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Islam in
America: They came before Columbus
by Ameen Izzadeen
(Deputy Editor The Sunday Times and Daily Mirror-Sri Lanka)
In 2003 Ameen Izzadeen spent nearly a month in the United States
as a guest of the US State Department. This is part one of a series of
observations penned after his visit.
As an outside observer Mr. Izzadeens insights are both enlightening and squarely
on the mark. Mr. Izzadeen addresses the concerns of Post 9-11 Muslims in
America and the campaign to vilify the American Muslims. We present
the series in its entirety.
Islam in America :
(P-1)
They came before
Columbus: Muslims at the crossroads
Friday, October 3rd,
2003
Early July this year,
when I was getting ready to leave for office, I got a call from the United
States Information Service, informing me that the State Department in
Washington had selected me for a three- week tour of the United States. This was
consequent on a conversation I had had a year ago with some USIS officials who
had advised me to send my resume for a visit. Since I had been a vehement critic
of the Bush administration's foreign policy, I asked them whether I was being
bribed. They said it was a study tour that would help me
understand the
American culture better. The theme of the tour was "Islam in America after 9/11"
- a politically charged topic - I could not resist.
To broaden my
horizons, to explore the land that has always fascinated me and to experience
the vibrancy of the democracy, protected and promoted by a constitution, which,
I believe, is the best man-made document on earth, I agreed to undertake the
tour.
This sticker put out
by the Council for American Islamic Relations, a premier Islamic human rights
group, shows that Muslim reawakening has begun
When I shared the news
with my friends and family members, I was warned. "They are getting you there
to bump you off."
My two little
daughters, Sumaiyah and Safiyah, in their innocence told me, "Dada, don't go.
The Americans will bomb you, like the way they bomb Iraq." I had a tough time in
assuring them that most Americans are good people.
It is no secret that
many Muslims in the post-9/11 global order perceive the United States as an
enemy. They suspect that the Bush administration’s war on terrorism is a cover
for a war on Islam and Muslims. Some still believe that 9/11 was a plot hatched
by the CIA or the Israeli intelligence service Mossad or even the right wing
Christian elements or the all three to subjugate the Muslim world.
It is amidst such
apprehensions that I decided to undertake the 'Islam in America' tour, come what
may. The fact that I have come back alive shows that reality is far from
apprehensions. Why should they do away with me? After all I am not even an
insignificant small fry in the US global agenda. Besides, I am not the only
critic of the US foreign policy.
While admitting that
three weeks were hardly sufficient to carry out a comprehensive study on Islam
in America, my interaction with government officials, Islamic activists, Native
Americans, Jewish and Christian leaders, human rights activists and secularists
helped me view the subject from many perspectives.
The tour as a whole
was an intellectually stimulating experience. With our outlook having been
conditioned by Euro-centric or America- centric notions, people, living in this
highly enlightened age of science and reason, still say that America was
discovered by Christopher Columbus, thus negating the fact that America was
inhabited by hundreds of tribes. Such a belief also pushes us to
resign ourselves to
the fait accompli and quashes the questions that help us go beyond the so-called
Columbus discovery.
They came before
Columbus? Who? The Muslims: In fact, nearly 180 years before Columbus. Young
Afro-American scholar Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad in his book 'Muslims in America:
Seven centuries of History (1312-2000)' traces the origins of Islam in America
to 1312 when African Muslims first arrived in the Gulf of Mexico for
exploration of the American interior using the Mississippi River as their
access route. These Muslim explorers were from Mali and other parts of West
Africa. Abu Bakri the brother of Mansa Musa was one of the first to set sail to
America from Africa.
Amir Muhammad is not
the only person to say this. Ivan Van Sertima in his books, 'They Came Before
Columbus' and 'African Presence in Early America’ also confirms that Moors or
Muslims arrived before Columbus. Dr. Barry Fell in his book 'Saga America' says
that the southwest Pima people possessed a vocabulary which contained words of
Arabic origin. Dr. Fell also reports that in Inyo County, California, there
exists an early rock carving which states in Arabic: Yeses ben Maria (Jesus, son
of Mary) - an Islamic reference to Christ.
That is the beginning;
a beginning many Americans do not know or have never been taught in
school.
Throughout American
history, the saga of Muslims has depicted suppression and resilience, slavery
and freedom, retreat and renaissance: A cycle of ups and downs. Islam in America
is full of ironies. While, today, Islam is the fastest growing religion and the
second largest religion in America, it is facing many a challenge. On the one
hand, Muslims are being attacked by white racists while on the other, new
legislation and security measures have curbed their freedom. They are caught
between their Islamic identity and loyalty to the State, which is fighting a war
they do not support. The American Muslim today stands up and cries, "I am a
Muslim and I am an American".
September 11, 2001
changed the destiny of the Muslims and the world. As the sole superpower, for
the first time in post-World War II history, took the brunt of that it
scornfully called Islamic terrorism on its own soil, Islam itself came into the
spotlight.
How can a religion,
which derives its very name from the root world 'peace', promote violence? What
in Islam prompts Muslims from Mindanao to Morocco to turn their bodies into
human bombs? Why do they, in President George W. Bush's words, hate us (the
United States)? These questions have laid siege on Islam. In the western
subconscious, all Muslims became terrorists and Islam the enemy.
The September 11
attacks drew unequivocal condemnation from the Muslim world. These
condemnations, however, genuine they might have been, were viewed by the
skeptical west as being apologistic. Little did the prejudiced western media
highlight the fact that about 600 of the 2,800 people who were killed in the
attacks were Muslims? Little did they give prominence to condemnations issued by
Muslims.
World renowned Islamic
scholar, Hamza Yusuf, founder of the Zaytuna Institute of California and advisor
to White House and Arab League, says: "Vigilante violence has never been
sanctioned in Islam - ever in the history of Islam."
He says those who
lionize terrorism should reflect on some of the images of people jumping out of
the buildings. "Once we arrogate to ourselves the right to give life and give
death, we're basically claiming that we have some divine right and that is
against every principle in revealed religion. God is the giver and the taker of
life and to take innocent lives is completely unacceptable. Those people are not
guided by the light of God; they're blinded by the light of God."
Akbar Ahmed, another
world renowned Muslim scholar based in the United States, in his latest book,
'Islam Under Siege', analyses the Al-Qaeda culture using Ibn Khaldoun's
anthropological tools such as 'Hasabiya' or group loyalty. According to him, it
is hyper- Hasabiya that has gripped groups such as Al-Qaeda. Hyper-Hasabiya or
religious extremism or chauvinism, he points out, has been prohibited by the
Prophet of Islam.
The learned professor
says this is the century of Islam and the real battle will be between the
exclusivists and the inclusivists - between those who promote a faith-based
group loyalty versus those who promote understanding and dialogue. "The world
needs to focus on resolving these problems and not on responding to them with
increasing force; it has been established in human history that violence simply
creates more violence."
Professor Ahmed
dismisses Samuel Huntington's theory of the clash of
civilizations. As
opposed to this theory, he stresses the need for a dialogue of civilizations as
first proposed by Iranian President Mohammed Khatami.
But the words of these
scholars have, unfortunately, not reached a large majority of Americans, though
a recent survey conducted by the prestigious Pew Research Center says the
American public has a better opinion of Muslim Americans than it did before
September 11, 2001. Favorable views of Muslim-Americans have risen from 45% in
March to 59% today, even though 40% of the public think the terrorists were
motivated, at least in part, by religion when they carried out the Sept. 11
attacks.
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