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“Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States today,” U.S. Department of State. “Between 17 and 30 percent of American Muslims are converts to the faith.”
To many fellow Americans, the religion of Islam is relatively a new phenomenon. However, historical evidence suggests Muslim presence in North America and United States dateing back to the 12th century A.D. “The Navigator of Columbus, who during the famous voyage, brought along a copy of a travel narrative written by Portuguese Muslims who had sailed to the New World in the 12th century. The narrative by al-Idrisi was called ‘The Sea of Tears’. In this narrative he discusses he voyage of 80 muhagharrun (explorers) who lived in Lisbon during the reign of the Murabit amir, Yusuf ibn Tashufin”, writes Aramco World in May/June 92 issue. In the Annuals of al-Masudi an early travel document to the region dates back to 942 A.D.
In 1539, the Spanish brought an Arab guide Istafan to help them settle in the area now called Arizona. Istafan has been to this ‘new world’ in one of the expeditions of Panfilo de Narvaez to Florida in 1527. He was one of the four people who survived thousands of miles tour of the Southwestern U.S. Istafan died in an Indian attack near Arizona and New Mexico in 1539.
Algerian native Salim went to study in Constantinople and was captured by the Spanish after his return. He was later sold to the French as a slave in New Orleans. Historical accounts show that after running from slavery he lived among American Indian tribes and later settled in Virginia where he learned to speak English. Salim came across Christianity through a Greek New Testament due to his knowledge of the language. He converted to Christianity and befriended several members of U.S. Congress. Salim attempted to go back to Algeria but was shunned as an apostate. He met Thomas Jefferson and attended the first Continental Congress. Reports say he died an insane man. (Source: Graham’s Magazine)
Majority of the early Muslims did not have strong conviction to maintain their faith and pass it on to their next generation. However, one slave in the 1730s in Maryland maintained his faith until his death. Ayub Sulaiman ibn Diallo became a go between for his people and the British after his repatriation. He was versed enough in Arabic to write at least a half dozen letters in that language, translate coin inscriptions for the British Museum, and draw a map of West Africa writing place names in Arabic.
Another prominent Muslim came as a result of the Jefferson Davis bill in 1855 passed by Congress. It authorized import of camels for military purpose in Arizona. A Greek convert to Islam Haji Ali (Philp Tedro) came with 3 Turks and 2 Arabs to help the military. But as war broke out among states, the plan to use camels for exploring Arizona was abandoned. Haji Ali was the only cameleers to remain in the United States, the others return to their homelands. Later Haji Ali became a Prospector in the Colorado River region. The soldiers in the U.S. Calvary used to call him ‘Hi Jolly’. Haji Ali died in 1903 in Quartzsite, Arizona where he was a Prospector and resident Imam. His three daughters were raised as Muslims but it is unknown how many generations continued to prcatice Islam.
On the occasion of Independence Day, The Lone Star Crescent presents a timeline of Islamic history in the region. Awareness and interest in Islam has been rising sharply since the mid-1990s. Here we cover important events in U.S. Muslim history until early 90s.
-1178 A Chinese document known as the Sung Document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land known as Mu-Lan-pi (America).
-1310 Abu Bakri (Abu Bakar), a Muslim king of the Malian Empire, spearheads a series of sea voyages to the New World.
-1312 Mandinga, African Muslims, from Mali and other parts of West Africa arrive in the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of America’s interior using the Mississippi River as their access rout.
-1527 A Muslim from Morocco by the name of Estevanico of Azamor (Istafan) lands in Florida with the expedition of Panfilo de Narveaz and remains in America to become the first of three Americans to cross the continent in 1539.
-1530 More than 30% of the estimated 10 million African slaves, uprooted from the areas of Fulas, “Fula Jallon”, “Fula Toro”, and “Massina” as well as other areas of “West Africa” governed from their capital “Timbuktu”, that arrived in America during the slave trade of that time and sent to Mexico, Cuba, and South America were Muslims, they and became part of the backbone of the American economy of that period.
-1732 A Muslim slave by the name of “Ayyub Bin Sulaiman Jallon” from “Boonda, Galumbo” is set free by James Oglethrope, the founder of Georgia, and provided transportation to England. In 1735, three years later, he arrived home.
-1790 Moors from Spain are reported to be living in South Carolina and Florida.
-1807 An African Muslim by the name of Yarrow Mamout is set free in Washington DC, after the United States Congress prohibits the importation of slaves into America after January 1st, 1808, and later becomes one of the first shareholders of the Columbia Bank, the second charted bank in America. It is implemented that Yarrow may have lived to be more than 128 years old, the oldest person in American history.
-1809 A Muslim by the name of “Omar ibn Said” is enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, and imprisoned after running away. Later in prison he was visited by John Owen, who became later a Governor of North Carolina, and taken to Bladen County to be placed on the Owen plantation and it is reported that he lived to be 100 years old
-1828 A slave by the name of “Abdulrahman Ibraheem Bin Sori”, known to many “The Prince of the Slaves” because he was a former prince from West Africa, on a Georgia plantation is freed by the order of Secretary of State Henery Clay and President John Quincy Adams. A drawing of him by Henery Inman is displayed in the Library of Congress.
-1839 “Sayyid Sa’id”, ruler of Oman orders his ship “The Sultana” to set sail to America on a trade mission, reaching New York, April 30, 1840. And although the voyage was not a commercial success, it marks the point of Muslims successful friendly relations with America, which still continues to exist between many of the Muslim nations and the United States.
-1856 The United States cavalry hire a Muslim by the name of “Hajji Ali” to experiment with raising camels in Arizona.
-1865 During the American Civil War, the “scorched earth” policy of the North destroyed churches, farms schools, libraries, colleges and a great deal of other property. On the morning of April 4, when the Federal troops reached the campus of the University of Alabama with orders to destroy the university, “Andre’ Deloffre”, a modern language professor and custodian of the “Rotunda library” at the university, appealed to the commanding officer, to spare one of the finest libraries in the south. The officer, being sympathetic, sent a courier to General Croxton at his headquarters in “Tuscaloosa” asking permission to save the library, but the general’s reply was negative, so the officer reportedly said “I will save one volume as a memento of this occasion” and the volume selected was a rare copy of the Qur’an”
-1889 A noted scholar and social activist by the name of Edward W. Blyden travels throughout the Eastern and Southern parts of the United States lecturing about Islam and in one of his speeches before the Colonization Society of Chicago he told his audience that the reasons Africans choose Islam over Christianity is that, “the Qur’an protected the black man from self-depreciation in the presence of Arabs or Europeans.”
-1893 “Mohammad Alexander Russel Webb”, one of the earliest “White American Converts”, founds the “American Islamic Propaganda Movement”. And on September 20th and 21st, he appeared at the First World Congress of Religions and delivered two lectures: “The spirit of Islam,” and “The Influence of Islam on Social Conditions.”
-1908 Muslim immigrants from the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, who are mainly Turks, Kurds, Albanians, and Arabs arrive in North America.
-1913 “Timothy Drew” (Noble Drew Ali) establishes an organization in Newark, NJ, known as the “Moorish Science Temple of America” (MSTA), responsible for many of today’s African-American converts to Islam, and who was reportedly commissioned by the Sultan of Morocco at that time to teach “Negroes” in the United States
-1915 Albanian Muslims build a Masjid (Mosque) in Maine and establish one of the first associations for Muslims in the United States, and in 1919 they build another Masjid in Connecticut.
-1920 The Red Crescent, a Muslim charity modeled after the International Red Cross, is established in Detroit.
-1926 “Dues Muhammad Ali,” mentor of “Marcus Gravey” and the person who had considerable impact on Gravey’s movement, establishes an organization in Detroit known as the Universal Islamic Society. Its motto was “One God, One Imam, One Destiny.”
-1926 Polish-speaking Tatars build a mosque in Brooklyn New York.
-1930 African-American Muslims build the “First Muslim Mosque” in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
-1933 The organization of the Nation of Islam (NOI) is founded by “Fard Muhammad” or (Wallace Ford), a Muslim mystic who introduced its philosophy to the United States and disappeared in 1933. The late “Eli-jah Mohammed, succeeded Frad in 1933 and built the organization into a strong ethnic movement advocating Islam as a way of life. The NOI is one of the most well known organizations that had its prints on the history of United States, as well as the American Muslim history; it holds itself responsible for converting a high percentage of African-Americans to Islam and highlighting American Christians’ difficulties combating the effects of slavery and racism among African-Americans. Two of the most famous African-Americans, “Muhammad Ali” and “Alhajj Malik al-Shabazz” (Malcolm X), were early adherents of this movement, but both later embraced the proper multiethnic concepts of orthodox Islam or mainstream Islam.
-1934 The Lebanese community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, opens its Masjid.
-1939 “Sheik Dawood” founds the “Islamic Mission Society” in New York, which publishes a magazine entitled, “Muslim Sunrise”.
-1952 Muslims in the Armed Services sue the Federal Government to be allowed to identify themselves as Muslims. Until then Islam was not recognized as a legitimate religion.
-1955 “Sheik Dawood Ahmed Faisal” establishes the “State Street Masjid” in New York City, which is still in use today and represents a special point in the development of the American Muslim community. And it is from this Masjid the “Dar-ul-Islam movement” was later born in 1962.
-1960 The NOI’s University of Islam schools flourishes drawing the attention of the American media, but the coverage focuses upon the “Black Muslims’ self-help programs for Blacks” yet considers them a “threat” to the white establishment.
1963 Establishment of the “Muslim Students Association” (MSA), an organization to aid foreign Muslim students attending schools in the United States.
-1965 The assassination of “Al-Haj Malik al-Shabazz” (Malcolm X), one of the most outstanding Muslims in American history as well as a dedicated fighter for justice and equality for African-Americans and other oppressed people, takes place in New York.
-1968 “Hamas Abdul Khaalis” founds the “Hanfi Movement” in New York and builds the “Hanafi-Hab Center” there, but latter on moves to Washington DC His movement had a membership of more than 1000 and one of the first Muslims who first came into contact with Islam through this movement is “Kareem AbdulJabbar” the famous Lakers basketball player. But in 1977, Khaalis and some of his followers seized control of 3 buildings in D. C., holding hostages for more than 30 hours, one man was killed. Khaalis is now incarcerated in Washington DC and is serving a sentence of 41 to 120 years, marking a challenging period in American Muslim history.
-1975 “Elijah Muhammad”, the late leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) dies and is succeeded by his son “Warith Deen Mohammed,” who is regarded as one of the leading Muslim spokesmen in the United States of today and is credited disputing many of his father’s ethnic beliefs and statements and for moving the organization toward the broader universal concepts of Islam.
-1982 The “Islamic Society of North America” (ISNA) is established in Plainfield, Indiana, which is now the umbrella organization.
-1986 “Dr. Isma’il R. al-Faruqi,” the founder of the “American Muslim Social Scientists” organization and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and his wife are murdered in their home outside Philadelphia. Dr. Faruqi and his wife are the authors of the Cultural Atlas of Islam and many other books. His murder was predicated without name by the president of Jewish Defence League one week before his death in the Village Voice, New York by claiming that within a week an outspoken Palestinian professor will be eliminated.
-1987 Muslim Alert Network was established in Chicago to mobilize Muslim response to media and discrimination against Muslims. Later on the same concept was used to establish CAIR.
-1990 Muslims hold the first solidarity conference called “Muslims Against Apartheid.” This was the first conference of its kind in support of Muslims for the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. The conference was organized by the American Muslim Council.
-1991 Imam Siraj Wahhaj offers an invocation (opening prayer) to the United States House of Representatives. He was the first Muslims to do so.
-1993 Bosnia Task Force, USA organized the largest rally to date by Muslim in favor of Bosnia in Washington DC attended by 50,000 Muslims
-1994 Islamic Shura Council of North America was established choosing four of the largest participents of the Bosnia Task Force, USA
-1996 Iftar-Dinner on Capitol Hill sponsored by American Muslim Council February 13 hosted by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D CT), Congressmen Nick J. Rahall (D W. VA), Dana Rohrabacher (R CA), Thomas M. Davis III (R VA), James P. Moran (D VA) and attended by ambassadors and representatives from most of the Muslim countries.
-1996 The White house celebration of Eid Al-Fitr, February 20, 1996 by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton the first Eid celebration ever at the White House.
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