After President Trump placed a ban on immigrants and refugees, questions spark the heart of millions and most people think Islam is a new phenomenon in America.
Also, that all Muslim Americans are migrating. All these caused most parts of the world to assume that Islam is a new religion in America along with other questions about integration and assimilation.
That said, In the past centuries, Islam culture have been intertwined into the American lifestyle. Not because Muslims are migrating to the states, but Islam has a long history in America from the earlier days of the country founding.
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While this story may sound strange, it’s not well-known. During the earlier day’s of America, the count of Muslims was small but they appear to be quite a large sum in American history.
So, what you are about to read through the history of America and how Muslims are present in the country from the founding time.
America Founders And Islam History
Those who found America, I mean the founding fathers had to include some set of Islam as they establish religious liberty.
As James H. Hutson, the chief of the Manuscript Division of the US Library of Congress. explains “The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic. Freedom of religion, as they conceived it, encompassed it,”
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Amazing as this may sound to you, Jefferson was known to own a copy of the Qur’an. Likewise, according to Hutson, Jefferson, while campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, demanded “recognition of the religious rights of the ‘Mahamdan,’ the Jew and the ‘pagan.’ ”
However, a dispute over the issue, whether a Muslim could become the president of the country, took charge When Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson stated that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation”.
Also, the same issue the American founding fathers discussed when working on the US Constitution.
In 1788, a newly forged federal constitution emerged. People who against Article VI which state that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
However, they warned that “in the course of four or five hundred years,” a Muslim could become president of the United States.
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The First Communities of Muslim Americans Were Slaves
In the early days of America. Due to war and slave trading, some amount of Muslims were slaves as noted by Scholar Richard Brent Turner that researchers estimate the number of Muslim slaves ranges from 40,000 (in just the US) all the way to 3 million across North and South America and the Caribbean.
Note: This is just a historic fact, as this statistic may not be exactly true.
Likewise, GhaneaBassiri writes:
‘Conversion to Christianity was arguably the most widespread method by which African Muslims reconfigured their religious practices and beliefs to adapt to their new context and to form new communal relations. While we do not know exactly when and how (or even whether) the open practice of Islam completely ceased in the nineteenth-century United States, it is clear from our sources that the American-born children of African Muslims did not practice Islam nor did they self-identify as Muslims.’
That said, with the numerous amount of Muslims in the country, by the end of the 19th century most of them had converted their religion. Also, this could have been caused by some unknown incident that may not be exposed to the world.