American Muslims: A long history of exclusion

In 2017, Trump’s proclamation banning individuals from six Muslim-majority countries and North Korea from entering the United States is framed as a religiously specific exclusionary measure, thus deserving the name 'Muslim Ban'.  

Trump rationalised his executive action stating: “As president, I must act to protect the security and interests of the United States and its people.”  

The Muslim Ban was challenged on constitutional grounds by attorney generals from across the country but the Supreme Court on June 26, 2018, handed down a 5-4 decision that upheld presidential power to regulate immigration and entry into the country based on national security grounds.  

Trump’s Muslim exclusionary measures harked back to the earliest period in the Western hemisphere related to Islam and Muslims. America’s split personality on immigration, inclusion, and exclusion, has a long history and predates the official founding of the country in 1776.

Indeed, the story of Muslims in America dates back to the earliest recorded period in the post-Columbus 1492 era.  

Here, the focus is not to imply that history in the Western hemisphere begins with Columbus’ arrival; rather an effort to date early Muslim arrival to the region.  

While narrative and theories of pre-Columbus West African Muslim contacts with the indigenous inhabitants are present and is still subject to research; nevertheless, the evidence of post-1492 Muslim presence is overwhelming and undisputed.  

In her seminal work, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, Dr. Sylvine Diouf maintains that between 15 to 20 percent of all slaves that were shipped to the new world were Muslim. 

Similar evidence is put forth by Allan Austin’s book, Muslims in Antebellum America, which has biographies of 76 Muslim slaves and arguing that a total of 29,695 Muslim slaves arriving in the United States based on estimates of 10 percent of all West Africans introduced between 1711 and 1808.

More critically, the first exclusionary measure in the new colonies targeted Muslims. On May 11, 1526, Spain adopted the first in a string of anti-Muslim legislation with the goal of stopping the arrival of Muslims in the newly colonised lands.  

Dr. Sylvine Diouf in her book argued that “a royal decree specifically forbade the introduction of Wolof ( from Senegal, Negros from the Levant, blacks who had been raised with the Moor.”  

The royal decree was re-issued at least five times over a period of 50 years while constantly referencing the Wolof of West Africa, who by this time were predominantly Muslim ethnic group.  

In 1522, records show the Wolof revolt on “the sugar plantation of Admiral Don Diego Colon – Christopher Columbus’ Son-in Hispaniola, in the territory of what is today the Dominican Republic, rebelled in San Juan, Puerto Rico; in Santa Marta; Columbia; Panama” and described in documents of the period as being: “arrogant, disobedient, rebellious and incorrigible.”

Slave records point to the Wolof, Tukulor, and Mandingo ethnic groups living in Mexico in 1549 making up to 29 percent of the African population in that region.  Furthermore, “between 1560 and 1650, according to notarial records, the Wolof, Mandingo, Fulani, Hausa, Nago, Mina, and Susu accounted for 15 percent of the Africans there and many, if not most, would have been Muslims. Mandingo, Fulani, Hausa, Nago, Mina, and Susu accounted for 15-19 percent of the Africans in Saint-Domingue between 1760-1800.”

In what came to be the United States, the percentage of Muslim slaves were higher than other parts due to a preference for the importation of West Africans that have skills in rice and indigo cultivation.  

Thus, we find between 1733 and 1807, close to 30 percent of the slaves that were imported to South Carolina were mostly from Muslim areas in West Africa.  

In Virginia for the period 1710-1769, the figure for importations from West Africa is 58 percent. Georgia and North Carolina slaves were usually bought in South Carolina, and their ethnic composition was comparable to that state’s with, as Philip Curtin puts it, “a heavy but non-quantifiable bias toward Senegambians and Sierra Leone.”  

“Allah. Muhammad.” A 1731 Slave found in Kent County, Pennsylvania. This slave is known today as Job Ben Solomon, Omar Ibn Said from Senegal/North Carolina and Bilali Mohamed – Sea Islands in Georgia is known to have remained a devout Muslim all his life and died uttering the Shahada. 

Diouf proposes “an estimate of 15 to 20 percent, or between 2.25 and 3 million Muslims over both American continents and the Caribbean Islands.”

The rising tide of Islamophobia in America has informed and shaped the current exclusionary measures directed at Muslims in the same way it was during the early period and will take time and effort to reverse it. 

Indeed, the language and the target speak of Muslims from the six countries, but the intended outcome is a curtailment of the rights and constitutional protections accorded to American Muslim citizens.  

In response, American Muslim leadership should take stock of the long history of Islam in America and build a proactive and inclusive narrative that centers the broad experiences of African Americans and the civil and human rights struggles they have led to strive toward a more perfect union.