Nuwaubian Nation
[4][6] His followers, by hand, constructed an Ancient Egypt-themed compound called "Tama-Re" and changed their collective name to the "United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.
Adherence declined steeply after York was convicted of numerous counts of child molestation, racketeering, and financial reporting violations, and sentenced to 135 years in federal prison in April 2004.
[9]: 156 The Southern Poverty Law Center described York as a "black supremacist cult leader",[10] and designated the Nuwaubian Nation as a hate group.
[4][5][6] The Nuwaubian Nation was centered exclusively on the person of its founder, Malachi (Dwight) York, who legally changed his name several times, and has used dozens of aliases.
York founded numerous esoteric or quasi-religious fraternal orders under various names during the 1970s and 1980s, at first along pseudo-Islamic lines, moving to a loosely "Afrocentric", "Ancient Egypt" theme, eclectically-mixing various ideas taken from black nationalism, cryptozoology, UFO religions, the Sumerians, ancient aliens, and other known conspiracy theories.
During the late 1990s, he styled himself a messianic founder-prophet of his movement, sometimes claiming divine status or extraterrestrial origin when appearing on his Savior's Day celebrations at Tama-Re.
[13] In 2004, York was convicted, sentenced to 135 years for transporting minors across state lines (during the course of sexually molesting them), racketeering, and finance-reporting violations.
The case was described in the book Ungodly: A True Story of Unprecedented Evil (2007) by Bill Osinski, a reporter who had covered the Nuwaubians in Georgia during the late 1990s.
As of 2010[update], some factions of the Black supremacist subculture in the United States appeared to continue to support York, portraying his conviction as a conspiracy by the "White Power Structure".
A Muslim cleric, Bilal Philips, published The Ansar Cult in America in 1988, denouncing the movement as un-Islamic.
[18]After moving to Georgia, York and his followers claimed affiliation with Masons as well as with the Jewish, Christian, and Egyptian[clarification needed] faiths.
They had perhaps borrowed the claim to indigenous ancestry from the Washitaw Nation, a Louisiana-based black separatist group led by Verdiacee Turner.
[23] They still follow York's (and others') "Nuwaubian" writings and scriptures, referencing UFO and extraterrestrial theology, "actual fact" and revelations of the "Nuwaupians".
Tensions increased locally, when the group distributed leaflets attacking whites and claiming racially-motivated persecution in a zoning conflict (they had set up an illegal nightclub in a warehouse on their property).
[10] During this period, the group maintained Holy Tabernacle stores "in more than a dozen cities in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Trinidad," and continued to gain revenues from them.
He explained that his office customarily releases proclamations drafted and submitted for publication by civic groups without subjecting them to substantial content review.
[26] On May 8, 2002, Tama-Re was raided by a joint force of FBI and ATF agents, state police, and local law enforcement.
Although there were fears that the raid would end in violence, no shots were fired during the operation, although tear gas was used by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.
York and his wife were arrested outside of the property on the same day, on federal charges of child molestation and racketeering, including transport of minors for sexual use.
He wrote that York had borrowed from a variety of sources for his ideas: A partial list, from my notes, of places I'd encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes Chariots of the Gods and the Rael's embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga.
[28]In indie hip hop, there are Nuwaubians who perform what they call Nu-wop, such as Daddi Kuwsh, Twinity, Nefu Amun Hotep, 9thScientist, Scienz of Life, Ntelek, Jedi Mind Tricks, Aslaam Mahdi, 720 Pure Sufi, Tos El Bashir and The Lost Children of Babylon.
