DALLAS — In some of his online videos, Corey Cobb Bey talks about being followed by suspicious vehicles. As he talks to the camera about "demons" he believes are following him, he is also wearing a burgundy fez, a calling card of the "Moorish" faith he professed to follow.
"It leaves you numb. It leaves you in a state of confusion," said Marcus Molden-Bey who identifies himself as the Grand Governor of Texas for the Moorish Science Temple of America.
"Why would this happen?" he said in an interview with WFAA while wearing the same style fez typically worn by men in his religion.
"A horrific incident. A tragic incident," he said of what Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia calls the execution of Officer Darron Burks.
Founded in the U.S. in 1925, the Moorish Science Temple of America is an Islamic faith based on the premise that African Americans are descendants of "moors" of Moabite or Moroccan heritage. The suffixes Bey or El are added to surnames to signify the adoption of the Moorish identification.
"We are Moorish Americans. Law abiding citizens, plain and simple," Molden-Bey told WFAA.
He says the gunman, who is accused of executing Burks before dying in a hail of bullets several minutes later, was not one of his true faith.
"Our core principals are love, truth, peace, freedom and justice," he said. "We encourage our people to be law-abiding citizens."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, however, has classified an offshoot of Moorish sovereign citizens as an extremist anti-government group. Investigators, including the ATF, are tracking where Cobb-Bey got his guns. But Molden-Bey, who says he did meet Cobb-Bey a few times several years ago, said he now fears just the appearance of a man in a burgundy fez will cause alarm for citizens and police.
"My thoughts personally over the last few days is how much could I have reached him more possibly, maybe there was something that I missed," he said. "It is important for me to let the city that I come from, the city that I love, the city that I am here working in know we do not at all encourage or support those actions," the Moorish Science Temple of America representative said.
While Molden-Bey says the MSTA community in the DFW area is relatively small and does not have its own building, the religious group headquartered in Chicago, Illinois maintains multiple temples and congregations across the United States.