Matthew Cox

So you ever heard of the Moorish, M-O-O-R, the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement?

No.

Okay.

Because this is America, black people have to have their own sovereign citizen movement.

Of course, it's given.

They call themselves the Moors.

Oh, okay.

And so a little history lesson, kind of fun.

In 1913, in Newark, New Jersey, the Moorish Science Temple of America was established by a guy named Noble Drew Ali.

Okay.

And what he recommended is that people who – and it was basically a sovereign citizens movement saying that they are the descendants of the ancient Moors, the Moor tribe.

And therefore they had a distinct nationality that was separate and apart from –

from being an American or being a black person, they are Moors.

And what they recommended is that if you were adopting this philosophy, that you need to add the suffix bay, B-E-Y, to your slave name.

And that will be your or sometimes L-E-L.

to your legal name.

And so when we did our very first story this episode, the bad guy was named Jeffrey M. Young-Bay because he was a Moorish sovereign citizen.

What happened though, over time, the Moorish science teachings, I hate to call it a cult because it's not really a faith, but kind of a white collar cult where people, you know, it's a set of very mistaken beliefs.

merges with the sovereign citizen common law movement and with all these crazy pseudo legal ideas and so they claim that they're not subject to laws or taxation they they correct their names with the bay or the L and they reject their slave names they assert divine or ancient national status over regarding exciting Moorish law and

And they believe that they have entirely separate standing here independent of the U.S.