Moor? Or Less?

[morrand]

It's usually a pleasure to see the name "Bey" show up in the opinions of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. It usually means that there's been another Moor who's busy failing in court. It's getting less and less common nowadays, but one or two will still show up. The latest apparently prompted Judge Posner to play ACJ Rooke for a little while as he tried to explain Moors to the circuit. His task was more focused, as is the resulting decision in John Jones Bey v. Indiana (at 5 pages vs. 188 in my copy of Meads v Meads).

It's a neat summary of the sovcit brand of Moors, with some gems:

Other groups claim that their Moorish nationality gives them the status in the United States of an indigenous people, although the logic behind this claim is deeply obscure. See id. Renita Bey teaches that Europeans are latecomers and Moors never granted them citizenship. Washitaw Nation Comes Under Investigation, Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center (June 15, 1999), http://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/ ... estigation. She teaches her followers that they are “Muurs” from “Muu” who traveled to North America before Africans did, when the world had only one continent.

Judge Posner also goes to some effort to distinguish the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) from the sovcits claiming it as justification for all kinds of foolishness.

The MSTA home office, located in Washington D.C., has issued a statement clarifying that the organization is neither
“a Sovereign Citizen movement [n]or a Tax Protestor Movement” and that it was not founded “for its members to become anarchist or conspiracy theorist[s].” Moorish Science Temple of America, Statement on Radical and Subversive Fringe Groups (July 15, 2011), http://msta1913.org/Statement_Radical_Moors.pdf. A MSTA temple in Georgia denounces sovereign-citizen propaganda as “completely asinine” and asks that Moors not “adopt[] the ideals of these European groups who at their core, hate [Moors’] very existence.” Frequently Asked Questions, Question 1, Moorish Science Temple of America (Georgia), moorishsciencetemple.org/faqs/. ...

Although the Moorish Science Temple does not buy the “sovereign citizen” line, many of its members do. Many of them argue, without any basis in fact, that as a result of eighteenth-century treaties the United States has no jurisdiction over its Moorish inhabitants, who are therefore under no obligation to pay taxes. That is Bey’s position, but he does not explain how it entitles him to an $11.5 billion refund from the State of Indiana and/or its subdivisions.

Now, there are reasons to distinguish the MSTA from its more wayward adherents. One of those became clear in April, when the decision in Nettles-Bey v. Williams came out, also from the 7th Circuit. In that case, Mr. Nettles-Bey (who, despite the surname, is neither a Moor nor apparently a sovcit) was arrested for squatting in a house in South Holland, Illinois, at the invitation of Sabeel El-Bey (who may have been both, though the circuit court's opinion stops short of saying). Mr. Nettles-Bey claimed that he had been arrested on the basis of his surname alone, alleging that the arresting officers were trying to drive the Moors out of town. This would not be surprising—an awful lot of Moorish paper in the Cook County Recorder's office seems to originate from that end of the county, anyway—but the courts were not entirely enthused about the arresting officers' attempts to invoke immunity in the face of accusations they arrested Mr. Nettles-Bey based chiefly on his (presumed) religious affiliations.

Back to Judge Posner: his opinion closes with:

Although we have discussed the MSTA at some length, our aim was to introduce readers who may not be familiar with the “sovereign citizen” movement to its principal institutional establishment. We do not mean to task the district judges of this circuit with having to delve into the history of every particular organization involved in every case before them. Often the organization either played no significant role in the events leading up to the case or if it did, nevertheless it was an organization already well known to the court. The unusual feature of this case is that the sovereign-citizen movement and its institutions, such as MSTA, are at once sources of difficult litigation and not well known outside the sovereign-citizen movement.

This seems ambivalent to me: is the MSTA actually responsible for this kind of foolishness, or not? If it's just a squatters' racket masquerading as a religious organization, it probably earns a certain degree of disrespect from the police and the courts. But if it's truly a religious organization that's just being misused by some to justify clogging up the courts with ridiculous demands, it seems unjust to pin it up as the "principal institutional establishment" of sovereign citizenry. That badge is debatable, anyway.

[Burnaby49]

Morrand, I wrote up a recent Canadian case where a couple of idiots thought they could wish away their problems by pretending to be American Moors. Didn't work well for them;

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11331

[Jeffrey]

That kind of looks like a mistake by Posner. The official MSTA is anti-sovereign citizen, the people Posner is complaining about are basically a splinter group that has incorporated sovcit beliefs to the religious views of the MSTA. I think Posner's confusion is probably based on the fact that the sovcit faction will sometimes claim allegiance to MSTA, even though the MSTA disavows them.

[morrand]

Morrand, I wrote up a recent Canadian case where a couple of idiots thought they could wish away their problems by pretending to be American Moors. Didn't work well for them;

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11331

No, it did not. Nor did it work well for Cherron Phillips a couple of years ago, who at least made the arguments on the correct side of the border. Nor did it work out for about half a dozen others I've got in my notes, who often didn't merit more than a summary dismissal on appeal. In this regard, the federal courts have the better practice, I think: they are able to dismiss these cases in a page or two by saying, "This is frivolous," where the Illinois courts are apparently bound to recite the whole case history and then engage in sober analysis before coming to that same conclusion. Also, the federal courts have PACER, which makes it easier to see the details behind the decision; the Cook County courts, on the other hand, are notorious for still being an all-paper operation, which hides a great many cases deep inside the clerk's office.

That kind of looks like a mistake by Posner. The official MSTA is anti-sovereign citizen, the people Posner is complaining about are basically a splinter group that has incorporated sovcit beliefs to the religious views of the MSTA. I think Posner's confusion is probably based on the fact that the sovcit faction will sometimes claim allegiance to MSTA, even though the MSTA disavows them.

Yes, and Judge Posner does mention that at some length (as quoted). I'm all for giving the MSTA the benefit of the doubt. At the risk of sailing too close to the line here, there's probably no religion that hasn't been abused by someone trying to shirk their responsibilities.

But...

If I head over to the Cook County Recorder's web site, and do a document search for "Moorish Science Temple," I get back several hundred documents filed within the past ten years or so, under an assortment of variations on that name. Many of these look like attempts to alter the 1928 charter of the MSTA to add a new member—probably not strictly necessary to record with the county, but harmless. Others are more suspicious: I have one up now (Document #1430754069) conveying a property on Epson Course, Jamaica, N.Y., to the Church in care of its Chicago office. And right behind it is a conveyance (also from a New York address) of a Lincoln Town Car. And I could keep going. Maybe this is just a way of taking the vow of poverty, and backing it up on paper. Maybe it's more.

Definitely, if this is a splinter group, it's a damned large one. Or at the very least, they're all over the country, all filing their papers in Cook County for some reason.

To its credit, I also find a number of releases filed by the MSTA, subsequent to some of these "conveyances," undoing them. For example, document #1418945063, which was filed (as was the deed it undid) while the underlying property was in the throes of foreclosure. The tale the record of that property tells is, I think, a good enough description of the underlying scheme, but one to tell another time. For now, enough to say the record backs the MSTA's repudiation of sovcit activities.

[notorial dissent]

To date there have been a number of cases GA, FL, KY, IL where the people involved have claimed to be Moors. They have all been epic failures resulting in significant jail time in some instances. Cherron and her brother are part of the IL Fed contingent. The rest seemed to be content with just breaking state laws. To the best of my knowledge, none of them had any actual or provable ties to MSTA other than trying to co-opt the name and some of the rhetoric, otherwise their ties, if there were any, seemed to be loosely to either offshoot or splinter groups or just to a group who had tried to look like MSTA, the altered re-filed charters and such. Originality, or history, aren't their long suits.

[The Observer]

Well, I am sure that all of us will agree that this is a case that is less filling vs. moor taste.

Sorry, I had to do this before ninja did it first.

[fortinbras]

The Moorish Science Temple cult goes back a bit more than a century and around the 1930s it splinters into several competing "Moorish" sects as well as the Black Muslim movement which is now Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

The various competing Moorish sects make use of various bits of nonsense that would be completely alien to a real Muslim, including a "Holy Koran" which does not resemble the Arabic version, an "Ethical Will of Abraham Lincoln", a "Zodiac Constitution", etc. For decades much of this stuff was so completely off-limits to outsiders (primarily meaning White Folks) that "Moors" would reference these items in pleadings but not present them in court. More recently these have become available generally, even on the internet. It turns out these documents all pretend that "Moors" have various privileges and immunities, including legal exemptions, not enjoyed by anyone else nor recognized by the public laws. They tend to deny US citizenship, and sometimes (in keeping with Moorish doctrine) claim "Asiatic" rather than African descent.

In short, Moors, of various brands, recite various arguments often associated with SovCits, as well as some assertions peculiar to the Moorish movement, alleging exemptions from traffic laws, tax laws, etc. They have a very consistent win-loss ratio.

[bmxninja357]

Well, I am sure that all of us will agree that this is a case that is less filling vs. moor taste.

Sorry, I had to do this before ninja did it first.

Ha! Never thought I would get to use this here. I'm assuming it's what it's like to go drinking with Burnaby49....

https://youtu.be/s7EA3FbfKfc

I''ll cream you!
Peace
Ninj

[Burnaby49]

I'm generally a bit more coherent and the guy I've been pubbing with for about 50 years rarely speaks. He ran out of conversation decades ago.