Moorish Science and the Law: Can Declaring Your Nationality Change Your Legal Status?

In February 2017, a federal appeals court considered a question that began with a parcel of Indiana real estate and reached backward into a much older history of belonging. John Jones Bey described himself as an “Aboriginal Indigenous Moorish-American.” He asked a court to stop state and county officials from taxing his property, return taxes already paid, and award compensation. His argument, as the opinion recorded it, was that the government could not lawfully tax him without a contract. His asserted nationality was part of the explanation.

The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal in Bey v. State, 847 F.3d 559 (2017). Yet the opinion did something unusual: it paused over the religious movement whose name had entered the litigation. It noted that the Moorish Science Temple of America had encouraged citizenship and that a Temple office had expressly disavowed tax-protest and sovereign-citizen interpretations.

Two different understandings of nationality had arrived on the same page. One concerned a people's name, ancestry, religious life, and dignity. The other claimed a change in the government's legal power. How had they become entangled? And can declaring who you are alter the authority that a court may exercise over you?

1. Behind the Declaration: Noble Drew Ali

To investigate Moorish Science and the law, begin somewhere other than a contemporary dispute. Begin with the archive: letters, pamphlets, convention programs, corporate documents, newspapers, and nationality cards preserved at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. These materials place the movement inside early twentieth-century African American religious and civic life, not outside history.

The founder is widely known as Noble Drew Ali. Older accounts identify him as Timothy Drew, born in North Carolina in 1886. Even this seemingly straightforward introduction needs care. The Schomburg finding aid warns that accounts of his life combine events with prophetic legend. A later scholarly reference discusses evidence identifying him as Thomas Drew, including a draft-registration record. His early biography is a research problem, not an invitation to choose the most dramatic story.

Likewise, the familiar founding date of 1913 belongs to accounts of a Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey. Spencer Dew's scholarly discussion distinguishes that earlier experiment, about which relatively little is known, from the thriving Moorish Science Temple community documented in Chicago by 1927. The precise date of Ali's move to Chicago is not securely established in that account. The archival collection contains organizational materials dating from 1926 onward. A remembered beginning and a surviving documentary trail need not be identical.

The distinction matters because an origin story can acquire authority of its own. Narratives of journeys to Egypt or Morocco, spiritual instruction, and a mission from a Moroccan ruler appear in accounts of Ali's life. The Schomburg finding aid presents these as legend or reported belief. They cannot simply be converted into evidence of diplomatic appointment or a legal relationship recognized by another state.

What emerges more clearly is the movement's response to racial classification. Ali rejected imposed racial names and taught an identity rooted in Moorish ancestry, religion, and national belonging. His Five Divine Holy Principles—Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice—framed an enterprise of uplift. He died in 1929; the movement continued through differing organizational lineages. Its history is larger than any single modern legal interpretation advanced in its name.

2. A Nationality Card, and the Meaning of a Name

Among the Schomburg collection's artifacts are examples of nationality and identification cards. The finding aid describes them as symbols of a member's new ethnic identity. It also records that in 1928 Ali warned members against accosting white people and displaying the cards. Their owners had felt empowered by what they carried.

This small document opens a substantial question. What exactly had changed? A person could understand a newly adopted name as recovery: the restoration of an identity that slavery and racial administration had obscured. An institution might instead ask whether the document proved citizenship, membership, ancestry, or something else. The same card could carry profound meaning without performing every legal function attributed to it.

Dew's published scholarly references reproduce a passage from Ali's September 1928 writing, “Nick Named,” calling on followers to reject imposed classifications and speak for themselves as American citizens. Dew also notes the phrase “Citizen of the USA” on membership identification cards, citing an earlier historical account. These references complicate the assumption that asserting Moorish American identity necessarily meant repudiating American citizenship.

The movement's religious literature must also be read within its own tradition. The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America, often called the Circle Seven Koran, presents teachings about divine identity and national origins. It is not interchangeable with the Qur'an used by other Muslim communities. Nor should religious statements of ancestry be treated automatically as conclusions established by genealogical research or nationality law.

Some adherents have understood Moorish nationality as restoration of a people's rightful name and moral standing. Others have interpreted nationality language as establishing an alternative legal position. Neither interpretation should be silently attributed to every Temple member. A religious community's account of itself and a litigant's jurisdictional argument require different evidence. Before asking whether a declaration works, one must ask what it is meant to accomplish.

3. Before Citizenship Became a Modern Category

Nationality, citizenship, allegiance, and subjecthood overlap, but they do not describe the same relationship in every century. A modern nationality form may ask which state recognizes a person as its national. An early modern jurist might begin with the bond between a subject and a sovereign. A religious community might use national belonging to recover a history that official classifications denied.

In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Supreme Court looked back through English common-law authorities, including Calvin's Case, to examine allegiance and protection. That historical model tied birth under a sovereign's protection to subjecthood. It was not simply a contract that each child signed. Nor was it a complete account of all the different ways membership had been understood across the world.

The American constitutional setting changed the vocabulary and the source of authority. The Fourteenth Amendment provides a rule of citizenship for persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. In Wong Kim Ark, the Court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents domiciled and residing in the United States, who were not serving in a diplomatic or official capacity, was an American citizen. His parents' foreign nationality did not defeat that result.

This was a concrete legal determination, not a philosophical solution to every question of belonging. The decision arose from exclusion at the border and examined a defined set of facts. Its historical discussion shows how legal membership could depend on constitutional rules rather than an individual's preferred description.

For African Americans confronting segregation, however, formal citizenship did not settle whether institutions treated them as full members of the polity. That gap helps explain why naming and recognition could become religious and political questions. A person could already possess citizenship yet seek a different understanding of ancestry, dignity, and collective identity. Changing the language of belonging was not necessarily an attempt to leave the country; it could be an attempt to claim a fuller place within it.

4. When Recognition Acquires Legal Force

The present federal definitions reveal another layer. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(21), a national is a person owing permanent allegiance to a state. Section 1101(a)(22) defines a national of the United States to include a citizen and a person who, although not a citizen, owes permanent allegiance to the United States. Nationality and citizenship are therefore not always synonyms even within American law.

But a statutory distinction is not an unrestricted choice between labels. Section 1408 specifies categories of people who are nationals but not citizens at birth, principally through circumstances connected to outlying possessions and parentage. A private declaration does not itself establish that a person meets those statutory conditions. Calling oneself a national raises a further question: a national of which state, under which rule, and for which purpose?

Loss of nationality has its own framework. Section 1481 identifies specified voluntary acts performed with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality. They include certain acts involving foreign naturalization or allegiance, and formal renunciation under stated conditions. The statute does not make every statement rejecting citizenship an effective expatriation. It is particularly important not to confuse a declaration sent to a domestic agency with the recognized procedures the statute describes.

Nor is government authority unlimited. In Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), the Supreme Court held that Congress could not involuntarily strip the plaintiff of citizenship because he had voted in a foreign election. The decision protected citizenship against forced loss. It did not establish that any personally drafted instrument changes nationality, or that losing nationality removes all legal obligations.

Recognition is thus more complicated than either complete state discretion or complete individual choice. Constitutions constrain officials; statutes define conditions; courts review disputes; administrative records supply evidence. A document matters through its relationship to those rules. A seal, title, or solemn declaration may express conviction, but legal consequence requires more than appearance. Which institution must recognize it, and what gives that institution its authority?

5. When Moorish Identity Enters the Courtroom

Return now to the Indiana property case. Could an assertion of nationality change the government's authority over a parcel of land? In Bey v. State, decided February 3, 2017, that question took a concrete form: the plaintiff sought protection from real-estate taxation, arguing that his asserted sovereign status required a contract before government could tax him. The Seventh Circuit examined the claim, rejected the theory, and affirmed dismissal. Moorish nationality was not recognized as a tax exemption or diplomatic immunity.

The opinion also discussed eighteenth-century treaties with Morocco in connection with arguments advanced by certain groups. Here, another question emerged: what connected those historical instruments to the person and dispute before the court? A reference to a treaty was not, by itself, a demonstration of an applicable provision. The court rejected the claimed immunity; the decision left no unresolved legal question about whether Bey's nationality declaration defeated Indiana's taxing authority.

Yet a judicial opinion contains more than its holding. The court's account of movement history drew partly on secondary websites and included generalizations about ancestry and affiliations. Those passages invite a different kind of scrutiny from the legal ruling. They cannot stand as a genealogical judgment about individual adherents, or replace a religious history of the Temple. The decision records what happened to Bey's argument, not everything that Moorish identity might mean.

Within the opinion itself, the distinction becomes visible. It cited a 2011 statement from a Temple home office disavowing sovereign-citizen and tax-protest movements, alongside scholarship describing civic engagement as a religious duty. The institution appearing in the historical account and the courtroom theory were not simply the same thing.

A second case approaches the question without requiring Moorish affiliation. In United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753, 767 (7th Cir. 2011), defendants Fernando Delatorre and Bolivar Benabe asserted sovereignty and immunity during a criminal prosecution. Could their claimed personal status place them beyond judicial jurisdiction? The appellate court answered no. Its ruling concerned asserted immunity, not the truth or worth of a religious identity.

Together, the decisions mark a specific boundary: personal declarations of sovereignty do not create the claimed exemption from taxation or judicial authority. They do not give courts unlimited power; a genuine jurisdictional defect still calls for examination under the applicable rules. The disputes were resolved, but the historical inquiry continues. How did a movement associated with identity, recognition, and civic uplift become connected with such differing interpretations of legal authority?

6. One Movement, Diverging Interpretations

How, then, did a project of civic uplift become associated with arguments for withdrawal from legal obligations? There is no single documentary moment at which all adherents changed their understanding. The evidence instead points toward divergent readings among individuals and groups claiming affiliation with a wider tradition.

Dew's 2016 article, “Moors Know the Law,” expressly distinguishes adherents continuing Ali's emphasis on American citizenship from those interpreting scripture as authority for exclusion from American jurisdiction. The available abstract describes practices ranging from declarations of secession to rejection of licensing requirements. That distinction supports a careful classification of interpretations, not a claim that every Moorish American participates in them.

The recurring attraction of documentary authority is understandable as a subject of inquiry. Governments use papers to classify people, recognize marriages, issue passports, assess property, and establish rights. A community seeking recognition may reasonably ask why some instruments are accepted while others are disregarded. The next step is where interpretations diverge: does a document express an identity, prove an existing legal status, or create a new one?

Those are three different functions. An identification card can demonstrate membership without demonstrating foreign citizenship. A sincerely held account of ancestry does not itself show diplomatic accreditation. A religious name can remain meaningful even when it has no effect on a tax assessment. Respecting the distinction does not diminish the underlying identity; it prevents one question from being made to answer another.

7. The Question Behind the Papers

A century after Ali's movement took shape, its nationality language still directs attention toward an enduring tension. People understand belonging through memory, faith, family, and collective history. States attach consequences to constitutions, statutes, recognized procedures, and recorded facts. These understandings can coexist without coinciding.

The legal record examined here is not evenly divided on immunity by declaration. The claims in Bey and Benabe did not succeed. Yet those outcomes do not exhaust the historical question of why people seek a different national name, or how political membership can be both formally recognized and socially contested.

Perhaps the most revealing inquiry begins neither with automatic acceptance of a declaration nor with dismissal of the person making it. It begins with the instrument: its origins, its intended audience, the rule it invokes, and the recognition it seeks. When someone writes a new nationality upon a card, what relationship are they trying to recover—and what must happen before an institution gives that relationship legal force?

Sources & Further Inquiry

• Moorish Science Temple of America collection, Sc MG 435, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library: finding aid and description of historical records, nationality cards, and organizational materials. Its biographical narrative is read with the cautions discussed above.
• Spencer Dew, “Moors Know the Law”: Sovereign Legal Discourse in Moorish Science Religious Communities and the Hermeneutics of Supersession, Journal of Law and Religion 31 (2016), 70–91, DOI 10.1017/jlr.2016.3. This essay uses the accessible abstract and published references, especially notes 8–11; the full subscription article was not reviewed. Those notes identify Fathie Ali Abdat's biographical research, Edward E. Curtis IV's historical discussion, and Ali's “Nick Named” in the Moorish Guide, September 28, 1928. The original newspaper was not independently inspected.
• Bey v. State, 847 F.3d 559 (7th Cir. 2017), full five-page opinion, decided February 3, 2017. The Temple's July 15, 2011 statement is discussed as reproduced in that opinion, not as a separately authenticated original.
• United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753, 767 (7th Cir. 2011), full appellate opinion, decided August 18, 2011.
• United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), including the historical discussion of subjecthood and the Court's treatment of the plaintiff's citizenship.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(21)–(22), definitions of national and national of the United States; 8 U.S.C. § 1408, nationals but not citizens at birth; 8 U.S.C. § 1481, loss of nationality.
• Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), constitutional protection against involuntary deprivation of citizenship.

Continue the Inquiry

What is a person in law? What distinguishes citizenship from nationality? Where does jurisdiction begin—and what gives an instrument legal force?

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