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“MOORS KNOW THE LAW”: SOVEREIGN LEGAL DISCOURSE IN MOORISH SCIENCE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SUPERSESSION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2016

Spencer Dew
Spencer Dew*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Centenary College of Louisiana
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Abstract

Among the many individuals and groups espousing affiliation with the Moorish Science Temple of America movement, some continue founding prophet Noble Drew Ali's emphasis on engaging in American citizenship as a religious duty, while others interpret the prophet's scriptures to lend authority to claims of being outside the jurisdiction of American legal authority. Such sovereign Moors, whose actions range from declaration of secession to rejection of drivers or marriage licenses, advance legal discourse rooted in historical narratives, tailor their legal thinking toward practical instruction and efficacious results, and appeal to etymology to further authorize their claims. Such sovereign Moorish legal discourse is best understood, following Catherine Wessinger's work on the Montana Freemen, as “magical,” and understanding the magical role played by legal texts and discourse within these communities can help scholars and legal professionals in their approach to and interactions with sovereign Moors.

Keywords

Moorish Sciencesovereign citizensnew religious movementsAfrican American religions
Type
ARTICLES
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 70 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2016 

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References

1 Bandele El-Amin, Moors, Moabite and Man: Reflection and Redemption (Middletown: Indigenous Peoples, 2011), 72. There is widespread irregularity in the practices of spelling and grammar among Moorish writers. I have, in this article, eschewed peppering citations from such authors with repeated uses of “sic.”

2 Ibid., 4.

3 Michael Barkun, one of the few scholars to address the sovereign citizen phenomenon, writes of the “common ideology” that unites sovereigns into a movement: “even though there is no organizational framework linking sovereign citizens, there is sufficient commonality in their beliefs so that they form a distinctive population.” Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 197.

4 Cover, Robert, “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative,” Harvard Law Review 97, no. 4 (1983): 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ibid., 42 and 40.

6 Ibid., 42.

7 Noble Drew Ali, A Warning from the Prophet in 1928 (Chicago: Young Men Moorish National Business League, 1928).

8 Fathie Ali Abdat has recently argued, based on the discovery of a World War I draft registration card with an address matching that in the “Prof. Drew, the Egyptian Adept Student” newspaper ad that was the first verified documentation of the man who would become Drew Ali, that he was born Thomas Drew, with a declared birth date of January 8, 1886. Abdat, Fathie Ali, “Before the Fez: The Life and Times of Drew Ali, 1886–1924,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 5, no. 8 (2014): 2–3Google Scholar.

9 While many Moors (and many early scholars) speak of the founding of the Moorish Science Temple of America as dating to 1913 in New Jersey, this is the date for Drew Ali's earlier religious experiment, the Canaanite Temple, about which little is known. Likewise, the precise date of Drew Ali's move to Chicago is not known, but by 1927 there was already a thriving Moorish Science Temple of America community there. See Edward E. Curtis IV, “Debating the Origins of the Moorish Science Temple: Toward a New Cultural History,” in The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions, ed. Edward E. Curtis IV and Danielle Brune Sigler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 70–90. Some new information about the Canaanite Temple is still being uncovered. See Azeem Hopkins-Bey, Prophet Noble Drew Ali: Saviour of Humanity (DeWitt: Ali's Men Publishing, 2014).

10 The vision of “vine and fig tree” is from Drew Ali's Holy Koran. Noble Drew Ali, The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Foundations of a Nation (Lexington: Department of Supreme Wisdom, 2011), 128–29. “Citizen of the USA” was a phrase emblazed on the Moorish identity cards issued to dues-paying members of the Moorish Science Temple of America. See Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace but Here (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), 206.

11 In the short piece “Nick Named,” Drew Ali writes,

when the forefathers of the Moorish Americans were first brought to this nation they had a nationality and a name, but in order to separate them from the achievements of their fathers a name was given them which had no connection whatever with the founders of civilization. They were nicknamed “negroes.” … If you look in some dictionaries you will see that the word negro means a sly person; a coon. If this is not an insult to the illustrious history of a nation there can never be one given. Just as they have saddled on the Moorish Americans the name negro they have also given him a religion that was made to enslave him and stop his progress. It is the duty of every man who lives to redeem the name of his forefathers and not be herded in to a mass of weaklings. Stop referring to yourself as negro, colored and Black for you are neither. If you are men, American citizens speak up for yourselves or it will never be done.

“Nick Named,” Moorish Guide, September 28, 1928, Moorish Science Temple Papers, 1926–1967 (box 1, folder 5), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

In his “A Warning from the Prophet in 1928,” he calls upon all “nations”—all races—to help him in his project of uplifting his own Moors:

So, I, the Prophet, am hereby calling aloud with a Divine plea to all true American citizens to help me to remove this great sin which has been committed and is being practiced by my people in the United States of America, because they know it is not the true and Divine way and without understanding they have fallen from the true light into utter darkness of sin, and there is not a nation on earth today that will recognize them socially, religiously, politically or economically, etc. in their present condition of their endeavorment in which they themselves try to force upon a civilized world, they will not refrain from their sinful ways of action and their deeds have brought jim-crowism, segregation, and everything that brings harm to human beings on earth.

Drew Ali, “A Warning from the Prophet in 1928.”

12 Moreover, slavery is presented as a universal aspect of human—not merely Moorish—history: “through sin and disobedience every nation has suffered slavery, due to the fact that they honored not the creed and principles of their forefathers.” Drew Ali, Holy Koran, 131.

13 Drew Ali, “A Warning from the Prophet in 1928.”

14 Azeem Hopkins-Bey, “What Makes One a Moorish American?” Know Thyself Radio, podcast audio, October 18, 2010, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/themooriam/2010/10/18/what-makes-one-a-moorish-american.

15 Drew Ali, “Political Slavery,” Moorish Guide, February 15, 1929, Moorish Science Temple Papers, 1926–1967 (box 1, folder 5), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

16 “‘Elect Anderson’—Prophet,” reads the headline of the February 1, 1929, Moorish Guide, instructing readers to vote for Louis Anderson for Second Ward alderman and Oscar De Priest for Congress. Moorish Science Temple Papers, 1926–1967 (box 1, folder 5), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

17 Drew Ali, “All Registering,” Moorish Guide, October 26, 1928, Moorish Science Temple Papers, 1926–1967 (box 1, folder 5), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

18 Hopkins-Bey, “What Makes One a Moorish American?”

19 Arthur Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), 41–51. See also, Robert B. Vale, “Islam Calls in Lombard St.,” Philadelphia Sunday News, October 21, 1934, which details how “thousands” flock to see the “Chicago mystic” who proclaimed himself as a reincarnation of both Muhammad and Drew Ali.

20 See El Bey v. Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc., 765 A.2d 132 (Md. 2001).

21 Drew Ali, “A Warning from the Prophet in 1928.”  The peculiarities of language use are Drew Ali's.

22 Azeem Hopkins-Bey, “What is Our ‘Free National Name’?,” Operation Proclamation, March 11, 2013, http://operationproclamation.org/subject-of-exposition-free-national-name.html.

23 Moorish America, “We Are All One Family Bearing One Free National Name,” Moorish American News, December 24, 2013, http://moorishamericannews.com/we-are-all-one-family-bearing-one-free-national-name#sthash.Mke8GJHg.dpbs.

24 Mahdi McCoy, “Why We Moors MUST Rock the Vote,” Moorish American News, September 16, 2014, http://moorishamericannews.com/moors-must-rock-vote#sthash.HyyO5jpg.dpuf.

25 Consider this retelling of history: “NOBLE DREW ALI ORGANIZED 100,000 PEOPLE IN 15 STATES, AND HAD 10,000 IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO ALONE. A concentrated vote is ultimate power politically, and OPERATION PROCLAMATION is the movement to duplicate Noble Drew Ali's civic agenda for the first time in 84 years.” Operation Proclamation, http://operationproclamation.org/ (site discontinued). An archived version of the site containing the quoted material from January 11, 2016, is available through the Internet Archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20160111205409/ http://operationproclamation.org/.

26 T. King Connally-Bey, “The Moorish Perpetual Union,” in Enter NationalNomics (The King-Dom of Divine Free-Dom): The Moorish Code; Enter NationalNomics—The Moorish Zodiac Constitution, The Great Seal (Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 2014), 19.

27 Ibid., 32.

28 Sharif A. Bey, The Blueprint: Moorish Musings on Noble Drew Ali's Divine Plan of the Age (DeWitt: Ali's Men Publishing, n.d.) (This source is not paginated.).

29 Connally-Bey reprints C. M. Bey's “Zodiac Constitution.” A full text of C. M. Bey's version is available at http://moorishdirectory.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Zodiac-Constitution-by-CM-Bey.pdf. This “Zodiac Constitution” was central in the arrest of one hundred New York City employees on tax evasion charges in 1997. See Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam, photographs by Jolie Stahl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 32.

30 Elijah N. Pleasant-Bey, “The Divine Constitution of Moorish America (defined),” n.d., http://moorishamericangov.org/TheDivineConstitutionExplained.pdf.

31 Chris, March 12, 2013 (4:14 a.m.), comment on Azeem Hopkins-Bey, “Subject of Exposition: ‘Free National Name’?,” Operation Proclamation, March 11, 2013, http://operationproclamation.org/subject-of-exposition-free-national-name.html.

32 Sarif Anael Bey, March 13, 2013 (1:34 p.m.), comment on Azeem Hopkins-Bey, “What is Our ‘Free National Name’?,” Operation Proclamation, March 11, 2013, http://operationproclamation.org/subject-of-exposition-free-national-name.html.

33 Bandele El Amin, Nationality, Birthrights, and Jurisprudence: New Social & Cultural Blueprint for Melaninated Indigenous People (n.p.: printed by author, 2014), 29. El-Amin's name is not consistently hyphenated in his publications. Citations use the form indicated by the title page of the work cited.

34 Ibid., 30.

35 Compare, for instance, similar historical narratives in sovereign texts such as David E. Robinson, Reclaiming Your Sovereignty: Take Back Your Christian Name (n.p.: printed by author, 2009) and Robert Hart, Citizen/Slave: Understanding the American Sovereign Spirit (Pittsburgh: Rose Dog Books, 2005).

36 El Amin, Nationality, 45 (In this and following citations to El Amin, italics are original unless otherwise noted.).

37 Ibid., 49.

38 Ibid., 47.

39 Ibid., 48.

40 El Amin, Moors, 48.

41 Ibid., 48–49.

42 Ibid., 51.

43 Ibid., 4.

44 Ibid., 52–53.

45 Ibid., 53.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., 71.

48 Ibid., 57.

49 Ibid., 72.

50 El Amin, Nationality, 60. El-Amin cites the 1914 edition of Bouvier's Law Dictionary to draw a contradistinction between the term “traveler” and “driver,” defined as “One employed in conducting a coach, carriage, wagon, or other vehicle,” and which El-Amin glosses as emphasizing “one who is ‘employed’ in conducting a vehicle. It should be self-evidence that this person could not be ‘travelling’ on a journey, but is using the road as a place of business.” El Amin, Moors, 65; Bouvier's Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopedia, 8th ed., s.v. “traveler”; Ibid., “driver.”

51 El Amin, Moors, 63.

52 Ibid., 72–73.

53 El Amin, Nationality, 15.

54 Ibid., 117.

55 Ibid., 114.

56 Ibid.

57 Drew Ali, “Nick Named.”

58 Drew Ali, “So This Is Chicago,” Moorish Guide, October 26, 1928, Moorish Science Temple Papers, 1926–1967 (box 1, folder 5), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

59 A. Bey, The Blueprint.

60 Ibid.

61 And following, as well, Drew Ali's famous statement in his Holy Koran that one popular term for Moorish-Americans, “black,” “according to science means death.”

62 “Taj Tarik Bey Black and White Is a Legal Status,” YouTube video, 10:24, posted by “SaneterTV7,” March 1, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du_XmbL662Q.

63 Ibid. 4:58.

64 Ibid. 2:20.

65 Ibid., 3:14.

66 “Taj Tariq Bey on the Battlefield,” YouTube video, 5:59, posted by “BLACKNEW102,” October 9, 2012, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yGoE78YB0.

67 Ibid., 10:18.

68 Ibid., 11:06.

69 Ibid., 14:24.

70 “Pictures of Our Moorish Supreme Court of Equity and Truth,” Moor News (blog), Moorish Science Temple, November 9, 2012, http://moorishamericannationalrepublic.com/news_categories/moor-news/page/9/.

71 El Amin, Moors, 72.

72 “Black's Law Dictionary 5th Edition,” YouTube video, 0:29, posted by “Tactikalguy1,” November 19, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgzLtssgsPM. Fellow travelers follow similar tactics, like Randy Stroud of http://sovereigntactics.org/. Stroud is a white sovereign who also relies on the fourth edition of Black's Law Dictionary alongside the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. He is interested in both “common definition and … legal definition” of any given word, though he cautions, “Legalese is its own separate language from common adage.” He provides another example, stating, “Right and license are antithetical to each other,” if you consider their legal meanings. He insists “Are you a driver? Do you drive? I'm a traveler, not a driver,” because “driver” includes the notion of “employment” in the fourth edition of Black's Law Dictionary. As a sovereign, Stroud argues that the United States is a corporation. As an exegete focused on the meaning of individual terms, he looks up words he associates with formative—scriptural?—texts—such as the Declaration of Independence. For example he defines “consent” as “[v]oluntary compliance” with government. Such work of words can produce shocking results: “Let's look up what a monster is,” he says, but he pushes deeper into the definition to find the strand he needs. A monster cannot inherit land, “In reality none of us can inherit any land” because “[m]ost people pay property taxes,” which means “most people are inadvertently subject to being a monster.” Randy Stroud, “Blacks Law: Lesson 1,” YouTube video, 0:38–3:45, 7:08–9:00, posted by “General Zero,” July 27, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rSgANcaess.

73 “Taj Tariq Bey on the Battlefield,” 11:26 and 13:47. Tarik Bey has his own notions of conspiracy and hegemony: “Masonry is Islam, the science,” he says, and it is through the science of Islam that Europeans (so-called whites) rule the world, but what he shares with the majority of contemporary Moorish Science thinkers is this emphasis on etymology as revealing the forgotten or concealed truth of words. “Taj Tarik Bey Black and White Is a Legal Status,” 8:02. While this is often negative—“black,” for instance, as a brand, a tool for oppression—words can also reveal positive glimpses of the glorious Moorish past. For instance, he explains that “They call our children pickaninnies. You know why? Because we're the pics that ruled Europe,” which is why the pope has a Moor in his coat of arms. “Our concepts are wrong: we are the druids!” “Taj Tarik Bey Black and White Is a Legal Status,” 21:11. Not all Moors will agree about being druids or about the particular reading of “pickaninny,” or the meaning of the presence of the Moor's head on the pope's coat of arms, but all Moors, I submit, will agree that “our concepts are wrong,” as a whole, that the confusion of the present age—to which the prophet Noble Drew Ali came with the mission of correcting, of “uplifting a nation” by teaching them how to think—is rooted largely in the terms used and misused, applied and misapplied to themselves, others, and the wider society.

74 Eric Mungin Bey, Discover the Key to the Moorish Questions: A Study Guide for All Moorish Americans (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2009). Mungin Bey takes scriptural texts and offers a glossary, amounting often to a word-by-word gloss (see page 15, on Drew Ali's pamphlet “The Great Meeting is On!,” where Mungin Bey begins by defining “Great” and “Meeting,” then moves on to key words in the text). Etymology of various forms gets employed here—indeed, perhaps exploding or at least setting wide the margins of the term—Mungin Bey speaks of “Nameology,” which is not merely about meaning but also “sounds … rhythms” and spiritual properties of names. More straightforward-seeming analysis of words proceed “according to the science of numerology” and “according to the science of letters”: he decodes a word like “black” via its numerological significance (11) or the meanings of the letters (“B” or “Beth: being life or death”) (see page 54).

75 Amen A. El, The Passion and Resurrection of the Moorish Hiram: Or the Metaphysical Subjugation and Posthumous Emancipation of the So-Called Black Race (Bloomington: Authorhouse Publishing, 2007). The word I am tempted to pin to this practice is anarchic; other Moorish thinkers are selective in reading out from word occurrences, like Amen A. El's analysis of idiomatic English. He argues that the “arrested development” (psychologically, socially, of the individual and the nation) of African Americans manifests “in their lingo, when they refer to their female partners as ‘mama’ and uses such adolescent terms as ‘crib’ for domicile!” (325). More mystically, he sees “occult meaning” in the “antiquated prophecy” of the book of Revelation, referencing as it does “the leaves of a curious unnamed tree [through which] the health of a nation might experience restoration.” He writes, “Etymological research has revealed that words like leaf, tree, branch, root, folio, liber and other such appelatives from the rich vernacular of Botany, has, since remotest antiquity, been employed by diverse cultures when referencing the varied instruments and technical formats of graphic communication or language,” a “scientific” claim that allows him, via some more comparative readings of texts, to reveal the secret of the Trees of Paradise, of Knowledge, and of Life (11).

76 “Taj Tariq Bey on the Battlefield,” 6:44.

77 Ibid., 6:55.

78 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 17n45.

79 Ibid.

80 Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000), 160.

81 T. M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 312.

82 Ibid., 258 and 133.

83 Ibid., 130.

84 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 12–13.

85 Ibid., 18.

86 Ibid., 53.

87 Ibid., 42.

88 Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently, 160. Wessinger argues that sovereign groups like the Montana Freemen should be examined via the category of “nativist movements.” Nativist movements are characterized by responding to a situation of perceived (or real) oppression with the desire “to gain and utilize the invisible power that the dominating group appears to possess … to acquire that power in order to defeat the controlling government and to establish the native's idealized past golden age.” Ibid.

89 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 53.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92 “Queen Valahra Renita El Harre-Bey: MOORISH LAW (Full Lessons),” YouTube video, 0:41, posted by “Keishon T. Kessee Ël-Bey,” June 6, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNihE3McnRk.

93 Ibid., 3:36.

94 Ibid., 3:44 and 0:29.

95 Ibid., 1:24.

96 Ibid., 4:37.

97 Ibid., 11:30.

98 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 46.