Nearly a dozen people associated with a group that calls itself Rise of the Moors have been appearing in court this week after Saturday's standoff on I-95 in Wakefield with Massachusetts State Police. Spencer Dew, a professor of religious studies at Kenyon College who's done research on the group, spoke with Arun Rath on GBH’s All Things Considered about the group’s roots and beliefs. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Arun Rath: The person ... who may have played a role in inspiring rise of the Moors, the name is Noble Drew Ali. Who was that, and how does the group draw a connection with him?
Spencer Dew: So Rise of the Moors is one community within a radically diverse religion called the Moorish Science Temple of America movement. And the Moorish Science Temple of America was founded in Chicago in 1925 by a man who called himself Noble Drew Ali. He claimed to be a prophet and he taught a basic message that begins with an alternative ethnic or racial claim. He says to his community — who were African Americans, many of the migrants from the South — he said, you are not “Negro, Black or colored. These terms are legal fictions,” he said, “nicknames. But these are oppressive categories that deny you full American citizenship.” The second move, then, is to say what you are instead is Moorish, and if you recognize your true ancestry and heritage and nationality as Moorish and hold up the Moorish flag alongside the United States flag — the flag of Morocco alongside the Stars and Stripes — then you will be recognized as a full citizen of the United States. Really, he was using a kind of immigrant ethnic paradigm. I mean, he made the comparison. He said you'll be like the Italian Americans, the Swedish Americans. He talks about other hyphenated Americans, and refers to his group as as Moorish Americans and then tells them that citizenship is salvation and they have a sacred duty to vote in elections, et cetera, et cetera.
Rath: This sounds somewhat familiar to me, I would say — and tell me if I'm wrong — because it seems that, at least in the early part of the 20th century, there were a number of African American kind of separatist, nationalist groups that talked about returning to Africa or some that had religious aspects to them. Is that right?
Dew: Sure. So what what I think makes Moorish Science unusual is, for much of the movement, instead of something like rejecting American citizenship, returning to Africa, starting their own territory, the emphasis is on being, “good citizens.” Being American citizens. And still today — I mean, certainly the most public-facing Moorish Science Temple of America groups are involved in local politics, are marching around with American flags, are really proclaiming that American identity. Now, what we get with a group like Rise of the Moors is, there's also a school of thought within, again, the very diverse, Moorish Science Temple of America movement that says, “We as Moors are, in fact, not American citizens and can't be American citizens.” So the folks in Massachusetts, they said, we're “foreign nationals.” If you saw the video, they're holding up the flag of Morocco in the middle of the highway and they're saying, “This is our flag, this is our nationality. We have a treaty with the United States” — they're referring to the 1777 Moroccan American Treaty of Friendship. And they're saying that that, while they are abiding by the federal laws of the United States, they are themselves not citizens of the United States. So within the same movement, you get these two — I don't know — alternate poles, of striving to be citizens and denying that possibility of citizenship.
Rath: Well, I think you've got right to exactly the problem that we journalists have been having, in terms of not knowing how to describe this group. I mean, they've been described — here on GBH, we're using the term “Black sovereign citizen group.” But is their ideology just kind of their own thing?
Dew: I think the trick here is that this is a movement that — I've seen headlines that say, “These extremists don't believe that American laws apply to them.” I think the trick is, they do, in fact, acknowledge American laws and acknowledge the authority of those laws. They are insistent that they are not breaking the law, and they're going to argue that in every court appearance that follows. I mean, to me, the most telling event of what they call a peaceful discussion — what the police and most journalists call a standoff — the most telling event was when the spokesperson, Jamal Bey, hands out copies of a court case to the police, cites the Second Amendment of the Constitution, cites various laws, and then says to the police, “Please give me a summons, take me before a judge and let the judge decide if my legal interpretations are correct.” I think that's the real issue here, right, that this movement says they haven't done anything illegal. They're they're barraging their social media platforms with the claim that they were always abiding by the law and that they've now been arrested illegally. And so what we're really going to have in the courts is an argument of two different claims about what the law is.
Rath: Well, in terms of how this boils down for legal realities, does this mean that the group says this about their ideology, that they're not really a threat? It is a group that has guns, though. Based on your understanding, how much should the general public be concerned about the danger they might pose?
Dew: I can't speak to the issue of danger. I will say this: it seems seems a pretty open-and-shut case, regarding — I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a judge — but it seems a pretty open-and-shut case regarding the firearms violations right? They’re in violation of Massachusetts law. I think what, to me, is interesting about what's going to happen is that every courtroom appearance is going to be really a religious event for this group, right? It's going to be an opportunity for them to publicize their own particular interpretation of American law and of their status within America.
Rath: One other question I want to ask you before we let you go. When we tend to think of groups in America, sovereign citizen groups who are fond of gun rights, we tend to think of white groups, quite frankly. And I'm just wondering, is that wrong headed? Are we wrong to be thinking about it in that way?
Dew: I've studied a lot of contemporary Moorish science groups. This is the only group I can think of offhand that has the attitude about firearms that they have, and wants to make the public appearance with firearms and make the kind of really religious claims about firearms that they do. I think they are very much in the minority within this movement. I think most militia groups are white — I think that's the both the caricature and the truth. I mean, it's interesting to me that the Rise of the Moors group has, immediately after the arrest, argued really vehemently that there's a kind of racial double standard here and has shown all of these pictures on their social media of white militia groups outside the state house in Michigan, storming the Capitol in D.C. and comparing their “peaceful” — and I guess it was peaceful — their appearance on the highway with these more threatening appearances by white militias.
Rath: Certainly quite a difference between that standoff on the highway and say, you know, Ammon Bundy and the folks out in the West in armed standoffs with federal authorities.
Dew: Yeah.
Rath: This is really fascinating. Professor Dew, you're just the right person to talk to, to tell us what we need to know about about this group that none of us had any clue about. Thank you so much.
Dew: Thank you for having me.
