Last October 27, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Atlanta upheld the federal racketeering conviction and 135-year prison sentence of the leader of the United Nation of Nuwaubian Moors. The successful prosecution of Dwight “Malachi” York, and the consequent destruction of the Nuwaubians’ settlement in Putnam County, Georgia, represent the latest example of official suppression of an unconventional religious groupin America—and one in which the news media played an enabling role. I first encountered the Nuwaubians in Times Square in the 1980s. Dressed in long white robes, they lived in Brooklyn and called themselves the Ansaaru Allah...