Special to WorldTribune.com
Liberals now argue America is — and always has been — a Muslim nation. Their goal is to make Islam an intrinsic part of the American experience, thereby hoping to present any criticism of Islamist behavior as being somehow “Un-American.”
Leading the charge is CNN. It recently aired an episode of “The United Shades of America,” hosted by W. Kamau Bell, a staunch critic of President Trump. Bell attempted to prove that Islam is as American as mom and apple pie.
“Islam has always been part of the American fabric,” a Muslim man in Detroit said to Bell. “A lot of people think that Islam is from a foreign country, or is a foreign religion. It’s not — it’s very American.”
Why? Because, according to Bell and his Muslim interviewee, during the slave trade about “25 to 30 percent” of the black slaves brought to America were Muslims. Hence, Muslim slaves were allegedly here before the Founding and played a pivotal role in building American society.
In fact, it was President Obama who first advanced the myth that the Muslim faith had deep roots in the New World. In his famous 2009 speech in Cairo, Obama said, “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He added: “The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco.”
This is false. The republican city-state of Ragusa (known as Dubrovnik in present-day Croatia) on the Adriatic Sea was the first to recognize America’s independence. It was not Muslim Moroccans, but Catholic Croatians who first reached out to our fledgling republic.
Moreover, Obama and CNN are not just peddling nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense. Liberals are attempting historical revisionism, the deliberate rewriting and falsification of history to advance radical multiculturalism. No lie is too big if it pushes a pro-Muslim agenda.
The overwhelming majority of slaves who were brought to the United States were Christian. The 25-30 percent figure of black slaves being Muslim is completely made up. There is not a scintilla of documentary evidence to prove it.
Many of the slave traders, however, were Muslim — a fact conveniently ignored by politically correct leftists. And whatever tiny percentage of slaves were Muslim, their faith was quickly submerged and dissolved by the rampant Christianity in the Americas.
Islam did not survive the slave ships crossing the Atlantic; this is why there were no mosques or minarets and very few copies of the Koran in the Old South. It was a foreign religion that came from a foreign region. The historical reality — the one that is being systematically eradicated on college campuses — is that America was an outgrowth of British and Christian civilization. Islam had nothing to do with our Founding; rather, from its inception America has been a Christian nation. These truths do not (and should not) exclude tolerance for other religious faiths.
But to claim the United States has always been a Muslim country is akin to saying Ireland is Buddhist. It is globalist propaganda masquerading as history.
Yet, the irony is that the Left refuses to apply its Philistine standards to Islam itself. In New Orleans, for example, monuments and statues dedicated to Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, the president of the old Confederacy, and Gen. Robert Lee have been torn down. The reason: They honored men who were slaveholders. Radical liberals are embarking upon a great cultural purge. They are determined to cleanse from our public square statues, memorials and monuments that are historical reminders of slavery and racism. Leave aside that slavery is part of our history and should not be washed away; and that every major civilization and culture in the world — ancient Egypt to the Romans, the Middle East to Africa, the Mayan Indians to Asia — engaged in slavery or barbaric forms of human bondage. That it is not a uniquely American sin. Instead, the very opposite is true: Slavery is a universal sin.
It is remarkable how liberals refuse to acknowledge Islam’s dark, deep-seated ties to slavery.
Prophet Muhammad not only had slaves, but sanctioned the enslavement of infidels. He ordered his followers to slaughter (and behead) Islam’s enemies, and then to enslave their women and children.
Since Islam’s inception, slavery has been a common practice across the Muslim world. For centuries, invading Ottoman Turks took countless Europeans as slaves — Greeks, Armenians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Rumanians and Bulgarians (to name just a few). In fact, slavery continues to this day in some Muslim countries, such as Sudan, Somalia and parts of Nigeria. ISIS also has numerous slaves. Many of the victims are Christians.
By the Left’s own logic, liberals should be tearing down mosques and minarets.
Just as Jackson was a slaveholder, so was Muhammad. Instead, CNN desperately wants to portray Islam as a founding religion of America. This, however, begs the question: Why is slavery unacceptable for dead white male Christians, but completely acceptable — if not forgivable — for dead Arab male Muslims?
The answer is obvious: Liberals are self-hating Americans, who despise Christianity and Western civilization. They are cowards, and know perfectly well that if they target mosques the same way as statues of Confederate leaders Islamic Jihadists will cut their throats.
In order to destroy Christianity, the Left must whitewash the sins of Islam and rewrite America’s past. George Orwell warned us that whoever controls the past, controls the present. And whoever controls the present, controls the future.
The United States of Islam? Give the liberals time. It’s coming.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at WorldTribune.com and the host of “The Kuhner Report” weekdays 12-3 pm EST on WRKO AM-680 in Boston.