Editing Nuwaubian Nation (section)

===The Ansaaru Allah Community===

In 1973, York's group again changed its name, this time to the Ansaaru Allah Community (AAC).{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=7}} The term ''Ansaaru Allah'' means "helper of Allah",{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=46}}  and may have appealed to York because it affirmed a link with the [[Ansar (Sudan)|Sudanese Ansar]] movement.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=19}} This name change did not entail a rejection of their "Nubian Islamic Hebrew" identity;{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=19}} the group's literature continued referring to both the AAC and the Nubian Islamic Hebrews throughout much of the 1980s.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=21}} Imitating common Sudanese clothing styles,{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=47}} members began wearing white ''jalabeeyah'' robes, with white turbans for men and face veils for women.{{sfnm|1a1=Gabriel|1y=2003|1p=153|2a1=Palmer|2y=2010|2p=46}} On moving to [[Bushwick Avenue]], the group also established its own security force, the Swords of Islam, modelled on the [[Fruit of Islam]] used by the NOI.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=45}} The Swords were used to crack down on drug dealing in the area, something that earned public praise from city mayor [[Ed Koch]] and from the Brooklyn police.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=45}}

{{Quote box
| quote = [York promoted] an Afrocentric Sufism that emphasised local dhikr with the ''duff'' and talking drums, identification with historical Nubia and Sudanese folk Islam, mystically guided apocalyptic anticolonialism, rigorous study of Arabic, claims of a "back to the scriptures" textualist revival, and aesthetics that incorporated Egyptian ankhs, nose rings, tarbushes, bones worn in the ears, and, in the case of [York] himself, tribal scarification.
| source=Scholar of religion Michael Muhammad Knight, 2020{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=34}}
| width = 25em
| align = left
}}

AAC members began to live communally and spent much of their day at the group's mosque.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=46}} Contact with prior friends and family was discouraged as these people were labelled ''[[kaafir|kaafirs]]'' (unbelievers).{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=51}} Any money and furniture a newcomer had would be turned over to the community,{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=51}} while mothers and pregnant women were encouraged to claim public welfare, funds then given to the AAC.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=53}} Members were assigned to single-sex quarters.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=51}} Children were separated from their parents and raised communally,{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=56}} brought up to speak Arabic, Hebrew, and York's invented language of Nubic.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=46}} 

Men sent out as street missionaries and fundraisers were called "propagators";{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=52}} they were given a quota to meet, and those who failed in this were chastised or in some cases beaten.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=52}} Men were rewarded with access to their female "mate" in the group's Green Room.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=57}}
An FBI investigation suggested that, at its peak, around 500 people were living at the AAC's commune.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=47}} 
The AAC also expanded its property ownership across New York City, obtaining around thirty buildings including apartment blocks, two recording studios, restaurants, a grocery store and a laundromat.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=47}} The AAC sent missionaries to other parts of the United States and also established groups in Montreal, Toronto, Port of Spain, Brixton, and in Jamaica.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=48}} 

York began maintaining that he was the only path to salvation, and in his publication ''The Truth: What Do People Say I Am?'' he included pictures of twenty prominent black leaders alongside his own descriptions of their apparent failures.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=26}} 
Although referring to itself as Muslim, some of York's publications in this period drew far more on the [[New Testament]] than either the [[Quran]] or the [[Hebrew Bible]].{{sfn|Knight|2020|pp=19-20}} From the late 1970s and into the 1980s the AAC also began making increasing use of themes regarding the alleged esoteric wisdom and advanced technologies of ancient Egypt, [[New Age]] ideas such as [[chakras]], and extraterrestrial civilisations.{{sfn|Knight|2020|pp=20-21}} From 1983, York was talking about Yanaan or Yaanuwn, an intergalactic [[sheikh]] who sometimes occupied York's body.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=22}} In the late 1980s, Yaanuwn was given greater prominence and increasingly identified with York himself.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=22}} In 1988, he told his followers: "I am an extraterrestrial incarnated."{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=22}}

In addition to the group's commune, York also had a personal property at West 29th Street on [[Coney Island]].{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=46}} He managed the AAC with his inner circle, which comprised his ministers, his "wives" or concubines, and his personal security force, the ''mujahid''.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=52}} In 1979, he founded a music group, Dr York and the Passion, which began performing at New York nightclubs.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=67}} York also had a music studio, Passion, attached to his living quarters; attractive young women joining the AAC would often be assigned to work there, thus becoming another of his concubines.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=57}} In 1983, York purchased 80 acres of land in the [[Catskills]], on which the AAC established a summer retreat called Camp Jazzir Abba;{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=48}} the name was a reference to [[Aba Island]] in Sudan.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=22}} The following year, York formed a Sufi order within his broader movement, the Sons of the Green Light.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=21}} Between 1987 and 1991 the AAC also began referring to itself as the Original Tents of Kedar.{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=21}} In 1988, York retired as the imam of the AAC's Brooklyn mosque and hence spent more time at Camp Jazzir Abba.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=48}}

====Growing opposition====

Over the course of the 1970s, the AAC began attracting negative attention from other Muslim groups active in New York, who criticised it as heretical.{{sfnm|1a1=Palmer|1y=2010|1p=26|2a1=Knight|2y=2020|2p=18}} In 1973, members of the [[Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood]], an African-American Sunni group, attacked AAC members for selling their newspapers in [[Manhattan]].{{sfn|Knight|2020|p=18}} In response to growing Islamic criticism, in 1989 York issued a ''A Rebuttal to the Slanderers'', in which he maintained that all previous translations of the Quran were false and that his own "19th translation" offered the "Supreme Code of the Quran". He further maintained that other Muslims were concealing the fact that Muhammad was a black African and denounced the first three [[Caliph]]s to succeed Muhammad as "usurpers", instead tracing the line of succession from Muhammad through to Muhammad Ahmad, the Sudanese Mahdi, and hence to himself.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|pp=26-27}}

Tensions with the authorities escalated in the late 1970s, particularly after Horace Green—a man who had refused the AAC's attempts to buy his building—was murdered. A member of the AAC's ''mujahim'' was suspected, but nobody was convicted.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=64}} A network of groups concerned about the AAC began to develop, incorporating ex-members, orthodox Muslim groups, the [[New York Police Department]], the [[Internal Revenue Service]], the [[United States Immigration and Naturalization Service|Immigration and Naturalization Service]], the [[Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives]], and the FBI.{{sfn|Palmer|2010|p=65}} In 1993, the FBI produced a report expressing their view that the AAC was a criminal enterprise masquerading as a religious community, and characterising the ''mujahim'' as a [[protection racket]].{{sfn|Palmer|2010|pp=65-66}}