What is the Rise of the Moors? Members identify as Moors and sovereign citizens.

PAWTUCKET, R.I. — A year ago, the members of a little-known Rhode Island-led group made it onto the radar of experts who study anti-government and hate groups. This weekend, the Rise of the Moors were plastered all over cable news.

The United States has many Moorish Americans, but the defendants facing weapons charges in Massachusetts are among a smaller number of people who assert they are both Moors and sovereign citizens. 

Their group, Rise of the Moors, headquartered in Pawtucket, has claimed Rhode Island as its territory. The Southern Poverty Law Center listed the group as an anti-government group in 2020.   

"We look at the totality of their actions and rhetoric," says Rachel Goldwasser, a research analyst at the Law Center's Intelligence Project.  "In this case, they fit sovereign citizens to a T."

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Goldwasser says she has been researching sovereign-citizens groups, including Moorish sovereign-citizen groups, for seven years and isn't aware of any other similar group with its own armed force. 

Goldwasser says she determined in August 2020 that the group was doing "marksmanship training." Her conclusion was based on a picture the group posted on Facebook, she says.

The Pawtucket group's armed activities were openly acknowledged in court on Tuesday, July 6 by the group's leader, a 29-year-old whom authorities identify as Jamal Tavon Sanders Latimer — who calls the group a "militia." He identifies himself as Jamal Talib Abdulleh Bey and says he is a retired Marine. 

The armed standoff leading to the arrests of 11 people and the recovery of assault rifles and ammunition raise questions about the origins of the group, its presence in Pawtucket and the significance of its recent armed operations in New England.

Others seek to disassociate

The Rise of the Moors group shares some similarities with other groups who identify as Moors. Attire, for example, is one of those similarities.

In Malden District Court in Massachusetts on Tuesday, some men wore the fez, a flat-topped conical red hat with a black tassel on top.

But many Moors in the United States want to disassociate themselves from people who identify as both Moors and sovereign citizens not subject to federal, state and local laws, says Goldwasser.

On Tuesday night, after members of the Pawtucket group refused to answer many questions at their arraignments in Massachusetts, representatives of one large Moorish American group reached out to The Providence Journal, which like Paste BN is a part of the Paste BN Network.

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"We're law-abiding citizens," Shaykh Ra Saadi El later said, referring to the members of Moorish Scientists of America 1928. "That's what I want the world to know."  

"We have to be honest," Saadi El added: "They are not Moorish Americans. ... They're bootleggers."

Bey, who was being held in Massachusetts pending a hearing on Friday, was not available to comment.

Goldwasser says people who identify as both Moors and also as sovereign citizens believe they have the authority to detach themselves from the United States. They may shirk taxes, forgo driver's licenses and fail to register firearms, she says. 

She was not surprised to hear that a 40-year-old member of the Pawtucket group, identified as Quinn Cumberlander, claimed status as a "foreign national" Tuesday in court.

The group, she says, believes that it has its own territory, in Rhode Island, which is referenced as "Nahiganset Territory" as well as "Rhode Island State Republic and Providence Plantations."

One group in Illinois, the United States of America Republic Government, makes their own license plates, she says, adding that they pick and choose what laws to follow and not follow, stopping at red lights but producing their own license plates.

Much of Goldwasser's knowledge of the Pawtucket group stems from paying close attention to members' social media accounts and the group's pages on Facebook and its website.

"They very likely associate with other Moors but how far that goes in terms of networking is very unclear," Goldwasser says.

From the outside, based on the group's ideology, she surmises that most members are Black residents.

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Rising gun ownership

An American University professor who studies armed groups, Thomas C. Zeitzoff, observes that the holiday-weekend standoff could have turned violent but did not, and the Rhode Island group has not carried out any attacks so far. Still, when groups gather with weapons in public places, it poses a threat, he says.

If the group's armed force was established within the last year, that's in sync, to some degree, with rising gun ownership among Black Americans over the past year, which Zeitzoff cites as "the milieu" of the pandemic era.  

"Why are we seeing sort of increased activity on these things?" Zeitzoff asks.

"It's partisan polarization. It's concerns about crime. It's concerns about police brutality."

By arming, a group is saying, "we're serious here," he says.

The trend is a reflection of the country's growing social and political divisions, he says.

"It's not shocking that during times of social stress, we've had a lot of protests, there's been a lot of coverage about difficulties between the Black communities and police that you see certain groups carry weapons." 

Zeitzoff acknowledges that members of the local group are not accused of parading around with weapons. They are accused of brandishing guns. 

Zeitzoff sayd he will be curious to see what the local group's armed members do in the future.  

Contributing: Tom Mooney.

Follow Mark Reynolds on Twitter: @mrkrynlds.