what is moorish citizenship

Moorish citizenship is a concept associated with the Moorish sovereign citizen movement, which emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the Moorish Science Temple of America. Members of this movement, called Moors, believe that a fictitious 1787 treaty between the United States and Morocco grants them immunity from normal laws and regulations, and that they are part of a sovereign nation. They claim that Moors inhabited what became the Americas hundreds of years before American Indians, thus granting them self-governing, “nation-within-a-nation” status, and exemptions from laws like paying taxes or regulations like those surrounding property ownership. Moorish sovereign citizens engage in the same criminal activities as “traditional” sovereign citizens do, including crimes of violence, scams and frauds, and so-called “paper terrorism” tactics, which typically involves the use of various documents and filings to harass, intimidate and retaliate against police officers, public officials, and others. Although the Moorish sovereign movement is primarily African-American in composition, there are a few white people associated with Moorish groups.