John Hamed, Jr., Barry Fell, and the Backdating of Islam in America
by Hugh Fitzgerald
John Hamed, Jr.’s letter criticizing a previous correspondent’s assertions about Islam first made the point that the Qur’an is full of references to “love” and “mercy” and “peace,” that where in the Qur’an violence appears, it was merely descriptive of what the early Muslims, suffering from the “relentless onslaught” of its enemies, were forced engage in to survive, that Islam teaches monotheism and “accepts the prophecies Moses and Jesus,” and that 7 million Muslims now live in America, “educated and middle-class,” and this part of his letter ends on a defiant note: “we are not going anywhere.”
He now proceeds both to backdate the presence of Muslims in America to many centuries before Columbus, and to claim that Muslims served important roles in Columbus’s voyages. He brings in, as his chief authority for the backdating, Dr. Barry Fell, to support the astonishing claims of his finding “the ruins of Muslim schools” in the American West:
Muslims have been here for a very long time. Dr. Barry Fell, an American historian, discovered the ruins of Muslim schools in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Indiana dating back to 700 to 800 C.E. In 1492, Columbus had two captains for the Pinta and the Nina who were Muslim. Columbus and others later discovered ruins of mosques and minarets with inscriptions of Qu’ranic [sic] verses in Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Nevada. We can go on and on, but suffice to say, Islam was here even before there was a U.S.A. There are more than 500 places in the U.S. today with clearly Islamic names: Mecca, Indiana; Medina in New York, Ohio and Texas; Toledo, Ohio; Mahomet, Illinois; Islamorada, Florida; etc.
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