With the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Muslim waves in America, and the arrival of Trump in power in America, VOX (Fox) published a report on the long and unknown history of Islam in America. The report dealt with the most prominent stations of Islam in American history and up to the present moment, written by Deputy Foreign Affairs at the site Jennifer Williams , saying:
Much of the controversy in America over President Trump's ban on immigrants and refugees tends to assume that Muslim Americans are mostly immigrants, that Islam is a relatively recent phenomenon in America, as well as questions about integration and assimilation.
In fact, Islam has a long history in America, dating back to the early days of the founding of the country. Islam and Muslim Americans have intertwined with American history over the past two centuries, or more. This story is not famous, although this is partly due to the low number of Muslims in the United States in most periods of history. However, the role of Islam still appears in ways that most Americans find surprising, especially in the history of slavery and the liberation of slaves in America.
What follows is a brief history of Islam in the United States from the date of its inception until today, and a guide to the Muslim American community after increasing their numbers.
The opinion of founding fathers in Islam and Muslims in America
Perhaps the most visible role of Islam in America in the era of founding fathers is the words and actions of the founders themselves, who sought to integrate Islam while establishing the principles of religious freedom.
"The early founders of America, Islam, have clearly incorporated their vision of the future of the Republic," said James Hutson, head of the manuscripts department at the US Library of Congress. Freedom of religion, as envisioned by the founders, included Islam. "
Thomas Jefferson, famed for having a copy of the Koran, spoke about the role of Islam in America. According to Hotson, Jefferson, while campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, demanded "recognition of religious rights (of the Mohammedans), Jews and pagans."
Even the question of a Muslim taking over the presidency of the United States - a case that emerged recently when Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said he "does not like to put a Muslim in the leadership of the nation" - was something the founding fathers debated when they endorsed the US Constitution .
At a North Carolina conference in 1788 to examine whether or not to ratify the Federal Constitution, opponents of ratification of the Constitution warned that Article VI of the Constitution allowed one Muslim to become, within one hundred or five hundred years, a president. Article 6 states: "No religious test should ever be required to be eligible for any official position or public responsibility in the United States."
Of course, the constitution was finally ratified, and that article remained unchanged. Ben-Carson has lost this controversy in the era of America's founding.
Even more, there is a hidden sculpture of the Prophet Muhammad on the northern wall of the Supreme Court of America. Although the building was built in 1935, it has roots that extend much earlier. As noted by Timothy Mar in his book "The Cultural Roots of American Islamism," the " revered statue of the Prophet Muhammad " is "between Charlemagne and Justinian as one of the greatest lawmakers in history."
The first American Muslim gatherings were slaves
In the early years of America's founding, the vast majority of Muslims were not citizens, but rather thin. Researcher Richard Brent Turner says researchers are different about the number of Muslim slaves brought to the Americas, ranging from 40,000 (in the United States alone) to three million in North and South America and the Caribbean.
Turner said many Muslim slaves were educated, knew Arabic, and usually "played leading roles in the jobs slaves used to do in farms in the American South. Their names, uniforms, rites and dietary laws were seen as signs of their Islamic identity in the slave society. "
"The Muslims, who lived in colonial America and the pre-civil war period, came from a range of different ethnic, educational, and economic backgrounds, " says historian Kambiz Janabasiri, whose book History of Islam in America is one of the most comprehensive books on the subject. . Their experiences in America varied depending on the time they were transferred to America and the place they were transferred to. "
"There was not a single interpretation or practice of Islam. At times, Islamic beliefs and practices were means of self-identification, distinguishing, and sometimes isolating, African Muslims from other enslaved Africans, or white Americans. "
The report says that although many African Muslims tried to preserve their Islamic identities and cultures when they arrived in America, they needed to adapt to their new environment and to form new societies. This eventually led to almost universal conversion to Christianity.
"It can be said that the conversion to Christianity was the most common way in which African Muslims reshaped their practices, their religious beliefs to adapt to this new context, and to form new community relationships. While we do not know exactly when and how Islam's overt practice of Islam ended in the 19th century (or if it was already done), it is clear from our sources that the African-born Muslim children of America did not practice Islam and did not know themselves They are Muslims. "
Thus, despite the massive influx of Muslims through the transatlantic slave trade, Islam had disappeared from these societies by the end of the nineteenth century.
The first mosque and the first Muslim migration after the end of the slave
At the same time that Islam was disappearing from slave societies and former slaves, millions of immigrants began to reach America's shores by the end of the 19th century, especially in the early 20th century. These numbers included tens of thousands of Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. This immigration was partly stimulated by the industrial revolution that broke out as soon as America finally emerged from the rubble of civil war and the era of reconstruction .
The first mosque in America was built in Chicago, according to historian Sally Hoyle, in 1893, and was part of the attractions at Cairo Street at the Chicago World Expo . Sally said that the mosque was supposed to be "a tradition of Sultan Qaitbay mosque in Cairo" and that "Islam is presented to the American public."
This scene from the Cairo Street Mosque in Chicago gives us a glimpse of the Islamic experience in America in the 1890s, among Muslims in Chicago, and also as a curious thing that intrigues non-Muslims. Here's Howell's description of this scene:
"The organizers of the exhibition urged Muslim workers and worshipers, including a trained Imam, to remain apostates. The workers spontaneously took the adan from the top of the beacon five times a day, which the crowd delighted. Muslim pilgrims gathered at prayer times inside the mosque to perform. "The mosque was destroyed by the end of the exhibition. The worshipers and the staff at the Cairo Street exhibition, brought to the United States as showcases, returned to their normal lives in Egypt, Morocco and Palestine.
The second mosque in the United States did not appear decades before that date. The mosque was built in Highland Park, Michigan, and was completed in 1921. Howell described this as well:
"The mosque, built by Muslim immigrants to be a place of worship, was intended to be representative of Islam to the American public, such as the Cairo Street Mosque, but the Muslims of Highland Park hoped to give a very different impression of their religion. Islam in this mosque will not be anything strange, foreign, or theater scene. But will be a different US religion from the religion practiced in the churches and temples nearby. This mosque will bring worshipers of American nationality. "
The growth of Islam in the early 20th century (not just immigration)
The beginning of the twentieth century saw the beginning of the formation of Muslim immigrants to small organizations of communities throughout the country.
At that time, African Americans also began "embracing Islam in the 1920s and 1930s, in part, in response to the radical and racist persecutions they had suffered before and during the period of great migration (the emigration of deprived southerners to industrial estates in the north)," Howell wrote.
Many of these African-American Muslim associations will continue to have a great influence in the form of Islam in America, by promoting Islam as a missing part of the African heritage. Howell says:
"For many, the Negro World was for Marcus Garvey, a New Negro Management Journal, founded in New York in 1914, which began to spread the link between African unity and Islam. By 1920, it had 100,000 members and 800 branches worldwide. "
Other organizations established during the period - such as the Maurice Science Temple of America created by Nobel Prize-winning Drew Ali in the middle of the second decade of the 20th century - and the Nation of Islam , created by Wallace Mohammed in 1930, paved the way for the emergence of Islam as a part Influential in the Black Power movement, and the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1924, the US Congress passed the National Assets Act, which "restricted immigration from Asia and other Muslim areas, and then stopped the flow of Muslim arrivals."
But as the twentieth century progressed, Muslims who had already reached American shores, along with African-Americans who had, in some cases, reconciled their long-lost Muslim roots, began to play a much more active role in politics, the American society .
The role of Islam in the era of civil rights and black nationalism
Today, we remember and celebrate the role of Christian leaders, most notably Martin Luther King Jr., in the civil rights struggle. But Islam also had a role.
"As Muslims did during the civil war, Muslim Americans fought and died in World War II and the Vietnam War," said sociologist Craig Considine. More than 15,000 Arab Americans, some of whom were Muslims, fought in the United States in North Africa, Europe and Asia during World War II.
"The Second World War changed dramatically the national identity of America, as Americans united with different ethnicities, religions, and races to fight in a devastating war under the banner of freedom," wrote the historian. He continued to explain how this led to the growing role of Islam in the civil rights movement, and black nationalist movements, he said:
"The gap between the reality of discrimination on the one hand and the democratic values that America itself has known after the war, on the other hand, for the African American Muslim communities is strong evidence, not just hypocrisy, but also the fact that black Americans are still outside the national narrative America, after about a century of civil war. In this context, criticizing the nationalist movements of black Muslims of Christianity as the religion of the white man and the adoption of the Islamic religion as the national religion of African America was attractive, bringing many converts to Islam and establishing Islam in black America as the religion of liberation. It will hand over a broad section of African-Americanism during the civil rights movement. "
But this history is controversial. Although many Americans associate Islam with black national groups, such as the Nation of Islam, represented by the charismatic leader Malcolm X and the Fifth Presence Nation (also known as the Five Pressers), the truth is that religious beliefs, , And the practices of these groups were far from mainstream in Islam.
In fact, most of the Muslims of the Movement of the Nation of Islam, and similar movements, are not truly Muslims. Many of their beliefs are contrary to many of the basic tenets of Islam, or even considered as infidels.
Most Muslims see the idea of one race over another, the central idea of some radical black Muslim nationalist movements, in contradiction to the teachings of Islam. Malcolm X himself will reject the beliefs of the Nation of Islam later. The man who, for millions of Americans, turned the face of black nationalism, the mainstream Sunni Islam, after a visit to North Africa and the Middle East in 1964, included a pilgrimage to Mecca and changed his name to Haji Malik al-Shabaz.
Malcolm was later assassinated.
Although Malcolm changed his beliefs, the Nation of Islam continued to be an important force in the American Muslim landscape for decades to come. The nation of Islam has come closer to mainstream Islam under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, who still leads the group to this day, but is still seen by most Muslims as separate from Islam.
A huge increase in the migration of Muslims after 1965
As a result of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, as many as 1.1 million Muslims reached the United States before the end of the 20th century.
Not all of these immigrants were religious, but their educational and cultural abilities led them to leadership positions (many of them academics, doctors, and engineers) among newly formed Muslim immigrant groups.
The researcher Zayn Abdullah followed their experiences after their arrival, which were usually influenced by events in the Middle East, although many of them were not from the region:
"The treatment of American Muslims, after their arrival in 1965, was largely shaped by a series of confrontations between the United States and many Muslim countries. The Six-Day War of 1967, a major event in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, drew negative images of the Arabs in the American media, leading to the consolidation of the worst stereotypes about Islam ...
The ban on the sale of oil to the United States in the 1970s exacerbated harsh views towards Muslims in the Middle East. Angry queues at American petrol stations angered Muslims in the United States. Many of the media have published caricatures of sheikhs from the oil-rich Arab states, who seek to dominate the world. "
Things got worse by the end of the decade. The Iranian revolution, the American hostage crisis captured world attention, and another example of the "violent" clash between Islam and the West.
The 1980s and 1990s: Hostages and hip-hop
"By the end of the decade, Americans were very upset by the Iranian revolution (1979) and the American hostage crisis," Abdullah wrote. It overthrew a populist uprising in 1979, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the US-backed Shah of Iran, and established a Shiite Islamic theocracy. The students involved in the revolution captured 52 American hostages for more than a year and were released on 20 January 1981.
Daily media coverage of the plight of the hostages, and the revolutionary religious fervor of their Muslim captors, reached the homes of millions of Americans. As historian Edward E. Cortes said: "When Iranian students seized the US embassy and kidnapped dozens of embassy staff, many Americans felt outrage. The hate crime rates against Muslims, Arabs, Iranians and South Asians increased in the United States."
The other way in which many Americans were exposed to Islam in the 1980s and 1990s was through hip-hop and rap, in part because of the legacy of the black nationalist movements established during the civil rights period. Andrew Emery wrote to the Guardian:
"For many music lovers in the 1980s and '90s, hip-hop was their first exciting show of Muslim culture and the religion of Islam. After the early days of the Break Dance and the Bragadossio, I found space for the religious and spiritual element in this music. The range of Muslim rappers extended from Yaseen Bay (formerly known as the direct-acting Muse Dave) to Tine, with its unlikely surface meanings, including stars such as Naz , Andre 3000 , Lopez Viasco , Ice Cube ,Basta Rimes .
Islamic beliefs were often expressed in marginal groups, such as the Nation of Islam and the Fifth President Nation. Their language was used in the rap language ... the important and profound influence of music and long-term culture was so obvious that it was no longer necessary to speak of it high".
Islam has gradually become more familiar in American life. The two converted American imams of Islam, Siraj Wahaj and Wardatuddin Muhammad, became the first Muslims to pray before the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1991 and 1992, respectively.
The events of September 11 and their terrible consequences for Muslims
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were a defining moment in the history of Islam in America. These attacks, carried out by extremists in the name of Islam, were the biggest attack on American soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. These attacks changed the nature of Muslim relations in the United States and opened a debate rarely recognized, but still ongoing, Equal citizens.
Although Muslim religious leaders, Muslim organizations in the United States and all over the world condemned the attacks as soon as they occurred, calling them non-Islamic, many Americans began to fear, mistrust and even dislike their Muslim neighbors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a 1,600% increase in hate crimes against Muslims in 2001.
For their part, American Muslims tried to reassure their American citizens that they were no less peaceful and patriotic. Curtis wrote:
"The mosques and Islamic centers throughout the country raised American flags and opened their doors to non-Muslims. Muslims sought to educate their non-Muslim neighbors about Islam, reassure the public about their loyalty to the United States, and their love for the American dream. Many Americans visited a mosque for the first time, usually to attend educational sessions on Islam, where Muslim leaders explained that Islam is a peaceful religion that does not recognize terrorism.
Curtis said young Muslim women had joined the Muslim Girl Scout teams and mourned the medals for their answer to "questions about Islamic practices, non-Muslim education about their religion, and learning Islamic prayers." Also, the girls sold biscuits, wearing uniform brown and green uniforms, sometimes adding a veil to these costumes.
The attacks of September 11 and subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have increased US interest in Islam and the Middle East, including the academic and governmental circles. Millions of Americans have learned about Islam, peoples, Islamic traditions, and the historical lands of Islam , Through university study programs, special news coverage, documentaries, and many books written on the subject.
Unfortunately, this growing appetite for Islam has opened the door to the rise of the "Islamophobia industry," as it is sometimes called. People who have anti-Muslim agendas published books, quasi-academic journals, articles, and created non-profit websites, blogs and research institutions and appeared on news channels to spread the "truth" of Islam, which presented it as a violent, evil and non-American religion. Although these people claimed to be "experts" in Islam, they usually presented a highly biased image and inaccurate information to the public, which was usually presented to open intolerance and conspiracy theories.
Many Americans are prone to believing the worst theories about Islam and accepting the hateful and violent visions offered by those who are adept at Islam, because 62% of them do not know a Muslim personally, according to a Pew poll in 2014. This distorted understanding of Islam is rooted in pockets Many in American society, which helped lay the foundation for the climate of fear and hatred of Muslims we see daily.
Continuing controversy and identity crisis among Muslim Americans
American Muslims are a diverse group, and their struggle to determine their identity and place in American society has been limited to rejecting terrorism, violence, and accepting non-Muslims. The same conversations about identity, gender, values, and integration that the rest of American society has been preoccupied with for decades, were also taking place within American Muslim communities.
New Muslim subcultures developed, especially in the middle of the millennium, partly because of the Internet and social media that enabled those with shared interests to communicate more easily than ever before. Zain Abdullah wrote:
"Groups such as the Union of Progressive Muslims, who from 2004 to 2006, and Muslims for Progressive Values, have established an online presence. The community of gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims has become more visible and added a voice to the debate over Islamic authenticity. The members of these groups challenged the tendency to define Muslim family life and restrict it to heterosexual. Al-Fatihah was established in 1998 in New York in response to the needs of gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims. "
Michael White Knight, a white American converted to Islam at the age of 16 after reading the biography of Malcolm X and spending two months studying Islam at the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, wrote in Pakistan a fictional story entitled The Power of Curse. Perhaps the exaggerated publicity of the Amazon site includes the best, and the shortest explanation of the book, which records one feature of the search for identity among Muslim American societies:
«House Rebel Muslims ( Bank ) in Buffalo , New York, home to girls rebels wearing the burqa, and Sufis shave their hair mohawk way, year righteous, and Shiite skinheads, and skaters Indonesians, the young Sudanese and rude, and Muslim gays and Muslims drunkards, and Feminists.
Their living room hosts parties and prayers, and there is a hole in the wall to indicate the Qiblah direction. Their lives are mixed with sex, drugs, and religion in almost equal quantities, which are expressed in devotion to the rebellious Islamic sub-culture (Bank).
The book, which began with self-made efforts, first spread through hand-held copies, Manifesto for the Pank Muslims, and as the gospel of rebellious youth.
When Knight wrote his book, there was no such thing as "strengthening Kors." Knight made this word. To his surprise, however, it turned out that the book, and the film on which it was based, had been expressed by thousands of young Muslims in America and abroad, and those young people themselves and their Islam were reflected in the fictional lives of the characters of Knight. The strength of Corez has become a real thing.
In 2009, some filmmakers produced a documentary film about this phenomenon: Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam. The film was officially selected at Sundance Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival in 2010.
Muslim Americans today
In 2007, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, was sworn in, using Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran. But this positive sign of the integration of American Muslims into the heart of the American political system has been met with some fear and hatred. The Ellison member is constantly demanding, by colleagues and critics, to prove his allegiance to America. In this way, Ellison's achievements, and the unfair and unequal demands imposed on him, are the best expression of Muslims in America today.
"You can not make Keith Allison or Andre Carson condemn the law in this Congress, as well as bring a person," said Iowa State Republican Congressman Sitf King on December 9 in an interview with MSNBC. Just came from the Middle East, a person steeped in Islam all his life, to do the same thing ».
Carson (Democrat of Indiana) is the second Muslim American to be elected to Congress. King's inclinations are clear: both members are questionable, and they are very likely to be betrayed to America because of their religion, and they should prove that loyalty to the firm condemnation of "shari'a."
The United States census does not collect data on religious affiliation, so there are no official statistics on the number of Muslims in the United States. But the 2011 Pew Research Center survey conducted in English, Arabic, Persian and Urdu found that there were 1.8 million adult Muslims (and 2.7 million Muslims of all ages) in the United States. While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based human rights organization, puts a much higher estimate of the number of American Muslims between 6 and 7 million Muslims.
Regardless of the real figure, our political debate puts Muslim Americans at the heart of the most controversial issues today: US foreign policy, national security, terrorism, integration, religious freedom, and American identity. The upsurge of the Mujahedeen led to a surge in the global jihadi movement, and the threat of jihadist terrorism increased at home, and so did Islamophobia.
American Muslim women wearing headscarves for reasons of religious decency and identity now have to decide whether they want to continue this practice and risk being scorned, and perhaps even violent, by people who associate Islam with terrorism. The mosques are being vandalized and innocent. The president openly and shamelessly called for a total, albeit temporary, suspension of Muslim entry into the United States.
Despite the long and rich history of Muslims as an integral part of American society, which dates back to the early days of our nation's founding, many American Muslims, in 2017, continue to be treated as unwanted aliens. This is not a prevailing feeling, of course, but it is not an easy, marginal belief.