there for three years, before mysteriously disappearing in June 1934. He was succeeded by his follower...
, Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
, there was Ben Ishmael, an "earlier Islamic saint or Imam," in America. Leaming simultaneously speculated that the "Ben-Ishmael" family name was actually derived from Arabic to mean "ابن اسماعيل" (Ibn Ismail) or "Son of Ishmael," an Islamic reference to Muslims' supposed lineage through Ishmael
Ishmael
Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
, son of Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
, via Mohammed. Leaming’s reinvention of the Ishmael story as a diverse, crypto-Muslim tribe, bridging the gap of "African and American Islam," and comprising a "lost-found nation in the wilderness of North America," was discredited by Nathaniel Deutsch in the book Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. Deutsch concluded that although much of the fascination with the Tribe of Ishmael has roots in American interest in Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
, there is no reason to believe the Ishmael family was anything but a poor Christian family targeted by eugenics researchers.