Sorry Barack, But There Were No Muslims On The Mayflower
Mid-Morning Anonymous
Friday, June 5, 2009
Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama
said that Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions
Muslims have made to the history and development of the United States.
�I know that Islam has always been a part of America�s story,� Mr.
Obama told the throng of unenlightened Muslims. �The first nation to
recognize my country was Morocco. . . And since our founding, American
Muslims have enriched the United States.�
Mr. Obama went on to say: �They [Muslims] have fought in our wars.
They have served in our government. They have stood for civil rights.
They have started businesses. They have taught at our universities.
They�ve excelled in our sports arenas. They�ve won Nobel Prizes, built
our tallest building and lit the Olympic torch. And when the first
Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to
defend our Constitution using the same holy Koran that one of our
founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library.�
No one at the Egyptian University or the international media took
issue with the President�s bizarre interpretation of American history,
let alone his confusion of the Nation of Islam (the religion of
Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X) that bears scant similarity to orthodox
Islam. The Nation of Islam teach that Allah in the flesh was a bona
fide nutcase named Wallace Fard and that Eli Muhammad, a conman with a
tested IQ of 70 and not the Prophet Muhammad, was the true last
prophet of Allah.
Let�s set the record straight once and for all.
Sorry, Barack Hussein, but there were no Muslims among the passengers
on the Mayflower or the settlers at Jamestown. Muslims were
conspicuously absent from the ranks of George Washington�s Army of the
Revolution and played no role in the creation of the American republic
- - save for the fact that the new country�s first declaration of war
was against the forces of Islam in the form of the Barbary pirates.1
Despite popular folklore, few Muslims numbered among the 12 million
black Africans who were shipped to the New World from the 17th to 19th
centuries. The Muslims, in fact, were not the slaves but the slave
traders. Senegalese educator Amadou-Mahtar M�Bow has written that in
1587 a shipload of Moriscos (Spanish Moors) landed in a coastal area
of South Carolina. The Moors, he contends, migrated to the mountains
of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina where they established
colonies.2 In reality, this is pure speculation. There is not a
scintilla of archival or archaeological evidence to support this
claim.
This is not to say that no Muslim slaves were transported to the
colonies. Two such slaves - - Ayuiba Suleiman Diallo and Omar ibn Said
- - were brought to America is 1731 but both were returned to Africa
in 1734.3 In a Herculean effort to materialize at least one Muslim
living in America before the Civil War, Muslims in America, an Islamic
website, point to the name of Mahomet, the great grandson of Uncas,
the founder of the Mohegan tribe, on a gravestone in Norwich,
Connecticut.4 The name of this Native America, they argue, resembles
that of the prophet, and, therefore, he must have been a convert to
Islam.
In a similar example of straining at gnats, the compilers of The
Collections and Stories of American Muslims, a non-profit
organization, claim that Peter Salem, a former slave who fought at the
Battle of Bunker Hill, must have been a Muslim since �Salem� bears an
etymological resemblance to �Salaam,� the Arabic word for peace.5
For additional proof, the compilers turn to folklore, such as the
story of Old Tom, a slave at a plantation in Georgia, who allegedly
uttered, �Allah is God and Mohammed his Prophet� on his death-bed - -
and the apocryphal tale of �Old Lizzy,� a slave from Edgefield County,
who reportedly said, �Christ built His first church in Mecca.�6
Surprisingly, there is no record of any Islamic American among the
enlisted and conscripted forces of World War I, let alone among the
blue and grey armies of the Civil War. The great migrations that
lasted from 1865 to 1925 brought 35,000,000 people to the New World:
4,500,000 from Ireland, 4,000,000 from Great Britain, 6,000,000 from
central Europe, 2,000,000 from the Scandinavian countries, 5,000,000
from Italy, 8,000,000 from Eastern Europe, and 3,000,000 from the
Balkans. But the number of Muslims who came here from the Middle East
was statistically nil.7
In 1960, aside from the temples of the Nation of Islam, the only
mosques in the United States were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dearborn,
Michigan, and Washington DC (which opened in 1957) - - and all three
professed less than 200 active members. Four other cities contained
miniature mosques with less than fifty members.8
Oh, yes, Jefferson did possess a copy of the Koran which Keith
Allison, our first Muslim Congressman, used to make his oath of
office. But what was Jefferson opinion of Islam? Did he believe the
Muslim religion represented a salubrious influence in world affairs?
Far from it. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, then US ambassador to France,
and John Adams, then US Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi
Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey�s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt
to negotiate a peace treaty with the Barbary Pirates based on
Congress� vote of funding. To the US Congress these two future
Presidents later reported the reasons for the Muslims� hostility
towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.
�...that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was
written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have
acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and
duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make
slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman
(Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.�
Jefferson had it right.
Obama has it wrong.
SeaWoe
I don't have to be a Commie of Nazi8 to recognize that, somewhere
along the lone, thay said or did something that made sense.
Without studying it, I am sure that there is good in Shintoism. Wanna
bet?
Me
"SeaWoe" <mid...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:c18095fa-c20f-4eaf...@z14g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
Here's something else Jefferson said
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1650.htm
"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was
finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of
opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion
is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an
amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it
should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of
our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that
they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every
denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67
-----------
Daniel
wrote:
obammy has been wrong since day one.
clouddreamer
>
> obammy has been wrong since day one.
Yeah right. He's already accomplished more in 5 months than Bush did in
8 years.
..
--
We must change the way we live
Or the climate will do it for us.
Daniel
> Daniel wrote:
> > On Jun 5, 11:08 am, Mid-Morning Anonymous <after_bru...@11am.am>
> > wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > obammy has been wrong since day one.
>
> Yeah right. He's already accomplished more in 5 months than Bush did in
> 8 years.
Name one thing he has "accomplished"?
SeaWoe
Lowered the disrespect in which we are held by other nations
Daniel
Really? How many missles has N. Korea tested since obammy took office?
Why has the casualty rate in Iraq risen since obammy took office? Why
couldn't obammy get our ALLIES to give us more assistance than 12
helicopters for Afghanistan? When did Iran decide to dismantle its'
nuclear program? Why has Somali piracy skyrocketed? Sounds more like
"other nations" have decided to bitch slap obammy.