CNN: Islam Part of America’s Founding

[IAMX 3,055]

 

 

CNN’s W. Kamau Bell devoted a recent episode of his series United Shades of America to exploring Muslim and Arab communities.

 

Aside from some interesting vignettes, the program is left-wing, anti-Trump propaganda that firmly establishes the network’s political bias. Bell also serves up some historical distortions of the sort spoonfed to undergraduates on politically-correct campuses, such as the claim that Islam has always been present in the U.S.

 

“Islam has always been part of the American fabric,” one Muslim man in Detroit tells Bell at an anti-Trump event. “A lot of people think that Islam is from a foreign country, or is a foreign religion. It’s not — it’s very American.” He goes on to criticize “those more violent voices in our society” — and he does not mean radical Islamists. Bell is so impressed that he asks the man, “When are you running for mayor?”, comparing him to a “young Barack Obama.”

 

It was Obama who told the Muslim world in his Cairo speech in 2009: “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He offered a dubious proof: “The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco.” He also cited the Treaty of Tripoli, which was essentially an agreement to pay a bribe to Muslim pirates who had made a practice of kidnapping Americans.

For CNN, the argument that Islam has “always” been present in the U.S. rests largely on the claim that a significant minority of black slaves were Muslim.

 

To the extent that Islam was a part of early American history, it was a negative force, an external enemy. The predations of the Barbary pirates prompted the U.S. to build a world-class navy and deploy the fledgling Marines. As Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger recall in Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History, Jefferson was shocked when, at a meeting in London with the Tripolitan ambassador and John Adams in 1786, the Muslim envoy declared that American Christians were fair game for piracy: “… all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of faithful persons to plunder and enslave.”

 

There are echoes of that Islamic supremacism in the public statements of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whom Bell interviews jovially on CNN. After the San Bernardino terror attack in December 2015, CAIR not only ensured an Islamic burial for the terrorists and represented their family in court, but blamed the murder of 14 Americans and the wounding of 22 more at a Christmas party on U.S. foreign policy.

(CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding operation — none of which Bell mentions.)

 

 

It's obviously fake news, but it's rather comical, this assertion that Islam had anything to do with the forming of the United States. I'm sure we can all imagine how the secularism discussion would have went if there was Islamic influence.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

This is ridiculous at it's core and totally infuriates me to no end. Yes, some slaves were probably Muslim but a very very small few of them. Islam did not have any significant impact in founding our country at all and was not in our country to any large extent if hardly at all. The earliest known dealing with Islam was with the Barbary Pirates as stated above. That is because they were taking our ships and keeping the sailors as slaves, because that's what they did. That is when we sent my fellow Marines to go clean house, and we never heard anything else about the Barbary Pirates again. 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2017 by cyberfx1024

[ready4ONE 5,400]

It's always fascinating to watch people with little actual knowledge pontificate as though what they wish was true is in fact unassailably true. #Sad

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

The answer to those who are easily triggered by CNN reports: turn the channel

[Boiler 44,855]

Vaguely amusing, perhaps they were confusing Allah, blessing be upon him, with Amish?

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

1 hour ago, ccneat said:

The answer to those who are easily triggered by CNN reports: turn the channel

The thing about that is that there are some people that'll think that it was on CNN so it must be true.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

1 hour ago, ready4ONE said:

It's always fascinating to watch people with little actual knowledge pontificate as though what they wish was true is in fact unassailably true. #Sad

I have read my history so I know the truth. I am not pontificating just stating facts.

[Boiler 44,855]

Not sure anybody actually believes anything on CNN.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

I do rember something in American history about Muslims and Tripoly. 

[Boiler 44,855]

####### kicking?

[TBoneTX 44,669]

An inappropriate post has been removed, along with a post quoting.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

3 hours ago, cyberfx1024 said:

The thing about that is that there are some people that'll think that it was on CNN so it must be true.

And where do you get your news?

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

56 minutes ago, ccneat said:

And where do you get your news?

It all depends on what the news is. Usually Jazeera, Alarabiya, BBC, pulsar,Gulf times, strait times for just a few.I also check the sources of a story as well so that I know I ain't reading no fake news. So a anonymous source or a memo written by so and so but no one has seen does not work for me.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

All I can tell you cyber is what you were taught, and what actually happened regarding Muslims in the New World are very much at odds. The knowledge is out there if you are interested, but the premise of the OP is flat out alternative history. Followers of Islam beat Columbus to the New World by hundreds of years.

[Dashinka 24,109]

32 minutes ago, ready4ONE said:

All I can tell you cyber is what you were taught, and what actually happened regarding Muslims in the New World are very much at odds. The knowledge is out there if you are interested, but the premise of the OP is flat out alternative history. Followers of Islam beat Columbus to the New World by hundreds of years.

I thought followers of Thor beat the followers of Islam?  Then of course there were Yupiks crossing over in Beringa with their religions. Who cares.