Collections & Stories of American Muslims Inc. (CSAM)

http://www.muslimsinamerica.org

Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History

For CSAM, the final objective is to convey through collected artifacts and stories the fact that Muslims have been in America for as long as any of the other non-indigenous peoples. As Muhammad explained, "Muslims have throughout American history helped build and preserve America. Muslims fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and many other American wars.

The exhibit traces this presence all the way back to 1492, documenting the presence of Muslim captains commanding the Nina and the Pinta, two of the three ships with which Christopher Columbus first set sail to the Americas.

Following this, the exhibit documents the founding and exploration, in 1527, of both Arizona and New Mexico by Estevanico, a Spaniard from Morocco. After Estevanico, Muhammad explains, the next wave of Muslims to come to America were termed the Melungeons. This group, like the Moors, left Spain and Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition.

After these accounts of the earliest Muslims to come to America, a particularly well-documented presence was established in 1730. It was at this time that Job ibn Soliman, a Muslim from Bundu, Senegal was captured and enslaved in Gambia. The following year Soliman was brought to Annapolis, Maryland. Historical reports indi-cate that Soliman was a Hafiz of the Qur'an, meaning that he had committed it to memory. In addition, Soliman had copied the Qur'an from memory three times.

In 1787 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams formalized a treaty with Morocco securing commerce and waterway rights. A similar treaty was signed with Algeria in 1795.

Although in this period most Muslims in America were slaves of African descent, some lived as free men. Men such as Yarrow Marmood lived in Washington, DC in the early 1800s and were documented owners of large properties. Others such as Ibrahim Abdul Rahman ibn Sori were freed from their servitude by white Americans.

Ibrahim was an African Muslim who had left his native country to study in Timbuktu. Upon arriving there, he was captured by warring tribes and sold to slave traders at the age of 26. In 1788, Ibrahim was bought by a Mis-sissippi cotton and tobacco farmer, and eventually became the overseer of the plantation. In 1807 Ibrahim had the good luck to meet John Cox, a surgeon whose life had been saved by Ibrahim's father in Africa many years earlier. Cox, after hearing Ibrahim's story, began petitioning for the freedom which Ibrahim won 25 years later, at the age of 66. Arab American Manuscript, 1829

Another account is that of Bilali, the leader of one of America's earliest known Muslim communities. From 1806 to the late 1830s an estimated 80 Muslims lived and worked on a plantation owned by Bilali. Unlike other African Muslims who had been enslaved
and forced to suppress their religious identity, the Muslims with Bilali were able to practice their faith freely.

The exhibit also documents in the late 1800s the conversion of many white Americans to Islam, such as Edward Blyden and Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb, the first known white American convert. Prior to his conversion, Webb was a journalist and prominent American diplomat in the Philippines. In 1893, Webb represented the Muslim World at Chicago's World Exposition Conference on World Religions. Webb also contributed to the progress of Islam in North America by establishing the American Muslim Brotherhood.

After moving through the lives of many of the early American Muslims, the exhibit concludes by documenting the traces they have left behind. Some are the names of American cities such as Medina, New York and Mecca, Indiana. More powerful than this, however, are the historic tombstones that have been found, dating as far back as 1884, depicting the Islamic symbol of God's Oneness. This symbol of the raised finger dates back nearly 1,400 years to the life of an early convert to Islam, Bilal ibn Rabah.

Bilal, the slave of Omaiyah bin Khala was severely beaten by his master when the latter came to know of his conversion to Islam. Omaiyah tortured Bilal in the blazing heat of the desert sun by placing a heavy rock on his chest and lashing him with a whip, all the while commanding him to renounce his belief in one God. Bilal could do nothing other than raise his one finger and say, Ahad, Ahad, one, one.

--Sadia Razaq
from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999