The PBS Series “The History Detectives” some years ago included a program on Islam in America – that is, on the history of Muslims in America, a history that we were asked to believe until recently had supposedly remained “hidden.” Here is part of the text for that program, available online.
“When the first Muslims came to the land that would become the United States is unclear. Many historians claim that the earliest Muslims came from the Senegambian region of Africa in the early 14th century. It is believed they were Moors, expelled from Spain, who made their way to the Caribbean and possibly to the Gulf of Mexico.”
It may be unclear exactly when Muslims came to North America, but what is clear to historians is that when Columbus arrived in 1492 there were no Muslims to be found, no archaeological evidence has ever been found of such an early Muslim presence in the New World. The PBS text airily refers to “many historians” who claim that Senegambian Muslims were in the territory that would become the United States in the 14th century. Who are those “many historians”? PBS doesn’t say. It doesn’t name even one because such a historian does not exist. There is no evidence that West Africans were shipbuilders, much less capable of building vessels large enough to cross the Atlantic from Africa to the New World. It’s a fairy tale fabricated to persuade us that the Muslim presence goes way back; a bit of propagandistic backdating to embellish the preposterous tale that “Islam has always been part of America’s story,” as Obama famously proclaimed in his speech at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
When Columbus made his journey to the United States, it is said he took with him a book written by Portuguese Muslims who had navigated their way to the New World in the 12th century.
“It is said”? Is that a historical source – “it is said”? Columbus made no mention of such a book “by Portuguese Muslims” who “had navigated their way to the New World in the 12th century.” Nor did anyone else. Online searches reveal no sources for such a claim. No one mentions this book, save for today’s Muslim propagandists and their ignorant non-Muslim collaborators – like those who prepared the PBS script on Muslims predating Columbus. Why didn’t the PBS authors offer a source for this tall tale?
Others claim there were Muslims, most notably a man named Istafan, who accompanied the Spanish as a guide to the New World in the early 16th century in their conquest of what would become Arizona and New Mexico.
“Others claim there were Muslims”? Who are these unidentified “others”? Where are the sources, where is the evidence? What is known is that “Muslims” were not in the New world in the early 16th century. There was exactly one man, known as “Istafan” or “Estevanico”(Little Stephen) who, though undoubtedly raised as a Muslim in Morocco, was almost certainly a Catholic convert. Spain did not allow non-Catholics to travel to the New World, and historians believe that “Istafan” was required to convert to Roman Catholicism in order to join the Narvaez expedition.
His existence is known from an account written by another member of the expedition, Cabeza de Vaca. What PBS ought to have written is this: “Istafan, a Catholic who had converted from Islam, was part of the Narvaez Expedition to what is the American West, and though not a Muslim, was the first person of Muslim descent in the New World.”
What is clear is the make up of the first real wave of Muslims in the United States: African slaves of whom 10 to 15 percent were said to be Muslims. Maintaining their religion was difficult and many were forcibly converted to Christianity. Any effort to practice Islam, and keep the traditional clothing and names alive had to be done in secret. There was an enclave of African-Americans on the Georgia coast that managed to maintain their faith until the early part of the 20th century.
There is again no evidence to support the claim that 10-15% of the slaves were Muslims. These inflated figures have begun to appear only in the last few decades, in books and articles by such people as Yousef Mroueh, an amateur historian who claims to have a doctorate, but no evidence of such doctorate can be found. Had that many slaves been Muslims, surely it would have been noticed and recorded by the plantation owners, or by the overseers, but there are no such records. Nor did other slaves make any mention of these “Muslim” slaves. There are about a half-dozen slaves who are known to have been Muslims when they arrived from Africa. They did not have with them Qur’ans; they built no mosques; they were living in an environment where the slaves were converted to Christianity, and it would have been impossible to maintain, much less pass on to their children, their Muslim faith. This claim that 10-15% of slaves were Muslims was not made until very late in the 20thcentury, when Muslims were engaged in a mighty effort to exaggerate both their numbers in the U.S., and how long Muslims had been in America.
Between 1878 and 1924, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, particularly from Syria and Lebanon, arrived in large numbers, with many settling in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and even the Dakotas. Like most other migrants they were seeking greater economic opportunity than in their homeland and often worked as manual laborers. One of the first big employers of Muslims and blacks was the Ford Company—these were often the only people willing to work in the hot, difficult conditions of the factories.
There were Arabic-speaking immigrants to the U.S. from Syria and Lebanon, then still part of the Ottoman Empire, but they were overwhelmingly Christians, hoping to escape both from the Ottoman Turkish rulers and from the Arab Muslims they lived among, both of whom oppressed Christians. There were very few Muslims arriving during this period. From 1878 to 1924, not a single mosque was built in America, evidence of how few Muslims arrived during that period
In fact, the first mosque in America was not built until 1929, in Ross, North Dakota. It was a one-room cement structure that could not have held more than twenty worshippers. The next mosque to be built, known as the Mother Mosque of America, was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1934. By 1940 there were no more than a dozen tiny mosques scattered around America.
At the same time, the Great Migration of blacks to the North helped encourage the African-American Islam revival and the growth of the African-American Muslim Nationalist Movement that still exists to this day. The hope remains to restore the culture and faith that was destroyed during the era of slavery.
The description here is of members not of Islam, but of the Nation of Islam, founded by Wallace Fard (succeeded by Elijah Muhammad) in 1930, a group whose goal was to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States. This “Nation of Islam’ had nothing to do with the universalist claims of Islam; it was this unorthodox group that about 10,000 African-Americans in Detroit joined in the 1930s. It is incorrect to describe this as a “revival” of “African-American Islam.” The Nation of Islam was entirely new; it was not a “revival” of orthodox Islam; its central creed was Black Supremacy; it did not admit whites. Here is Elijah Muhammad’s creed: “The Blackman is the Original Man. From him came all brown, yellow, red, and white people. By using a special method of birth-control law, the Blackman was able to produce the white race. This method of birth control was developed by a Black scientist known as Yakub, who envisioned making and teaching a nation of people who would be diametrically opposed to the Original People. A Race of people who would one day rule the Original People and the earth for a period of 6,000 years. Yakub promised his followers that he would graft a nation from his own people, and he would teach them how to rule his people through a system of tricks and lies whereby they use deceit to divide and conquer, and break the unity of the darker people, put one brother against another, and then act as mediators and rule both sides.”
This has nothing to do with orthodox Islam. And at no time did the Nation of Islam membership exceed 50,000; it is now believed to have about 20,000 members; it gets more attention than its numbers warrant because of the antisemitic rants of its cretinous leader, Louis Farrakhan.
mortimer says
When these ‘historians’ see the smallest trail of chipmunk tracks leading through a forest, they confidently conclude that Hercules was here.
Moreover, it is exceedingly unlikely that 10% – 15% of slaves were Muslims, because Muslims are not supposed to enslave fellow Muslims. Most of the slavers in West Africa were Muslims.
Terry Gain says
Hercules? I had no idea he was a Muslim.
william carr says
The negroes or Africans that were bought by traders and shipped to US had been enslaved by Muslim slave traders who were the main proponents of slavery in Africa
Michael Copeland says
Muslims still are the main proponents of slavery in Africa.
Islam has never abolished slavery.
R Russell says
Revisionist history. Here in the UK our children are no longer taught the correct history of our nations. They are thus wide open to absorbing nonsense.
Mural says
The leftist clowns do the exact same thing in India.
Hank Mansfield says
A recent entry on the ScienceDaily website dealt with New World Monkeys, a genetic study was done and the findings were that all Western Hemisphere monkeys descended from lineages found in West Africa. The scientists theorized they floated across on huge rafts of debris washed down rivers after storms.
A long running feud in paleontology deals with stone spear points found on the US East Coast resembling those simultaneously found in Western Europe instead of Siberia. Also there are archaeological sites all the way in Chile that pre-date the opening of an ice-free corridor into the American West. I think it’s possible that early peoples arrived by hunting sea mammals along the edge of pack ice, from both directions.
I could see a few Arab trading ships or West African canoes arriving by accident over centuries, but rewriting history to suggest that Muslims planned and executed some level of colonization is reckless.
Kepha says
The Evolutionists tell us the first New World monkeys became such after rafting over on storm tossed piles of fallen branhes somtime tens of millions of years ago, before Africa and South America had drifted as far apart as they are now.
End PC says
Islamists figure that winners write their history, and since they expect to win at their colonization of America they get their low-life quislings in the media to propagate false history.
Boromir's Horn says
Malcom X said “we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, the Rock landed on us!”
Now libs are telling us we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, we landed on the
Black Stone of the Kaaba
jca reid says
This Revisionism makes the Nazi/Soviet material appear to be positively subtle. First African slaves – Muslim. This means there were forcibly converted to Islam by the Muslim Slavers, then sold to the Black African Slavers, who would then sell them onto the White Slavers. One tends to forget the massive contribution that Muslim, (Arab), Slavers played in this evil Trade. They don’t like to say, but it was White British Missionaries that intervened, then the British Army. Now THERE is a Revisionist story to tell! Muslims in the Slave Trade!
As for the late 19th/early 20th Century migration, couldn’t it be a mixture of people from the Lebanon: Christians/Jews. Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall for that Region. No mention of what the Ellis Island Records show.
Next we’ll be hearing that it was a Muslim that made the first powered flight & the first walked on the Moon & didn’t support & fight for the Nazis in WW2! This is vile & folk propagating this should be dealt with most severely in the courts.
Hank Mansfield says
Muslims introduced coastal tribes in Africa to Islam, and then supported them to the point they became stronger than their traditional enemies, who were still animists.
That little loophole in Islam’s injunction against enslaving other Muslims explains the scope of the slave-catching expeditions into the African interior.
Kepha says
Actually, Islam didn’t quite reach the Guinea Coast back in the days of the slave trade. It was animists who sold fellow African animists to EUropean slaver. The Islamic slave trade headed north to the Mediterranean from the Sahel and northeastwards to the Middle East from the Zanj (eastern Africa).
And, as a scion of East African Muslims, Obama had people hunting and selling slaves for decades after the last Sothron slaveholders had been put out of business by the US Civil War, indeed, they didn’t stop until “Prfijjus Albion” pointed maxim guns at them and told them to desist.
winoceros says
I am interested in this point specifically as discussed by you and Kepha. Where do you each find information about this? Thank you.
gravenimage says
This article gives you a good overview, winoceros:
https://www.dw.com/en/east-africas-forgotten-slave-trade/a-50126759
PRCS says
Thinking of Iowa Congressional candidate Phillips’ comments (JihadWatch April 16)
The Constitution’s First Amendment was ratified in 1791.
Given the long history and huge number of Muslims here at the time, surely Islam’s cruel and unusual punishments would have been excluded from its “free exercise thereof” protection, eh?
Well there’s a reason that wasn’t done, of course.
Wellington says
Fine article by Hugh Fitzgerald. Destroys PBS’s silly, insupportable claims.
Always be skeptical of generalizations with no examples. Stating such contentions as “many historians” and “others claim” with zero examples (the “Istafan example” being no example at all as Fitzgerald clarifies) makes any generalization essentially worthless.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Wellington.
Lilith Wept says
The book ( and website of the same name” Lost Islamic History , Reclaiming Muslim History from the Past , by Firas Alkhateeb, is filled with lies like this. I found the website and then ordered the book, and I couldn’t finish it I was so disgusted by the blatant lies! This re writing of our history will be just another form of jihad. And if they keep repeating these lies loudly enough and often enough, then ignorant people will come to believe them as Truth….and them in turn repeat them as truth, thus aiding moslems .
Kepha says
You mean, the honorable Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and all the others whose books you can’t find save in places in the most run-down part of town would LIE to us or spin fables?
Loki says
Of course islam has been part of American history since its begining.
As soon as the United States declared its independence from Britain the moslem Barbary Pirates started attacking American shipping in the Mediterranean.
Then it took 25 years before Thomas Jefferson was able to build a navy to send against them.
gravenimage says
+1
Kepha says
Absolutely.
Giacomo Latta says
So I guess because the USA fought against Nazi Germany that Nazism has been a part of American history? A truly bizarre way of looking at things!
Terry Gain says
I am looking forward to the PBS documentary on the Muslim moon landing. No silly, not the splitting of the moon.
gravenimage says
Don’t forget Neil Armstrong supposedly converting to Islam because he heard the Adnan on the moon. “Proof” that this is true? He moved to a Muslim country.
Never mind that in reality he moved back to Lebanon–that is, the town of Lebanon, Ohio.
Muslims are pathetic. That they now have dhimmis like the ones at PBS pushing this garbage is what is really disgusting.
Kerry Wade says
I hope Mr Fitzgerald informs the so-called History Detectives of these facts. They ought to be challenged even though we know there is no gainsaying truth. My grandmother used to say, ‘right is right and wrong is no mans plea.’
gravenimage says
PBS Backdating and Exaggerating the Muslim Presence in the U.S. (Part 1)
……………
Yes, this is all bs–starting with the claim that Muslims discovered the Americas in the early 14th century. If they were expelled from Spain, why would they then pass by all of the Islamic countries in North Africa? Why is there no record of their discovery, or any sign of their ever having lived in the new world?
That PBS is peddling this tripe is just sickening.
Brian Hoff says
Simple it was not writing in English or any European language.
Giacomo Latta says
So for you to know it was written in some other language. Like what? Klingon?
gravenimage says
Well, this from “Brian Hoff”–really, “DefenderofIslam”–is especially hilarious.
The claim above is that these Muslims were moors expelled from Spain in the early 14th century. They would have written in either Arabic or Spanish–Arabic has been understood by educated Westerners for centuries. And then, Spanish is *itself* a Western language–doesn’t the witless “Brian Hoff” know this?
Then, why would Muslims, who could go to North Africa or just to the nearest part of “Al-Andalus” still controlled by Muslims in the early 1300s instead travel about 15,000 miles to an unknown and uncharted land?
Columbus had the spur of finding a route to Asia, since the overland route Europe had used since Roman times was blocked by hostile Muslims after the destruction of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Moreover, he was part of the Age of Discovery–Spanish and Portuguese mariners had already discovered the route to the Indian ocean around the Horn of Africa.
Muslims were making no such discoveries.
But let’s leave that aside for now.
Can “Brian Hoff” name this manuscript? Can he tell us what language it was written in? Can he tell us how large an area Muslims explored and settled in the New World? Can he tell us if they ever got word back to the rest of the Muslim world? Can he tell us where this manuscript is today? Can he tell us what other Muslims have written about these discoveries in the past seven hundred years? Can he point to Muslim archeological sites in the Americas?
Let’s just say I won’t be holding my breath awaiting any sort of cogent answer…
Stephen J says
One can not help to wonder how much is CAIR and the muslim brotherhood paying these people off.
Crusades Were Right says
Actually, it was the Chinese who founded USA! Remember its first president: Zharj Wa Shing Tan? lol
Kepha says
It’s 乔治华盛顿 (Qiaozhi Huashengdun). 为什么哥伦布来美洲时,他找不到华人呢?就是因为华人先来美洲时,他们看有很多非常原始的印第安人。他们觉得因美洲没有大学,他们得不到硕士学位获博士学位,就回家了。
gravenimage says
Yes–another absurd, spurious claim with nothing to back it up. That the Chinese of the time were so insular makes this especially unlikely.
So far the only claims that have any evidence are (obviously) Columbus and the rest of the Spanish and Portuguese mariners and other Europeans who followed them; the Norse at Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. which was briefly occupied in the 11th century and was part of the settlement of Iceland and Greenland and likely discovery of Baffin Island, and–plausible but uncertain–Basque fishermen following the schools of fish and fishing off the Grand Banks. The story of St. Brendan–a 5th century Irish saint–is most likely apocryphal, and has little detail or plausibility.
Brian Hoff says
We are frind out the Neanderthals cavemen ate fish meat . They went fishing rods and built boats and sailing ship They knew wood working and metal working they have bronge tool. They didnot use tin to make bronge they use than other metal which make bronge.
Giacomo Latta says
Bronze by definition is composed of copper and tin. Therefore, it cannot be composed of anything else. As for your other ”information”, what is your source? Al-jazeera? The Washington Post?
gravenimage says
There is evidence that Neanderthals fished with pointy sticks from shore and wading or swimming into coastal waters, lakes, and rivers–but this does not appear to be widespread
Actually, there is little indication that the Neanderthals widely ate fish, from evidence in their bones:
“Seafood gave us the edge on the Neanderthals”
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17595-seafood-gave-us-the-edge-on-the-neanderthals/#ixzz6K8514qSp
And Neanderthals had certainly died out by 24,000 years ago. The first sailing ships date from the 2nd millennium BCE.
They may have used things like logs to navigate water, but the clearly *never* used sailing ships.
And the very oldest evidence of metalworking dates to about 5,000 BCE. Again, this was *long* after the time of the Neanderthals.
Where is “Brian Hoff” getting his claptrap from?
yesireee says
PBS declares that it’s reporting is “balanced”