Eleven men were taken into custody early Saturday morning on July 3 after a nine-hour standoff between Massachusetts police and heavily armed men in tactical gear who claimed to be part of a militia group called Rise of the Moors.
A Massachusetts State Police trooper saw two cars with their hazard lights on parked on the shoulder of Interstate-95, outside the town of Wakefield at about 1:30 a.m. The group of heavily armed men were refilling gas tanks with their own fuel and told law enforcement that they making were headed to Maine for 'training.'
After refusing to comply with an order to drop their weapons, several men took off into a nearby woodland area, prompting a shelter-in-place order for local communities.
They indicated to police that they were not carrying gun licenses and that they did not recognize US laws as members of a little-known group named 'Rise of the Moors.'
State law enforcement said the men referred to themselves 'as a militia' and that they 'adhere to 'Moorish Sovereign Ideology.''
Here's what we know about the group, which only formed in the late 1990s, but has recently exploded in popularity thanks to social media...
'Sovereign citizens' who claim they're not subject to US laws
Rise of the Moors are a 'Moorish sovereign citizens' group whose adherents say they are part of their own sovereign nation and therefore are not subject to any US law.
According to the group's website, Rise of the Moors is based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and is one of 25 active antigovernmental sovereign-citizen groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2020.
While the group's Facebook page has 1,100 followers and a YouTube channel with 17,000 subscribers, the total number of members is unknown.
Freddy Cruz, a research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center told the Washington Post: 'They have the idea that they have the authority to essentially detach themselves from the United States. So they do things like refusing to pay taxes, get driver's licenses, or register firearms, and they try to get their members to challenge those federal laws.'
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.'
A group of heavily armed men were refusing to comply with police Saturday morning north of Boston, prompting Interstate 95 to be closed and a shelter-in-place order for nearby residents after several of the men fled to a nearby woodland area. The men were said to be members of a little-known extremist group called ‘Rise of the Moors,’ that believes they are not subject to US laws
Jahmal Latimer also known as ‘Talib Abdulla Bey’ cofounded the militia group which claims to be a non-profit educational group based out of Rhode Island. He identifies himself on the group webpage as the chief of the 'Rhode Island State Republic and Providence Plantations'
Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey (pictured in the center wearing a turban) poses with fellow members of the Rise of the Moors group in January 2021
'Salad bar' group founded on a non-existent 1787 treated between the US and Morocco
Rise of the Moors (like other Moorish sovereign citizen groups), believe in a fictitious 1787 treaty between the United States and Morocco that grants them immunity from US law.
'There's no such treaty,' says Kenneth Gray, a retired FBI Agent who specialized in Counter-Terrorism. 'It's bogus. It's all part of their fraudulent historical claims.'
They use this perceived immunity to justify refusing to pay taxes, buy auto insurance, register their vehicles and to defraud banks and other lending institutions.
Rise of the Moors are just one offshoot of many different types of 'Moorish Sovereign Citizen' groups. Most groups tend to be small, with only a couple dozen followers.
JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism described Moorish sovereign citizens on Twitter as 'a salad bar' group made up of different factions that have cobbled together their own ideology from a variety of sources.
'They rely on an alternative history that borrows from Moorish Science Temple, Black Hebrew Israelism, Nation of Islam, UFO theories, phony Native American tribes, and the pseudo-legal arguments crafted by white supremacist 'patriot' groups in the 1970s,' she says.
Some Moorish Sovereign Citizen groups believe that Black Moors were the first settlers in the United States and argue that slave ships were a fiction created by white historians to cover up their claim the land. Others believe that a UFO mothership will soon descend to earth to collect the chosen people (Moors) and return them to their home galaxy.
The Rise of the Moor webpage states in no-uncertain terms: 'Moors are the organic or original sovereigns of this land — America.' It continues, 'When we declare our nationality as Moorish Americans we are taking back the position as the aboriginal people of the land, to which the sovereign power is vested in.'
They believe in the notion that all African-Americans (as well as Dominicans, Haitians and Tainos) were descended from African 'Moors' and therefore they do not, and should not 'identify as black.'
'The Moors of North America have been branded by European Colonial occupiers of our land in order to strip us of our illustrious history.'
The temple founded in 1913 that gives the group its Moroccan influences
Much of the dogma in Rise of the Moors is based in a religious sect known as the Moorish Science Temple.
The organization was founded by Noble Drew Ali (born as Timothy Drew) in 1913.
The Rise of the Moors pays tribute to the Noble Drew Ali on their website, calling him the 'first Patriot of the fallen Moors here in America' as well as the 'Savior of Humanity.'
Drew Ali taught that all blacks were of Moorish origins but had their Muslim identity taken away from them through slavery and racial segregation. He also encouraged use of the term 'Moor' rather than 'black' in self-identification. Many of the group’s formal practices were derived from Muslim observances.
He established new traditions that
