A surreal scene played out on Interstate 95 in Massachusetts on July 3rd. A group of 11 men armed with rifles and sidearms, wearing civilian-market tactical attire and equipped with body cameras was pulled over on the freeway refueling their two vehicles from gas cans when they were approached by a Massachusetts State Trooper at about 6 AM EST, this kicked off a nine-hour standoff with law enforcement that ended with the men being peacefully taken into custody. The group who call themselves ‘Rise of the Moors’ claim to be foreign nationals and not subject to American laws, in spite of their being based out of Pawtucket, RI, with a majority of the 11 men being from the Bronx, Rhode Island, or other parts of New York.
We Get It: They’re Nuts. But Who Are They?
The Daily Mail wrote, “The Rise of The Moors, which flies the Moroccan flag, is centered on the belief that its followers are the ‘aboriginal people’ of the US and takes its teachings partly from a religious sect known as the Moorish Science Temple, a religious movement that dates back to 1913.
“It wasn’t until the 1990s that the Moorish movement began merging their beliefs with ‘the sovereign citizens’ movement.’ Sovereign Citizens believe that individual citizens are independent of federal and state governments. Thus was the birth of the ‘Moorish Sovereign Citizens.’ “
According to their own website, ‘The Rise of The Moors’ adhere to the belief that they along with all “Negro’, Blacks’, ‘Coloreds’, ‘Indians’, ‘West-Indians’, ‘Latinos’, ‘Jamaicans’, ‘Dominicans’, et. alia” are NOT American citizens, but are a
“non-self-governing-nation due to the fact that our country has been colonized and is under the occupation power of the De Facto United States Corporation (See Title 28 Chapter VI, Subchapter 176 SEction 3002 (15)(a) fo the United States Codes)”
In spite of their repeated admonitions that they ARE NOT ‘sovereign citizens,’ their rhetoric and modus operandi are a near-perfect match.
The group also goes on to make the ahistorical claim that even the name “America” is derived from the phrase “Al Moroccan” meaning descendant of the Moors: Moreno y Morena. (However, it is a well-known widely taught fact in most grade-schools that North and South America are so named for the Italian merchant, explorer, and navigator from the Republic of Florence: Amerigo Vespucci who mapped the North, Central, and South American Coasts in the 1490s.)
The BBC found that the group considers their prophet and founder to be “Timothy Drew, known Noble Drew Ali, founded the Moorish Science Temple of America in the 1920s. The religious group follows Islam and believes that all African-Americans can trace their lineage to Moab – an ancient kingdom in modern-day Jordan.”
The apparent leader who styles himself Talib Abdulla Bey ‘grand chief of Rhode Island’, a former Marine named Jahmal Latimer said in a Youtube Video,
“We are not antigovernment. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black identity extremists,” said the man who appeared to be wearing military-style equipment. “As specified multiple times to the police that we are abiding by the peaceful journey laws of the United States.”
According to The Hill, “Police said the group would not comply or put their weapons down, so both sides of the highway were shut down, and residents near the area were told to shelter-in-place.”
“No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous,” Wakefield police said earlier Saturday. “We are asking residents in these areas to lock their doors and remain inside their homes. A heavy police presence will be in this area as well.”
“You can imagine, 11 armed individuals standing armed with long guns slung on an interstate highway at 2 in the morning certainly raises concerns and is certainly not consistent with the firearms laws that we have here in Massachusetts,” State Police Col. Christopher Mason said.
The Associated Press reports that Col. Mason told journalists, that the men refused to disarm and did not have the firearms licenses required by state law. He said, they had a different perspective on the law “I appreciate that perspective,” he said, “I disagree with that perspective at the end of the day, but I recognize that it’s there.”
Police confiscated three AR-15 rifles; two pistols; a bolt-action rifle of unknown caliber; a shotgun and a “short-barreled rifle” they stated in a press release. Newsweek wrote that “The suspects have all been charged with conspiracy to commit a crime; unlawful possession of guns and ammunition; use of body armor in a crime; possession of a high-capacity magazine; and improper storage of firearms in a vehicle.”
The Rise of The Moors Stance On The 2A Is Sound–Everything Else?
Not So Much.
While there is absolutely a Second-Amendment argument to be had here, and the State police even agreed that the men seemed to have a peaceful purpose, their vehicles being filled with camping gear for use training on private land in Maine, and the men made no threats to police, the rest of their legal and historical opinions seem to be pure bunk.
With everything from a fantastically inventive interpretation of the American-Moroccan Treaty of Peace and Friendship dating from 1787, the longest still-active Treaty in US History, to their insistence that people of recent-African descent are “indigenous” to the North American continent, which is not supported by any academically accepted theories among Archaeologists, Anthropologists or Historians. There is a whole lot about their ‘beliefs’ to pick apart.
But so far there isn’t a law against having wacky notions of history or strange legal theories, and the charges these guys are looking at are starkly contrary to the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms and should be challenged on those grounds. But likely, the most that people will remember of this episode is that they were stuck in traffic for several hours in the middle of a holiday weekend.
The Embassy of Morocco in New York made no statements regarding the incident or other so-called ‘Moorish Sovereign Citizens.’ But our oldest African allies and the first nation to diplomatically recognize the newly independent United States of America did at least take the time to wish us all a Happy Independence Day. However, these eleven men likely won’t get to see a judge until at least Monday, maybe Tuesday after the holiday weekend.
#HappyIndependenceDay America! 🇺🇸 🇲🇦 🇺🇸🇲🇦 pic.twitter.com/muRJk8w0nh
— Morocco in the USA (@morocco_usa) July 4, 2021
