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In reply to the discussion: Police: Armed Men Who Don't 'Recognize Our Laws' on the Run [View all]FailureToCommunicate
(14,014 posts)"The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Moorish sovereign citizen movement as a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the anti-government sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments. Its roots are based in the Moorish Science Temple of America founded in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali.
Many of the groups hold the belief that there is a 1787 treaty between the United States and Morocco that grants them immunity from U.S. law, the center said. They frequently use the surnames Bey and El.
Moorish groups have received national attention. In Baltimore, a man accused of murder and arson argued he was exempt from state law. In Bethesda, Maryland, Moorish Nationals claimed a $6-million mansion awaiting sale as their own. Then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011 issued a proclamation declaring a week in January as Moorish American Week. In 2017, a federal judge sentenced the Grand Sheik of a Moorish Temple in Chicago to 68 months in prison for scheming to defraud the Internal Revenue Service out of $3.2 million."