Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee! Caliph-Haronia (Californai), T’Allah assee (Tallahassee in FL), Allah Bamya (Alabama), Mecca in Indiana, Islamorada in Florida, Medina in Idaho, Medina in NY, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in TN, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.

Muslims have been here in America from the begining. They came with Columbus, they came before Columbus and they came after Columbus.Updated April 19th, 2009. Research in Process (Rupee News RIP)

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Islam in America is everywhere. One just has to look for it. From Caliph Haronia (California), to Allah-Bumya (Alabama), to Tallah-Hasse (Tallahassee), to Medina Ohio, to Moorestown New Jersey, to Islamorada Florida, to Al-Hambra California Muslims have left an impact on the country.

10th century Arab map showing America as the Unknown land Ard a Majhoola

Arab maps like these were used by Columbus to navigate his way from Spain to the Americas.

 


Map Globe of the world by Arab Al Idris

Chinese Muslim Admiral Zeng He Haji Mahmud Shams ship compared to Columbus ship Santa Maria Columbussailed from Muslim Spain. Two of Columbus’ captains on the first voyage, in actual fact, were Muslims: Martin Alonso Pinzon was in charge of the Pinta, while his brother Vicente Yanez Pinzonwas the designated captain of Nina; both were from the Moroccan Marinid dynasty, descendants of Sultan Abu Zayan Muhammad III (r. 1362-1366). Formerly well-to-do ship riggers, they assisted Columbus in organizing his voyage of exploration, preparing the Santa Maria, the flagship, and covering all its expenses.

mico-nabi-prophet-noble: miconapy sporting that turban in full moorish gear.

I have a copy of the Chippewaand Choctaw languages I picked up in a Mississippi museum and guess what I found my friends and all you doubters? These languages are filled with Arabic! Let me give you an easy example: Oklahoma means Red People and the word in Arabic for red is hamra so with the linguistic twist that happens when words jump languages, it becomes homa. And folks what about Mashulaville, Mississippi? That is a common Arabic express meaning Allah blesses.Anyway, the person who wrote this blog is on the right track and I would like you to join me in my dictionary project to show the Arabic origins of English and Native American Languages.And for all you blues lovers, isn’t BB Kind from Indianola, Mississippi? And one story of the origin of the name is that there was an Indian princess named Ola which is an Arabic name. Folks don’t sit on history. Let the history out into the open and it will tell you a story about the Faith of all our Fathers in this great land. Mystik stylez777

Sicily was part of the Islamic expansion of the 8th century map

Islamic expansion in the 8th century map

A sum of 565 names, 484 in America and 81 in Canada, of villages, towns, cities, mountains, lakes, rivers and etc. are etymologically Arabic, designated by locals long before the arrival of Columbus. Many of these names are in fact the same as names of Islamic places; Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahometin Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.

 

Muslims have been here in America from the beginning. They came with Columbus, they came before Columbus and they came after Columbus.

Muslims have been here in America from the begining. They came with Columbus, they came before Columbus and they came after Columbus.7 Century AD (700-800 AD)

The Worlds of Islam: The Inquisition against Muslims

Islamic Sicily fed the Christian Renaissance
Melungeon Muslims in America escaping the Spanish Inquisition

Proof of Muslim presence in the America from authenticated Western sources:

1. Professor Barry Fell, retired lecturer from Harvard University and also a member of the American Academy of Science and Arts, the Royal Society, the Epigraphy Society and the Society of Scientific and Archeological Discoveries, is adamant about the arrival of Islam in America in the 650s, predicating this argument upon the Cuficcalligraphy belonging to that era found in various diggings across America. If the words of Professor Fell have truth-value, then the Muslims had arrived in America during the era of Uthman, or at least that of Ali, the fourth caliph. Such information, however, is not found in Muslim sources.

Professor Fell again uses the results of various archaeological diggings undertaken across many regions in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Indiana to assert the construction of Muslim schools during 700-800 CE. Writings, drawings, and charts inscribed on rocks discovered in the most remote and untainted terrains of Western America are relics bestowed by the elementary and intermediate systems of Muslim education at the time. These documents were written in the old Cufic letters of North African Arabic, covering subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, history, geography, mathematics, astronomy, and navigation. The descendants of these settlers are thought to be the current native tribes of Iroquois, Algonquin, Anasazi, Hohokam, and Olmec.

7th century rock inscriptions with kalima in NevadaReds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.
2. The second evidence offered by Professor Fell is that the inscription of “In the Name of God” (picture 1), found on a rock during archaeological work in Nevada, belongs to the seventh century, when the haraka sign system had not yet been developed. Likewise, the stone bearing the inscription “Muhammad is the Prophet of God” (picture 2) is pertinent to the same era. As seen by comparison of the two pictures, the inscriptions are not in the style of Modern Arabic; conversely they are in a Cufic style relevant to the seventh century.

7th century rock inscriptions with kalima in NevadaReds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.3. The Arabs, according to the findings of Professor Fell, settled in Nevada during the seventh and eighth centuries. The earlier existence of a school, which taught Islam and science, particularly navigation, has come to light following the archeological investigation undertaken by Professors Heizer and Baumhoff of California University around site WA 25 in Nevada. The excavations in Nevada have uncovered writings in Naskhi Arabic and Cufic style that are inscribed on rocks which carry information about this school (picture 3).

What if Islam had never existed? What if Islam went away? Corollary to Usher

The application of the mathematical formula “five diamonds equal an alif” (alif is the first letter of Arabic alphabet) may be seen in this picture (pictures 3b and 3c). The Arabic letters in pictures 3b and 3c, found amid excavations in Nevada, are in exactly the same style as North African Arabic. Again similarly, another rock was found in Nevada bearing the name “God”, the style of which is yet again reminiscent of the prevalent technique of seventhand eighth-century North Africa.

The calligraphical similarities between various writing styles of the Prophet’s name over diverse periods, particularly those relating to Africa and America, found during archaeological investigations are striking indeed. Figure A of picture 4 was found in al-Ain Lahag, Morocco and figure B in East Walker River; both are currently at the University of California. Figure C was discovered in Nevada and figures C and D were located in Churchill County and are also currently preserved at the University of California; likewise figure F was discovered in al-Haji Minoun, Morocco, while figure G, inscribed on ceramic, was revealed in al-Suk, Tripoli, Libya and figure H, at the University of California, was discovered at Cottonwood Canyon, while finally figure I was located on the border of Morocco and Libya. All these inscriptions belong to the eighthand ninth centuries, clearly illustrating the resemblance in style between North America and North Africa, as well as overtly suggesting a migration that occurred from Africa to America

7th century rock inscriptions with kalima in Nevada

Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.

3. In the twelfth century the Athapcan Tribe, comprised of native Apaches and Navajos, raided the area inhabited by the Arabs, who either ended up fleeing or were exiled toward the South. These illiterate natives were spellbound by the schools founded by the Arabs, and, perhaps with the assistance of captives, attempted to imitate the same subjects, transforming the geometrical shapes into mythical beasts, which carried on for centuries.

7th century rock inscriptions with kalima in NevadaReds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.4. Picture 5 is the Cufic writing found in 1951 in the White Mountains, close to the town of Benton on the border of Nevada. The words Shaytan maha mayan, i.e. the Devil is the source of all lies, have been written in a Cufic style peculiar to the seventh century.
5. Once more, a rock inscription belonging to post-650 CE, bearing the Cufic letters H-M-I-D of the word Hamid (picture 6), is another Arabic script discovered on the Atlata rocks in the Valley of Fire in Nevada.Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.5. Once more, a rock inscription belonging to post-650 CE, bearing the Cufic letters H-M-I-D of the word Hamid (picture 6), is another Arabic script discovered on the Atlata rocks in the Valley of Fire in Nevada.

6. While traveling from Malden to Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts in 1787 (on what is now RT. 16), the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris noticed some coins discovered by workers during road construction. The workers, not putting much value on these coins, presented him with a handful. Consequently, Harris decided to send these coins to the library of Harvard College for examination (picture 7). The study yielded that these were in fact Samarqand dirhams from the eighth and ninth centuries. As can be seen in the picture, the coins manifestly display the inscriptions La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasulullah (There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger) and Bismillah (in the name of God).Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.6. While traveling from Malden to Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts in 1787 (on what is now RT. 16), the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris noticed some coins discovered by workers during road construction. The workers, not putting much value on these coins, presented him with a handful. Consequently, Harris decided to send these coins to the library of Harvard College for examination (picture 7).

The study yielded that these were in fact Samarqand dirhamsfrom the eighthand ninth centuries. As can be seen in the picture, the coins manifestly display the inscriptions La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasulullah (There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger) and Bismillah (in the name of God).

6. While traveling from Malden to Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts in 1787 (on what is now RT. 16), the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris noticed some coins discovered by workers during road construction. The workers, not putting much value on these coins, presented him with a handful. Consequently, Harris decided to send these coins to the library of Harvard College for examination (picture 7). The study yielded that these were in fact Samarqand dirhams from the eighth and ninth centuries. As can be seen in the picture, the coins manifestly display the inscriptions La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasulullah (There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger) and Bismillah (in the name of God).Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.7. Picture 8 shows a piece of rock discovered in a cave in the region of Corinto in El Salvador, bearing the inscription Malaka Haji mi Malaya; this has been identified as belonging to the thirteenthcentury, suggesting a possible arrival of Muslims in South America, perhaps coming from somewhere near Indonesia.

7. During his second voyage, Columbus was told by the natives of Espanola (Haiti) of black men who had appeared on the island before him and they showed him the lances that had been left there by these Africans to support their assertions. The tips of the lances were of a metal, an alloy of gold, which they called guanin, a word which is semantically remarkably similar to the Arabic word ghina, meaning richness. Columbus had in fact brought some of this guanin back to Spain, recording that it was composed of 56.25% gold, 18.75% silver and 25% copper, ratios that were prevalent in African Guinea as standards for the processing of metals.

8. On his third voyage to the New World, Columbus visited Trinidad, where the sailors noticed the symmetrically patterned cotton and colorful handkerchiefs of the natives. Afterward, Columbus realized that the handkerchiefs, which the natives called almayzar, were all much the same in color, style, and use as the headscarves and waist bands used in Guinea. The word almayzar is Arabic, and denotes a cover, tie, apron, or skirt, and is a component of the regional costumes of the Moors, Arabs and, Berbers of NorthAfrica, who had conquered Spain in the eighth century.

Columbus observed that the local women wore cotton garments and wrote in astonishment that they had learned of the concept namus, i.e. chastity. In much the same vein, Hernan Cortes, another Spanish explorer, later recorded that the clothing of local women consisted of long veils and skirts decorated with ornaments that were similar to those of the Moors. Ferdinand, Columbus’ son, was also quick to notice the resemblance between the cotton dresses of the natives and the ornamented shawls fashioned by Moorish women in Granada. The cradles used by the natives, furthermore, very closely resembled those of North Africa.

9. Columbus recorded on 21 October 1492 that he had noticed a mosque on top of a mountain while sailing around Cibara on the northeast coast of Cuba. Relics of mosques carrying Qur’anic inscriptions on their minarets have been found in Cuba, Mexico, Texas, and Nevada since these times.

10. Leo Weiner, a well-known Harvard historian and linguist, stated in his book The Discovery of Africa and America, written in 1920, that Columbus was aware of the existence of Mandinka, an ethnic group of West Africa, in the New World. The same book also affirms that Columbus was aware that West African Muslims were living across North America, including the south, middle regions and Canada, as well as in the Caribbean, and that they had maritaland commercialties with the native tribes of Iroque and Algonquin.

11. A preponderance of the voyages embarked upon by Columbus and other Spanish and Portuguese explorers toward the other side of the Atlantic were undertaken only in the light of the geographical and navigational knowledge prepared by Muslims. Al-Masudi’s (871-957 CE) work Muruj’uz-Zahab, for instance, was written with this sort of data compiled by Muslim traders from across Africa and Asia.

Two of Columbus’ captains on the first voyage, in actual fact, were Muslims: Martin Alonso Pinzon was in charge of the Pinta, while his brother Vicente Yanez Pinzonwas the designated captain of Nina; both were from the Moroccan Marinid dynasty, descendants of Sultan Abu Zayan Muhammad III (r. 1362-1366). Formerly well-to-do ship riggers, they assisted Columbus in organizing his voyage of exploration, preparing the Santa Maria, the flagship, and covering all its expenses.

12. Christopher Columbus has recorded the custom of nose piercing, which used to be and still popular in the Middle Eastern and Arab countries, as being prevalent in some islands across the Atlantic also mentions the writing of letters in Arabic.

13. In the account of sixteenth century missionaries in America, the local copper mines, found particularly in Virginia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin were not operated by the natives, but instead by people from the Middle East, towards whom the natives nurtured a profound sympathy.

14. A sum of 565 names, 484 in America and 81 in Canada, of villages, towns, cities, mountains, lakes, rivers and etcetera, are etymologically Arabic, designated by locals long before the arrival of Columbus. Many of these names are in fact the same as names of Islamic places; Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahometin Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately revealtheir Arabic etymologicalancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.

The last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell just before the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1492. Non-Christians were forced to either convert to Catholicism to save themselves from the tyranny of the Inquisition or were exiled from the country. Documents exist which prove the existence of immigrant Muslims in Spanish America before 1550. In 1539 an edict from Spanish King Charles V was put into practice which forbade the immigration of Muslims to settlements in the West. This edict was later expanded to expel all Muslims from overseas Spanish colonies in 1543. The existence of Muslims in overseas islands and regions was known along with the fact that the Spanish king issued such an edict. Again, in many Islamic sources, it is noted that Muslims living in Spain and North Africa made overseas voyages during the Andalusia period. Scientific research on this subject will bring out many documents into the daylight, documents which have escaped the notice of both Muslims in America and those throughout the world, which will perhaps serve, in the future if not immediately, as a starting point for a re-evaluation of the history of America.

Structures in America and Aribia are similar

House and building Structures
Archaeological excavations conducted throughout North America and NorthAfrica reveala corresponding architecturalresemblance between ninthcentury buildings. The structure of a Berber house of the Atlas Mountains, Morocco (picture 9), for instance, is exactly the same as that of a house in New Mexico (picture 10). The same similarity can be traced between the Castle of Montezuma discovered in Arizona and the remnants found in Mesa Verdein Colorado and the general structure of Berber buildings (picture 11-12).

The same similarity can be traced between the Castle of Montezuma discovered in Arizona and the remnants found in Mesa Verde in Colorado and the general structure of Berber buildings (picture 11-12).Arabic words prevalent among natives prior to the arrival of Europeans

Arabic words prevalent among natives prior to the arrival of Eu ropeans
The pervasiveness of many Islamic words across the continent prior to European influx is verified by the following terms discovered in the regions currently known as New England and Nova Scotia, in America and Canada respectively. Fell pointed to some words as example of Arabic influence on Native Americans. All of the words listed below are derived from the Arabic language. However, time had eroded their original meanings and most are not used in Arabic today.

The research undertaken by Professor Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institute shows that a small cabin built from piles of rock found in Ellenville, New York is virtually the same as the cabin, again of rock, found around Aqabah, Southern Arabia, bothof which are thought to have been built around the start of the eighth century (picture 13).

The last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell just before the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1492. Non-Christians were forced to either convert to Catholicism to save themselves from the tyranny of the Inquisition or were exiled from the country. Documents exist which prove the existence of immigrant Muslims in Spanish America before 1550. In 1539 an edict from Spanish King Charles V was put into practice which forbade the immigration of Muslims to settlements in the West. This edict was later expanded to expel all Muslims from overseas Spanish colonies in 1543. The existence of Muslims in overseas islands and regions was known along with the fact that the Spanish king issued such an edict. Again, in many Islamic sources, it is noted that Muslims living in Spain and North Africa made overseas voyages during the Andalusia period. Scientific research on this subject will bring out many documents into the daylight, documents which have escaped the notice of both Muslims in America and those throughout the world, which will perhaps serve, in the future if not immediately, as a starting point for a re-evaluation of the history of America.

1000 AD (10th century Arab map showing America as the Unknown land Ard a Majhoola)

10th century Arab map showing America as the Unknown land Ard a Majhoola

(Archaic African American artist, Earl Sweeting depicting pre-Clolumbus contacts between Muslims and Native Americans)

Pre-Columbian Muslim contact with Native Americans

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. Through conversion and through immigration, the number of Muslims has now risen to between 6 and 16 million. There are more Muslims than Presbyterians and more American Muslims than American Jews

Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!

History is but a jig saw puzzle. The facts about Cherokee Muslims were initially brought out by Cherokees themselves. Ms. Sheila Musaji also has a website and has done research on the subject of Cherokee being Muslims. Dr. Robert Crane, the ex US Ambassador to the UAE, and an advisor to President Nixon who is a Cherokkee brought it to my attention, and he has written various articles on the subject. Dr. Crane did “revert” back to Islam.

Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!Reds have Green Roots? Islam in America and Native Americans. Salahuddin Watie was a Cherokee!

I quoted from “Digging for the Red Roots” by Mahir Abdal-Razzaaq El posted on Cherokee Online and other websites. The Main Cherokee site also has some refrences to the Muslim origins of the Cherokees Apparently there was a ship from Mali that came to the shores of the USA that brought the Quran with them and the Cherokees or many of them converted. IN the face of a dominant Christian culture the Muslim Black slaves and most of the Cherokees seem to have lost their Muslim heritage in the early 19th century..however many have survived and many have “reverted” back to Islam

1178 A Chinese document known as the Sung Document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land known as Mu-Lan-pi (America)

1310Abu Bakri (Abu Bakar), a Muslim king of the Malian Empire, spearheads a series of sea voyages to the New World.

1312Mandinga, African Muslims, from Mali and other parts of West Africa arrive in the Gulf of Mexico

1421:Admiral Zeng He sails to America

1) There are many documents, treaties, legislation and resolutions that were passed between 1600s and 1800s that show that Muslims were in fact here and were very active in the comunities in which they lived. Treaties such as Peace and Friendship that was signed on the Delaware River in the year 1787 bear the signatures of Abdel-Khak and Muhammad Ibn Abdullah

2) All of the documents are presently in the National Archives as well as the Library of Congress.

3) If you have access to records in the state of South Carolina, read the Moors Sundry Act of 1790.

4) Languages; in which some are influenced by Arabic, Persian, Hebrew words. Almost all of the tribes vocabulary include the word Allah.

5) The traditional dress code for Indian women includes the kimah and long dresses.

6) For men, standard fare is turbans and long tops that come down to the knees. If you were to look at any of the old books on Cherokee clothing up until the time of 1832, you will see the men wearing turbans and the women wearing long head coverings.

7) The last Cherokee chief who had a Muslim name was Ramadhan Ibn Wati of the Cherokees in 1866. http://www.cville.com/members/ridenour/swatie.htm
Nancy Paschal (Watie) Wheeler’s epitaphNinnie “Minnehaha” Josephine Watie – could read the
Bible fluently and quote Latin……………

Ninnie “Minnehaha” Josephine Watie (1853 – 2/27/1875, age 22, died in northern Cherokee Nation) married John Martin Daniel (10/2/1842 – 10/10/1918).  

According to the research of Mahir Abdal-Razzaaq El a Cherokee Blackfoot American Indian Sladdin “Stand” Watiewas the last Cherokee with a Muslim name. Therefore the issue of Ninnie Josephine Watie’semphasis on announcing to the world that she knew the Bible jives with the research of Mr Maher Abdal Rassaq El

There are various books written on the subject of Muslims in America which you can find in your local library or bookstore.

8) The ancient Cherokee identified themselves as Ani’Yun’-wiya, meaning “realor principal people.” Muslim Legacy in Early Americas (http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/africanm.htm)- W. Africans, Moors and Amerindians.

9) During the eighteenth century, the Cherokee people were primarily settled in more than forty thousand square miles area comprising the higher regions of the Southeast, the Appalachian (Apa-la-che) ….and South Carolina, eastern Tennessee (Tenasuh), northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama (Allahbamya). This is the same region where a group known as ‘Melungeons’ had settled. By 1840 almost all eastern Native American tribes were forced to migrate to their territories west of the Mississippi.http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/melungeon.htm

10) Sequuouya “invented” the script of the oral language….Historians relate that Sequoyah, fascinated by printed and written words in the English language, decided to adopt Roman and Greek symbols. However, it appears that he also used some Arabic alphabets, symbols, and its system of writing. Sequoyah’ssystem is similar to that used in teaching Arabic language and other Muslim languages which were strongly influenced by universal use of Arabic language among Muslims ever since the seventh century

Sequoyah developed the alphabet, or table of characters, for the Cherokee language, completing his task by 1821. After moving to Oklahoma, he encouraged the printing of books and a newspaper in Cherokee and became active in the political life of his tribe. Sequoyah’s fame is perpetuated in the name of the genus of California’s giant redwoods. This portrait depicts Sequoyah wearing a peace medal and holding a tablet with the Cherokee alphabet. It is a copy of the painting made by Charles Bird King in 1828, when Sequoyah was in Washington, D.C., to negotiate a treaty. King’s portrait was created for Thomas McKenney, commissioner of Indian affairs, who sought to record the culture and prominent figures of the Native American tribes. More than one hundred of the portraits that he commissioned were reproduced in McKenney and co-editor James Hall’s three-volume History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs (Philadelphia, 1838-1844). Henry Inman’s copies were part of the process of making lithographs for this publication.

11)Sequoyah: His famous portrait was done in 1828 by Charles Bird King in Washington, D.C. Suquoyahwas not alone in wearing Muslim dress. More than a dozen Native-American leaders of other tribes, including Chippewa, Creek, Iowa, Kansas, Miami, Potawatomi, Sauk & Fox, Seminole, Shawnee, Sioux, Winnebago, and Yuchi, wore the Muslim head dress. Some of them wore distinctly Arab head dress. Their famous portraits published between 1835 and 1870 confirm this fact.

12) The last Cherokee Native-American chief by the name Ramadhan Ibn Wati (popularly known as Stand Watie [1806-71]; there is no R in Cherokee Syllabary), who served as a Confederate brigadier general, surrendered his command to the United States on June 23, 1865. His son Saladin Watieserved on Southern Cherokee delegation to Washington, D.C. to sign a new treaty with the United States at the end of Civil War. He died mysteriously at the age of twenty-one. (Saladin is an anglicized name for Salahuddin, the famous Muslim Sultan who liberated Jerusalem from the crusaders in 1187).

13) 1839“Sayyid Sa’id”, ruler of Oman orders his ship “The Sultana” to set sail to America on a trademission, reaching New York, April 30, 1840. And although the voyage was not a commercialsuccess, it marks the point of Muslims successful friendly relations with America, which still continues to exist between many of the Islamic nations and the United States of today

14) 1865During the American Civil War, the “scorched earth” policy of the Northdestroyed churches, farms schools, libraries, colleges and a great dealof other property. On the morning of April 4, when the Federaltroops reached the campus of the University of Alabama with orders to destroy the university, “Andre’ Deloffre”, a modern language professor and custodian of the “Rotunda library” at the university, appealed to the commanding officer, to spare one of the finest libraries in the south. The officer, being sympathetic, sent a courier to General Croxton at his headquarters in “Tuscaloosa” asking permission to save the library, but the general’s reply was negative, so the officer reportedly said “I will save one volume as a memento of this occasion” and the volume selected was a rare copy of the Qur’an

15) 1900: Earliest recorded Muslim group to organize for communal prayers, in Ross, North Dakota.

The research on pre-Columbus contact between Muslims and Native Americans has been research by many scholars. Some are listed here:

Muslim African Americans like Clyde Ahmad Winters (who wrote a series of brilliant articles in the magazine Al-Ittihad in the late 1970s, including “Islām in Early North and South America”, and “The Influence of Mande Languages on America”,) and Shaykh AbdallahHakim Quick (who is a widely respected and accomplished historian with a doctorate in West African studies, and author of Deeper Roots), but also scholars from the African continent – Dr. Sulayman Nyang, the Gambian-born Howard University Professor of African Studies , as well as Kofi Wangara, and others .

The list of distinguished Non-Muslim African American scholars who have written on the subject is long, stemming from as far back as the 1930s. They include the writings of John G. Jackson (Introduction to African Civilization, 1937), J.A. Rogers (Africa’s Gift to America, 1961), Carter G. Woodson (The African Background Outlined), Harold G. Lawrence (African Explorers of the New World, 1962), and too many others to list here.

Professor Ivan Van Sertima is an internationally acclaimed historian, linguist, and anthropologist. His book They Came Before Columbus (1976), which AdemCarroll denigrates (has he truly read it?), won the Clarence L. Holt Prize in 1981. It is a literary prize awarded every two years “for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.” Van Sertima’s later compilation, African Presence in Early America, is considered a definitive work on the subject. On July 7, 1987 Dr. Van Sertimaappeared before a Congressional Committee to challenge the “Columbus myth”. In November 1991 he defended his thesis in an address to the Smithsonian Institute.

These scholarly, ground-breaking works, focusing upon African Muslim (as opposed to European Viking) pre-Columbia exploration of NorthAmerica, include those written by what is believed to be the first Western author to write on the subject, Harvard Professor Leo Weiner (Africa and the Discovery of America, 1922 ). Weinerheads a list of historians and social scientists who were neither African nor African Americans (including Basil Davidson, Robert Silverburg, Cyrus Gordon (Before Columbus, 1971), Legrand H. Clegg, Lewis Spence, Barry Fell , Jose V. Pimienta-Bey , and many others).

These works compliment references in the writings of Christopher Columbus, Balboa, and other European explorers, to those very same Muslim African explorers (specifically The Mandinka -the people of Kunta Kinte, ancestor of Alex Haley, author of Roots, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X) who were already present in the Carribean and North America, before the bearers of the Cross arrived (e.g. Narrative of the Third Voyage, The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Lionel Cecil Jane).

WHY DID MUSLIMS NOT CONDEMN VIOLENCE
http://rupeenews.com/2007/12/12/the-condemnation-blame-game-is-a-trap-sippenhaft-collective-guilt-is-a-war-crime-muslims-refuse-to-take-foster-parentage-of-the-morass-of-foreign-policy-failures-that-perpetuate-this-cycle/

Muslim explorers came to the land of the OriginalAmericans, met them, peacefully interacted withthem, traded with them (see the above depiction of such a meeting by the African American artist, Earl Sweeting), inter-married with them, and perhaps even gave another relative handful of them da’wa is hardly diffusionist.

Notes
1. Trento, Salvatore Michael. The Search for Lost America, p.15 Penguin Books, New York: 1978.
2. Fell, Dr. Barry. Saga America, p. 190, Time Books, New York: 1980.
3. ibid. p. xiv.
4. ibid. pp. 332-333.
5. ibid. pp. 333-334.
6 ibid. p. 182.
7. ibid. p. 243.
8. ibid. p. 26.
6. ibid. p. 276.
7. Teacher, John Boyd. Christopher Columbus, p. 380, New York: 1950.
8. Columbus, Ferdinand. The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus, p. 232 Rutgers Uni. Press, 1959.
9. Obregon, Mauricio. The Columbus Papers, The Barcelona Letter of 1493.
10. The Landfall Controversy, and the Indian Guides, McMillan Co., New York: 1991.
11. Weiner, Dr. Leo. Africa and the Discovery of America, Vol.2 p. 365-366 Philadelphia: 1920.
12. Obregon, 1493.
13. Trento, 1978, p. 23.
14. ibid. p. 29.
15. ibid. p. 65.
16. Fell, 1980. 250-252.
17. Trento, 1978, p. 15.
18. Fell, 1980. p. 400-403.

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Appendix A

Source: http://www.southsidepride.com/2008/03/articles/Anishinabe.html

Anishinabeman crafts unique spiritual path

(Photo by Jeanette Iacono)

In 1986, Nick Boswell walked into a used-book store and picked up an old copy of the Koran. He thought, “Oh, here’s something to give my brother to reform him.” Once he started reading, though, he knew the message was for him. It astounded him, hit the nail on the head, made perfect sense to him. He couldn’t stop reading. A new world opened to him and he started doing research on Islam, which convinced him further that he was on the right path.
Then he looked around for a mosque and discovered there was one in Columbia Heights. On July 4 of the same year, he walked up there from South Minneapolis. He thought he’d just sit in the back and watch, but he wasn’t allowed to do that. He had to participate in the prayers. “I went every day for a year,” he said, “and then they invited me to be on the Board of Directors.” Boswell’s Islamic faith is now central to his identity.

Boswell is, as he calls himself, an “Ojibwa warrior from the sovereign state of the White Earth Indian Reservation located within the confines of northern Minnesota.” He was taken away from his family when he was small and placed in a boarding school for three and a half years. He said it was “harsh but fair,” like the 21 years he spent in the military, first in Korea and much later in Vietnam, where he was disabled.

Upon his return to the United States, he got involved in the Franklin Avenue Social Service Committee as well as with the Native American community. He formed a group called St. Paul/Minneapolis Coalition of Chippewa Heirs. During that time he had two children and earned degrees in sociology and chemical dependency counseling.

Boswell was easy to spot when he arrived at Maria’s Restaurant a few weeks ago. He’s a big man in good shape, whose signature black beret, displaying a Combat Infantry Badge, covers his long, gray ponytail and frames his broad, affable face. His right hand and leg are noticeably crippled from his war injury. He said he barely hears out of his right ear. He ordered eggs and potatoes, no meat, because Maria’s doesn’t serve halal meat. At home, he said, he eats meat because he can buy halal—or kosher.

There are many qualities in Islam that appeal to Boswell. Two stand out.
As a “spiritually disillusioned warrior” he was glad to become part of a religion that champions oppressed people and has a true sense of justice. He saw the way the U.S. military treated the Korean people, “like animals,” and then the Vietnamese people the same way, and realized it was exactly the way Native Americans were treated in this country.

In the 1980s he joined with other Native Americans to fight to save land on the White Earth Reservation. “Vernon Bellecourt (of the American Indian Movement) told me, ‘Senator Boschwitz is taking our land,’ “ Boswell said.

Boschwitzintroduced a bill in the senate that “legalized all past illegal land transaction on White EarthReservation,” Boswell wrote in the Islamic Center of Minnesota’s newsletter. He continued, “The Ojibwa Indian have been historically treated as foreigners on our own soil, we have yet to be shown the respect of human rights and self-determination.”

Boswell compares the Native American fight for Indian land to the fight of the Palestinians who continue to lose their land and their dignity. “With Allah’s guidance, we will prevail, as our Palestinian Brothers and Sisters across the ocean will,” he also wrote in the Islamic Center newsletter.

“What about the suicide bombers?” was the question that couldn’t be avoided. The suicide bombers, he said, are willing to give their lives. They choose to give their lives. In Palestine they have to because they can’ t compete with jet bombers and tanks. “All they have left is their bodies.”

The other quality of Islam that speaks to Boswell is the strictness, the discipline. He said following the rules makes it possible to have happiness. When people don’ t steal from each other (personally or institutionally), when people focus on God and the well-being of the community rather than on their own selfish spheres, when there is no chemical abuse (chemical abuse is impossible where tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are strictly prohibited) people can live together in happiness.

The prohibition against alcohol is very important to Boswell. He quit drinking in 1975 and since then one of his goals in life is to find out what causes alcoholism. It was a scourge upon his own life and is a scourge upon the Native American community. He would like to find a solution.

His dream is to create an Islamic school for Native American children where they can live and be surrounded by adults who are not using drugs or alcohol. To prepare for his school, Boswell pursued Islamic studies in Egypt, from 1991 to 1994, and would like to do further Islamic studies.

In the late ’90s he was invited to study again in the Middle East but couldn’t leave his high school-age children. He would still like to consider it if he could get through all the red tape and get around the present political state of affairs.
After his children graduated from high school, he went to Springfield, Ill., where he earned a master’s degrees in human service counseling: alcohol and substance, gerontology, children and family, social service administration. In 2005, he studied at the Adler Graduate School in Hopkins. Why Adler? “I found the answer to my concern about alcohol in Adlerian psychology. The first five years are formative years. If parents are drinking in front of their children … In the Islamic lifestyle there is no drinking in front of the children.”

Boswell is a person of vast experience with all kinds of human beings. He has touched down in many cultures. He is curious about people, likes meeting people and apparently has a broad range of friends and acquaintances, whom he clearly enjoys. When he was a social worker, he was involved above and beyond the call of duty; people would call him in the middle of the night with their problems. He’s entrenched in people.

Our conversation took many turns. He offered many personal, and sometimes incongruent, takes on things. His sensitivity to the miniscule and odd forms of prejudice that erupt among people is finely honed.

Boswell sees no conflict between Native spirituality and Islam. He is proud to call himself Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Anishinabe, whichever name you want to use, and his origins are deeply respected by his Muslim brothers and sisters.

The Ojibwa believe in the spirits in mountains, streams, rocks and air. “We have ceremonies that call on the spirits. Islam says that God made spirits and mankind to worship him,” he explained. “It’s different in Christianity and Buddhism.”

Almsgiving, one of the five pillars of Islam (profession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, the fast and the pilgrimage to Mecca) came up. Almsgiving is the fountain of hospitality, which Boswell says Islam and Native American spirituality also have in common. “Muslims practice hospitality, like Natives do on the reservation. If someone’s hungry you have an obligation. And then people show their gratefulness by chopping wood, for example.” However, he said, almsgiving and hospitality of necessity have to be curtailed when there are drugs and alcohol involved. “Drug use affects the ability to be hospitable.”

What about hospitality between Sunni and Shia Muslims? Everyone wants to know about the conflict between them. Are they like the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland? Boswell clarified that there are many pacifist Muslims and, obviously, among the Muslim pacifists there is no violence. (Boswell himself is not a pacifist. “I admire them,” he said, “but I’m an infantry man. I couldn’t do that.”) Also there are many Sunni/ Shiamarriages unaffected by the flames of prejudice encouraged by outside forces.

He didn’t explain the violence but he did explain the difference between Sunni and Shia—Shias believe the Koran says the caliphs should be descendants of Muhammad and Sunnis believe the caliphs don’t have to be descendants of Muhammad. In its practical application, the difference is a class difference, each group with its own practices and traditions. In the U.S., as in the rest of the world, the majority of the globe’s approximately 1.3 billion Muslims are Sunni, but violence between the two groups doesn’t happen here in the U.S. as it does elsewhere, he said. My impression was that he sees violence and warfare across the planet as inexplicable, but inevitable.

Boswell says what he sees, and he sees a lot, which makes him hard to describe. You start to call him an idealist, but then you have to call him a realist. He is knowledgeable and grounded in his unique faith journey. He seems happy.

Appendix B

Pre-Columbian History

The true knowers of the Cherokee religion have kept it secret.  The traditionalists who live isolated in the woods of western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma told me when I was last there in 1970 as a personal emissary of President Nixon that when anthropologists come to study the religion, the traditionalists entertain them with a bunch of nonsense and then whoop with laughter when they see this nonsense printed in scholarly books. 

According to the traditionalists, the Cherokee religion came in the form of a book that was brought in a great fleet of ships out of the east when the Cherokees lived on an island where it was never cold.  After three generations, the bad people from the south killed almost everyone on all the islands and destroyed the book.  The remainder of the Cherokees immigrated west to the Great Land. 

Their mass migration from a tropical island in the Caribbean to the Yucatan Peninsula in the late 1300s was verified by the leading Meso-American archeologist, T. B. Irving (Al Hajji Ta’alim Ali).  He was the only person who had recorded the relevant inscriptions.  Twenty years ago, he said he would write up this history, but he died last year without ever doing so.  I have visited the Yucatan and asked other Mesoamerican archeologists about this history, but they know nothing about it.

After some more generations, the number of which I have forgotten, the bad people attacked again.  This time the Cherokees all migrated north and eastwards to find the lost book, because they knew that it came out of the east.  This is the origin story according to the Ani Waya clan.

What this all means is open to modern research and interpretation.  There is now thorough documentation of a great expedition of da’wa that the Emir of Mali, Abu Bakr, sent across the Atlantic in 1310 A.C. after he met Chinese Muslims in the hajj.  Scholars do not seem to be clear on whether he was hoping to bring Islam to China or to America, because there is evidence that at least two earlier Muslim expeditions had visited America, one in 1100 going westward from Africa and the other in 1178 eastward from China.  When the first expedition did not return, Emir Abu Bakr sent a second expedition two years later in 1312, reportedly including Mandinga members from what is now Liberia.  The detailed manifests of each of the Emir’s ships are now of historical record.

In recent years hidden libraries have been found in Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali.  I attended a conference in Mali’s capital Bamako in 1999 but could not get permission to travel the 200 miles north to Timbuktu, because, I was told, the French-influenced government in Bamako wants to hide its great Islamic past.  These libraries should be micro-filmed while they still exist in order to compare the practices of popular Islam with those of the Cherokees.

Although the customs of several tribes, some archeological evidence, and ethno-linguistic analysis give circumstantial evidence of this early presence of Islam in America, the only oral tradition, as far as I know, comes from my own ancestors in the Ani Waya tribe of the Cherokee.  We are not supposed to interpret tradition, because this can introduce distortions, but the ancient Cherokee traditions of what is called simply the “people” (Ani Yunwiya) coincide withthe devastating attacks by the Caribs from what is now Venezuela at the end of the 1300s.  And Mayan inscriptions of the next century record the arrival of a great people from the east.  The details about this people may be buried in the personal papers of the Muslim translator of the Qur’an, T. B. Irving.  Early evidence of Islam may be found only by scholars who are specifically looking for it.

The Modern Period

The history of the Cherokees after they arrived in the Carolinasis part of modern America, but it is not much clearer than their history in the earlier period, despite a wealthof documentary material and shelves of books on the subject.

Historians acknowledge that the Cherokees when first encountered by Europeans lived in large towns of several thousand people with two story brick buildings and an advanced system of legislative, executive, and judicial government.  They also acknowledge that within two hundred years from 1600 to 1800 their population had been reduced to only a fraction of what it had been.  This was part of the universal history of European colonialism, which managed to reduce the total native population in America from at least ten million to as little as a few hundred thousand.  With this catastrophic disruption came a similar loss of their religious and cultural heritage, including, in the case of the Cherokees, the dilution of authentic Islam. 

Some Western anthropologists have speculated that the Cherokee religion with its emphasis on a sophisticated divine law and system of government may derive from a lost Jewish tribe, but this may be merely an attempt by Christian missionaries to hide the Cherokees’ true Islamic identity.

Perhaps the best, recent research may be found in the book by Thomas E. Mails, The Cherokee People: the Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times, published by Marlow and Company.  Mails leads the others in his conclusion that the remarkable similarities between the Abrahamic religions and the traditionalCherokee religion precede any possibility of adoption from European influences.

Like the others, however, he concludes that such similarities must come from the ancient Hebrews.  This probably stems from his ignorance of Islam and his familiarity withthe commonalities withthe Jews in the Cherokee origin stories, including Adam and Eve, the flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham, the crossing of the Red Sea, Moses, the wandering in the wilderness, and the ark.  It is difficult to understand how he can ignore the fact that the traditionalist Cherokees started every prayer with Ya Allah and prayed five times a day and fasted during Ramadhan, though it is understandable that Mails does not know the Cherokee rituals of the Hajj, since these have been kept highly secret. 

Unfortunately, only a knowledgeable Muslim would be able to mine the wealthof very difficult source materialto compare this with Islam.  The major original source, since the Cherokees had lost their written language long before they moved to what is now the United States, is the fourteen volume collection known as the John Howard Payne Papers, Ayer MS 689, in the Ayer Collection of Americana, Newberry Library of the University of Chicago.  These are in minisculehandwriting and in script that is very difficult to decipher.  The Payne papers are by Payne and by a couple of others who authored individual chapters, especially Daniel Sabin Butrick, who was a Christian missionary to the Cherokees from 1817 to 1847.

In another file on the Cherokees that probably is in my sister’s historic stone barn in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, I have reference to a typewritten copy of the Payne originals prepared by his great granddaughter.  She spent an entire year turning the almost illegible manuscript into readable copy.  Payne, who lived from 1791 to 1852, unlike Butrick, was sympathetic to the Cherokees.  His informants among the Cherokees were born as early as 1735 at a time when contact withoutsiders had barely begun.  Payne was a poet by tradeand lived withthe Cherokees during the period of their successful effort to gain U.S. Supreme Court acceptance of their sovereignty and their unsuccessful effort thereafter to stop their removal to Oklahoma.  One would have to examine the so-called Payne papers to determine what may be authentic scholarship on the Cherokees and what was propagandaand spin to demean them.  My impression is that the unexpurgated Payne writings are available to whoever can find them or at least were until forty years ago.  In all research on the wisdom of Islam in the Cherokee religion, one must beware of a long history of cultural genocide.

The earliest account of the Cherokees was James Adair’s The History of the American Indians.  He was a trader withthe Cherokees in 1736 and first pointed out the identity of the Cherokee religion with Abrahamicsources.  In 1888, James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees does not discuss these origins but does treat in detail Cherokee astronomy, which he learned about from Cherokees who were born as early as 1800.  Other books, such as Haywood’s of 1823 and Washburn’s of 1869 should be compared withthe more recent books, such as The Eastern Cherokees by William Harlen Gilbert, Jr. and others, which are stored, together with my most valuable books, in my sister’s barn.

The more recent books in some ways are more objective, but the definitive history of the Cherokees, and especially analysis of the relation of Islam to the founding of America has yet to be written.  This is the task of young American-born Muslims, because they know that other Americans fear what they do not know and that this history would show that Islam is not foreign to America.

The Original Founders of Modern America

The Cherokee were Grandfathers of the Great American Experiment in the holistic symbiosis of order, justice, and liberty.  Jefferson said that he borrowed the American system of government from the Iroquois confederation.  If the Cherokee religion and political culture were introduced into America by Muslim settlers from North Africa two hundred years before Columbus “discovered ” America, then it remains to be researched whether the Iroquois system of representative government comes from the Cherokee nation.

Jefferson was familiar with the Iroquois and maintained contact with the leaders of a great religious revival among the Iroquois from about 1800 to 1810.  He spent some time with their greatest religious leader, known as Handsome Lake of the Seneca, and not only corresponded with him but invited him twice to the White House.  The details are in The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca by Anthony F C Wallace, Vintage, 1972, 395 pages. 

The origin of this religious rebirth, like that of the coeval rebirth among the Cherokee further south, lay in their response to the destruction of the native way of life by the white settlers, especially by the introduction of alcohol and gambling, and by the destruction of the nuclear family and of moral community.  It was also a reaction against the missionary efforts of the Christians who wanted the Iroquois to assimilate into Western society and disappear.  Handsome Lake was convinced that his people could not adopt Christianity without adopting everything bad about Western society along with it.

Part of the spiritual quest by young American Muslims today should be to explore whether the religion that he revived was Islam as borrowed from the Cherokee, who had been adopted under the tribal name of Tuscarora into the Iroquois confederacy.  By the year 1500, the Cherokee had established a vast trading empire in eastern North America, and a portion of them, known as the Tuscarora, moved from North Carolina to Iroquois country before the arrival of the first European settlers.  The Tuscarora who lived with the Iroquois were the first to adopt Christianity as their religion, but the original religion of the Tuscarora was not the ancient Iroquois religion but Islam.  This origin of the Seneca rebirth was not known to Wallace, but he recounts in detail the revival of this religion and Jefferson’s admiration of it.

According to an article in The Message, published by the Islamic Society of NorthAmerica, in July, 1996, the last Cherokee chief with a Muslim name was Ramadhan ibn Wati, who lived from 1806 to 1871 and governed during the time of the great split between the Union Cherokee and the Confederate Cherokee in the American Civil War.  Chief (Emir) Ramadhanwas a Confederate brigadier general who shared the South’s opposition to the encroaching power of the industrialized North.  He surrendered his command to President Lincoln on June 23, 1865, and his young son, Saladin Watie, named after the famous liberator of Jerusalem in 1187, Salah al Din, served in the Southern Cherokee delegation to sign a treaty of surrender in Washington, D.C.

The traditionalist Cherokee political system was based on governance from the bottom up, rather than from the top down as was common in Europe.  The ultimate sovereign was Allah and he governed through the individual members of the Cherokee nation, each of whom carried the amana to be a representative of the divine on earth.  The nation was composed of autonomous bands or clans, such as the Ani Waya.  The members of each band chose their leaders through a system of indirect election of at least four communities.  One community represented the warriors, one the religious leaders, and one the merchants.  The fourth I believe may have been the judicial community.  These four elected leaders in turn elected the head of the band, and the heads of the bands elected the leader of the nation.

This system today is known as constitutional or republican federalism.  It contrasts with the system of absolutist democracy bound by popular majority rule, which all of America’s founders condemned as inherently unjust and dangerous.

In times of trouble, women rose to prominence, especially to arbitrate between the young warriors who wanted to risk the lives of their sons and the elders who preached non-violence in all except the greatest threats to group survival.  This matriarchal custom still existed at the time of the American Revolutionary War, according to ThedaPerdue’s “Cherokee Women and the Trail of Tears,” published in Journal of Women’s History, vol 1, 1989, pp. 14-17.  But, the butchering of the Cherokees by the American settlers and their abandonment by the British undercut the traditionalists and nearly destroyed the entire set of cultural traditions that had survived for centuries since the time of the origins in the Caribbean.  This period of Cherokee history, which exceeds in its tragedy even that of the Trail of Tears, and the role of the Cherokee women is described in Tom Hatley’s book, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of the Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 220 ff.

The Cherokee leaders often were known by Anglo names.  The most famous was Nancy Ward, who was known as the principal Ghigau of the Cherokee Nation, a term translated by the colonialists as “war-leader.” In fact, she was the principal peace leader, as described in Norma Tucker’s article, “Nancy Ward: Ghigau of the Cherokees,” in Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 53, 1969. 

She persuaded the Raven of Chota, who was the war leader of the principal Cherokee town, to seek peace.  As the official emissary of the entire nation, she persuaded Jefferson’s emissary, Arthur Campbell, to declare an armistice or truce prior to the signing of a peace treaty.  Unfortunately, according to Campbell’s own diary, “I wished first to visit the vindictive part of the nation … and to destroy the whole as much as possible by destroying their habitations and provisions.” Although he had spared Chota in the past out of respect for Nancy Ward, he attacked in the middle of winter and commenced to destroy a thousand houses, fifty thousand bushels of corn, and all but a few small towns.  The Raven of Chota reported later, as recorded in O’Donnell, Southern Indians in the American Revolution, pp. 118-119, the Virginians “dyed their hands in the blood of many of our women and children, burnt 17 towns, and destroyed all our provisions by which we and our families were almost destroyed by famine this Spring.”

Jefferson was a Virginia politician so he did what was politically correct.  But, at the same time, he was impressed by the Cherokee traditionalists, including the women leaders at the time of their maximum tragedy, who tried to practice what Mahatma Gandhi called satyagraha or peaceful defense based on spiritual power.  This is a well established practice in Islamic history (see the section on heroes in [url=http://www.theamericanmuslim.org]http://www.theamericanmuslim.org),[/url] but needs much further research.

The Iroquois adopted the best of the Cherokee religion, and this is what most impressed Jefferson in later years.  The religion as revived by Handsome Lake opposed both cultural assimilation, which is suicide, and cultural nativism, which is the continuation of a culture based on worship of one’s own ethnic group rather than on the enlightened understanding of divine revelation and natural law.  According to Wallace’s book, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, Handsome Lake’s primary message consisted of four basic principles:

1) All people came from the same source, a transcendent God, and thus are equal in dignity.

2) All religions are legitimate paths to God.  Therefore one should not blame the Christians for not accepting the divine revelation that he was reviving.  They should follow their religion until they understand that the religion that he was reviving teaches a truer knowledge of God.

3) Violence results from ignorance of true religion.  Therefore knowledge is the most powerful weapon against war, and war is almost never the best solution to conflict. And

4) More important than knowledge is love of the transcendent God, because love is the path to knowledge.

Much research remains to be done to connect Jefferson’s then unique concept of federalism with Islamic concepts of religious and political pluralism.  The efforts of both the Cherokees and Iroquois to conduct interfaith meetings with the Europeans as equals impressed the Christian missionaries, since such interfaith outreach without any effort to convert others was almost unknown in the Christian world. 

Jefferson tried to keep his personal relationship with God secret and largely succeeded, though recent research in his twenty volumes of hitherto secret personal correspondence should shed much light on this, including the influence of Islam. 

Perhaps his major message was the same as that taught by the Cherokee and Iroquois.  No people, he said, can remain free unless they are educated; education consists above all in knowledge of virtue; and no people can remain virtuous except within a religious framework, whether it be Christian or of some other faith tradition, and unless this framework of respect for the divine legitimacy of cultural and religious pluralism and for the power of interfaith cooperation pervades all public life. 

This is the profound wisdom of the Great American Experiment, but we have just begun to explore its ancient roots.

1.  Chairman, Global Justice Institute, 2121 K Street, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20037.  Cell phone: 407 733-8678. E-mail: transcendentlaw@aol.com Web: [url=http://www.theamericanmuslim.org]http://www.theamericanmuslim.org[/url] Cherokee, Indiana.  Co-founder and former Executive Vice-President, American Indian National Bank, 1974; President, Native American Economic Development Corporation, 1975-77.

Appendix C

Propaganda poster of national-liberation American Indian movement with an inscription: ” Wars of Indians never will come to the end “.

2. Sheikh Nik Bosvoll, the veteran American Indian правозащитного movements, the leader of moslems-Indians, the missionary.

3. Clyde Беллькурт in арафатке. A photo of 1973.

4. Clyde Беллькурт and sheikh Abdulkarim Kibrisi, the chapter тариката накшбандийя-хакканийя in the USA. Have been come out with assumptions, that Белльвекурт secretly professes the Islam for quite some time now.

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