Organizations: Who Are Those Arabs?

One morning, they were there. Accompanied by close to 50 brass bands, some 500 horses and at least two camels, they swarmed into Manhattan 150,000 strong, occupied 85 hotels and motor inns, added to the traffic jam, monopolized sidewalks, held seven-hour-long parades, and displayed a keen group sense of humor in a thousand hilarious ways, including occasionally entangling innocent natives in loops of invisible thread. They wore red fezzes, red and green floppy harem trousers, and embroidered jackets, and looked like wandering extras from The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. They were the respectable and respected members of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of North America.In other words, Shriners.

As representatives of an organization forthrightly dedicated to whoopee in a good cause, the Shriners are pranksters by profession, obligation and tradition. Launched over a Manhattan lunch table in 1870 by 13 Masons determined to have more cheer than that earnest, philanthropic brotherhood provided for, the Order of the Shrine is no frivolous minor offshoot but the second highest level of all Masonry. Only 32nd-degree Masons or Knights Templar are eligible —though admittedly their degree can be attained, if a man puts his mind to study, in a matter of months. The Shriners’ caste mark, worn proudly if sometimes absurdly, is a maroon felt hat that can conceal but does little else for a shiny bald head.

Manna from Mecca. Why a fez? The most dedicated Shriner is hard put to say. The reason is that the history of the Shrine was invented after its founding, and has been elaborated ever since. The fact seems to be that one of the 13 founders happened to have made a trip to the Middle East just before the historic meeting, and thought the Arabs were quaint and Mecca romantic. And in a country of egalitarians, there is something about titles like “Imperial Potentate” or “Grand Chief Rabban” that can make any true democrat tingle.

The belated attempt to create a history has “traced” the beginning of the order to A.D. 644, when the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law, Kalif Alee (whose name be praised!), founded a “vigilance committee” to dole out punishment for crimes not already covered by existing laws. The committee became a select group of noblemen, presumably above reproach and therefore demonstrably better than other men. They evolved elaborate rituals and ceremonies. As luck would have it, a copy of the ritual (in translation) wandered slowly across the vast Near Eastern deserts to America, where it fell, like manna from heaven (Mecca, anyway), into the hands of the first Imperial Potentate, Dr. Walter M. Fleming. For his part, Fleming dropped some of the dogma, amended the purposes to stress “the exercise of charity and the improvement of the mind” rather than “the gaining of all possible power and the purification of base elements from the land,” but was careful to hang onto what mattered.

And what mattered were the symbols of exotica that attended the organization, such as the jewel of the order and its Arabic motto, Kuwat wa Ghadab (Strength and Fury), and the special intramural greeting, “Es selamu alei-kum” (“Peace be with you”).

Prestige from Rank. Neither strong nor furious, except occasionally with their wives, most Shriners seemed less like noble pranksters than a mobilized cross section of middle-class Americans. They claim an unrestricted membership (though Negroes would be welcome, none have tested the claim, preferring a similar, separate-but-equal Negro Shrine). The organization does include a substantial number of Jews, who are apparently more interested in what one Imperial Potentate called “the opportunity for fun and play and mirth on a truly magnificent scale” than in the Shriners’ proud Arabic ancestry.

At week’s end, Manhattan had found little cause to grumble about the Shriner invasion. The nobles had spent freely on liquor, nightclubs and souvenirs, but had remained the orderly, decent citizens they are back home. In between the public displays of high jinks, the Shriners found time to entertain children in hospitals, mounted an eight-hour display-cum-parade at Shea Stadium, where some 30,000 spectators shelled out $2 to watch wheeling formations of huge men driving miniature cars and a motorized ferris wheel that dunked its four riders in an oversize tub of soapy water every twelve seconds. More somberly, they jammed into Radio City Music Hall for prayer services, and elected a new leader.

Imperial Potentate Omar Carlyle Brock, 64, an Erie, Pa., businessman and 43-year member of the Masons, took the fearsome honor with due solemnity. He is a zealous worker in the Shrine’s child-welfare program, which has built and maintains 17 children’s hospitals and has just raised $10,000,000 to build and staff three specialized institutions for the treatment of burns (the most common of childhood’s accidents) in Galveston, Boston, and Cincinnati. He succeeds to an office once held by Actor Harold Lloyd, assumes leadership of more than three-quarters of a million men, currently including Chief Justice Earl Warren, former President Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, Irving Berlin, and, quite naturally, Senator Barry Goldwater. Past members include Ty Cobb and Franklin D. Roosevelt; Astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Virgil Grissom are new recruits. Omar Brock neither smokes nor (unlike his Persian namesake) drinks, has no superstitions. “You learn to live and you learn to die,” he says.

As for the Shriners themselves, their fezzes askew and damp with humidity, their throats hoarse from laughter, by the end of last week they were plumb out of invisible thread as well. But all that was small fish compared to the whale of a time they had.