Posted: 16 Feb 2015 07:24 AM PST
Turkish President
Erdogan’s claim that Columbus encountered a mosque in Cuba (the explorer
actually saw a rock whose shape he compared to the dome of a mosque) and a
Saudi Imam claiming that Columbus had sailed to America to attack Muslims are
typical of an emerging genre of Muslim revisionist history that lays claim to
America based on an imaginary earlier Muslim presence here.
While
these examples may be laughable, Muslim historical revisionism has taken root
in academia. It can be found in PBS broadcasts and in a recent New York Times
piece.
In the New York Times, Peter Manseau asserts that, “There is an inconvenient
footnote to the assertion that Islam is anti-American: Muslims arrived here
before the founding of the United States — not just a few, but thousands.”
The description of Islam as anti-American has nothing to do with the Muslim
date of arrival. Instead it refers to Islam’s theocratic erosion of the line
between mosque and state, its theological doctrines of violence against non-Muslims
and women, as well as the belief of a succession of killers crying “Allahu
Akbar” that they can achieve a paradise full of virgins by killing Americans.
The Muslims who had the biggest influence on the United States were nineteen
men who boarded planes on September 11.
But Manseau goes on to offer up three examples of Muslims in the early days
of the United States.
“In 1528, a Moroccan slave called Estevanico was shipwrecked along with a
band of Spanish explorers near the future city of Galveston, Tex. The city of
Azemmour, in which he was raised, had been a Muslim stronghold against
European invasion until it fell during his youth. While given a Christian
name after his enslavement, he eventually escaped his Christian captors and
set off on his own through much of the Southwest.”
Manseau neglects to mention that Estevanico or Esteban de Dorantes was
African, not Arab. Morocco was a major slave market and Africans in Morocco
today are still often taunted as slaves. If Estevanico was ever Muslim, it
was because he or his ancestors had been enslaved and converted to Islam.
And Manseau’s history only gets worse.
Estevanico didn’t escape his masters. He set out as a scout for them. He did
disobey them by resuming a faith healing routine that began during an earlier
journey in which he along with some members of his expedition claimed to be a
“Son of the Sun” and cured diseases with the sign of the cross.
It’s hard to think of a less Islamic form of behavior.
During his expedition, Estevanico pretended to be a shaman, gathered
followers, including a harem, and demanded turquoise and women from the local
Indians in exchange for magical healing. Meanwhile he sent back crosses of
different sizes to his Spanish masters to show them the most promising Indian
villages. Eventually he reached the Zuni who killed him for, in some
accounts, wearing offensive shamanic clothing from other tribes or for
demanding women from them.
Zuni accounts claim that he molested their women. A similar report comes from
Coronado who said that, "The Indians say that they killed him here
because the Indians of Chichiticale said that he was a bad man and not like
the Christians who never killed women, and he killed them, and because he
assaulted their women, whom the Indians love better than themselves."
Black nationalists tried to make a hero out of Estevanico, but he makes a
remarkably poor hero. He was a scam artist exploiting the native population,
aiding the Spaniards and abusing women along the way. Some of this makes him
a tolerably passing Muslim, but there is no real evidence that he was a
Muslim aside from his land of origin. At times he appears to have practiced
Christianity and later adopted the persona of an Indian shaman. Manseau tries
to put the best face possible on his history but deceives readers in much the
same way that his hero deceived the native population.
But Manseau’s next “Muslim” hero is if anything even worse than Estevanico.
“The best known Muslim to pass through the port at New Orleans
was Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim ibn Sori, a prince in his homeland whose plight drew
wide attention. As one newspaper account noted, he had read the Bible and
admired its precepts, but added, ‘His principal objections are that
Christians do not follow them,’” Manseau writes.
This description once again leaves out quite a lot.
The so-called Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori has been a major figure in
Muslim revisionist history. He appeared in a PBS documentary which was
targeted to black audiences. Unfortunately for them, Abdul Rahman was
actually a racist who boasted that “not a drop of Negro blood runs in his
veins. He places the Negro on a scale of being infinitely below the Moor.”
He was notorious for his abuse of slaves. A letter mentions that, “M. Foster
actually made him manager of the plantation, had continually to keep an eye
upon him and to curb his sanguinary temper to prevent him from exercising
cruelty on his fellow servants.”
Abdul Rahman, by his own account, was a Muslim Moor sold into slavery by the
Africans he had been attacking. He was a violent racist who despised Africans
and abused the slaves under his power.
The parallel with Estevanico’s abuse of the native population is striking.
However much of what we know about Abdul Rahman came from his own mythmaking.
It’s quite likely that he was never a prince of anything. Like Estevanico, he
may have just been a talented con artist who was good at raising money by
telling stories.
And during his grand tour of America, he promised to introduce Christianity
to Africa.
As Muslim role models go, Abdul Rahman manages to be even worse than
Estevanico. Manseau leaves all these details out because they change the
narrative. Neither of his Muslim role models appears to have been
particularly Muslim. Both casually dabbled in Christianity when it suited
them.
But Manseau goes on. “Among the enslaved Muslims in North Carolina was a
religious teacher named Omar ibn Said. Recaptured in 1810 after running away
from a cruel master he called a kafir (an infidel), he became known for
inscribing the walls of his jail cell with Arabic script. He wrote an account
of his life in 1831, describing how in freedom he had loved to read the
Quran, but in slavery his owners had converted him to Christianity.”
Manseau fails to mention that “Omar was regularly willing and able to
reassure all visiting Christians that he was a true convert as he often wrote
in Arabic what he called 'The Lord's Prayer' and the Twenty-Third Psalm.” Or
“Prince Moro’s” eager wish that "Mohamedans may receive the
gospel." Not to mention Omar’s autobiography in which he wrote that,
“When I was a Mohammedan I prayed thus… But now I pray “Our Father”, etc., in
the words of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.”
Manseau’s
description of Omar’s autobiography is blatantly dishonest. As with Estevanico
and Abdul Rahman, he has to leave out basic facts of the lives of these
“Muslims” to accommodate his agenda. But Manseau is following in the
footsteps of other revisionist historians who insisted that Omar’s copying of
material from the Koran in an Arabic he had mostly forgotten proved his
commitment to Islam.
The basic fact he has to leave out is that Omar described himself as a devout
Christian. His other two “Muslims” consist of a man who promised to bring
Christianity to Africa and another who played a shaman when he wasn’t making
crosses.
The deceits of Peter Manseau and the New York Times, which never bothers fact
checking even the wildest Muslim claims, are in their own way every bit as
dishonest as Erdogan’s Cuban mosque. The difference is that they have the
protective coloration of academia and journalism. Their dishonesty is more
sedate and buried under protective layers of omissions and distortions.
Revisionist Muslim histories of America should be rejected, whether they come
from Erdogan or the New York Times, because they are built on lies. And a
history built on lies cannot stand.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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