A People’s History of Muslims in the United States

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/04/peoples-history-muslims.html



A People’s History of Muslims in the United States
By Juan Cole | Apr. 21, 2014
(By Alison Kysia)

When I teach history related to Islam or Muslims in the United States, I begin by asking students what names they associate with these terms. The list is consistent year after year: Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali.

All of these individuals have affected U.S. history in significant ways. If we take a step back and look at the messages these figures communicate about Muslims in U.S. history, we see a story dominated by men and by the Nation of Islam. Although important, focusing solely on these stories leaves us with a skewed view of Muslims in U.S. history. Even these examples are a stretch. Most of my students reference 9/11 as the first time they heard of Muslims.

Mainstream textbooks do little to correct or supplement the biases that students learn from the media. These books distort the rich and complex place of Muslims throughout U.S. history. For example, Malik El-Shabazz (consistently referred to first by the name Malcolm X rather than the name he chose for himself before his assassination) is framed as the militant, angry black man, the opposite of the Christian, nonviolent Martin Luther King Jr. Muhammad Ali is another popular representative of Muslims in U.S. history textbooks but is misrepresented through the emphasis on his boxing career rather than his anti-racist activism against the Vietnam War.

Muslims have been part of our story from the beginning. For example, although U.S. history textbooks wouldn’t dare leave out the sanitized story of Christopher Columbus, they fail to include the Muslim-led revolt against his son, Diego, on Dec. 25, 1522. Armed with the machetes they used to cut cane, these rebels, including enslaved West African Muslims, succeeded in killing a number of colonial settlers before the insurrection was quelled; of the 15 bodies recovered, nine were Europeans. As Michael Gomez explains in Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas, Muslims were among the first to resist the colonialists. In fact, colonial authorities had long seen these “Moors” as a threat. According to Sylviane Diouf, author of Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, colonial documents between the Crown and conquistadors describe enslaved Muslims as “arrogant, disobedient, rebellious, and incorrigible.” Diouf writes that no fewer than five decrees were issued against these rebels in the first 50 years of colonization. Records from as early as 1503 confirm a request by Nicholas de Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola, to Queen Isabella asking her to restrict further shipment of enslaved Muslims because they were “a source of scandal to the Indians, and some had fled their owners.” It’s essential that students know that resistance to colonial domination has always been a part of our history—and Muslims played a role in this resistance from the earliest days.


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Did you know Muslims invented the number zero in 650 AD? They did it in a mathematical language called 'Algebra".

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I think that 650AD date is for the Hindu invention

See http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xKYI_NrtRRAC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19

[unhappycamper]

2. I stand corrected; thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero

0 (number)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Zero)

0 (zero; BrE: /ˈzɪərəʊ/ or AmE: /ˈziːroʊ/) is both a number[1] and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It fulfills a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, 0 is used as a placeholder in place value systems. In the English language, 0 may be called zero, nought or (US) naught /ˈnɔːt/, nil, or — in contexts where at least one adjacent digit distinguishes it from the letter "O" — oh or o /ˈoʊ/. Informal or slang terms for zero include zilch and zip.[2] Ought or aught /ˈɔːt/ has also been used historically.[3] (See Names for the number 0 in English.)

History

Ancient Egyptian numerals were base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1740 BCE the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. The symbol nfr, meaning beautiful, was also used to indicate the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids and distances were measured relative to the base line as being above or below this line.[12]

Mesopotamia

By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonian mathematics had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from about 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeros with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges.[13]

The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone. Nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60), looked the same because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them.

India

The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol or an empty space for separation is attributed to India, where, by the 9th century AD, practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of division.[14][15] The Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th–2nd century BC) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code.[16][17] He and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word śūnya to refer to zero or void.

In 498 AD, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that "sthānāt sthānaṁ daśaguņaṁ syāt"[18] i.e. "from place to place each is ten times the preceding,"[18][19] which is the origin of the modern decimal-based place value notation.[20][21]

The oldest known text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhâga, dated 458 AD, where shunya ("void" or "empty&quot was employed for this purpose.[22] The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuja Temple at Gwalior in India, dated 876 AD.[23][24] There are many documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, but their authenticity may be doubted.[13]

[MineralMan]

3. Alcohol is derived from Arabic, too.

[theboss]

4. Here is a question to totally sidetrack this thread.....

Is the Nation of Islam really a "Muslim" organization? It seems more like a black nationalist movement that has some Muslim trappings thrown on it.

It's obvious why NOI dominates our discussion of Muslims in America. They were prominent at the height of the civil rights struggle, had an extremely charismatic spokesman in Malcolm X, and - for a brief time - made major inroads into the sports world with Ali. Aside from that, Muslims have not had a large presence in the US until recently.