PBS’s ‘American Muslims: A History Revealed’

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PBS has created “a landmark series of short documentary films that reveal and explore the untold histories of Muslims in the United States” (h/t Leroy); the series is titled “American Muslims: A History Revealed.”[1]  This series consists of six short documentaries that largely focus on a select few Muslims in the United States during various periods of American history.  If you are looking for short human-interest stories, want to see how the teachings of Islam can be misinterpreted, how actual names are changed in front of your eyes to apparently satisfy a narrative, and the religion of Islam supposedly represented by three groups that preach Islamic heresy, this is your documentary.  If you are looking for fact-filled in-depth information about Muslims as a group in American history, this is not your documentary.

And there is another matter.  This series relies on interviews with a number of scholars; four of those scholars are decidedly anti-Israel, and two have even expressed support for Muslim terrorists:

Maytha Alhassen: …expressed support for terrorists, promoted anti-Israel agitators and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.[2]

Edward E. Curtis IV: …is the faculty advisor of the Interfaith Coalition for Palestine (ICP) at IUPUI  [Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis] and founder of IUPUI Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. He is also the chairman of the Christians for Peace & Justice in the Middle East (CPJME). All three organizations endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and promote BDS on IUPUI’s campus.[3]

Zareena Grewal: … is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has condemned efforts to promote cross-cultural dialogue… In 2014, Grewal signed a letter calling on “scholars and librarians within Middle East studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions.”[4]

Salah Hassan: …a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)’s “Organizing Collective.” Hassan has discouraged colleagues from attending academic conferences in Israel…[Hasan’s support for a terrorist:] Khader Adnan was a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. A 2007 YouTube video showed Adnan praising and encouraging suicide bombings…On February 20, 2012, Hassan shared a petition on Facebook called “Scholars in Solidarity with Khader Adnan.”…On February 19, 2012, Hassan shared on Facebook a video of a “Belfast vigil for Khader Adnan,” which was featured on the anti-Israel propaganda site Electronic Intifada (EI).[5]

Now let’s take a look at each of these six documentaries.

ONE: Little Mosque on the Prairie

This 22:02 minute documentary focuses of a Muslim couple who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the 20^th Century, homesteaded in North Dakota and help build a small community.

TWO: Hidden from History

This 23:20 minute documentary focuses on the life of an African Muslim named Mamadou Yarrow, who was brought to the United States as a slave in 1752.  After 45 years as a slave, Yarrow buys his freedom, buys a house in Georgetown and has his portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale, a famous Revolutionary War artists.  This documentary purports, through the story of Yarrow, to reveal “the little-known story of America’s first Muslims, whose labor helped build the economic foundations of the early United States.”  However, there is no mention of how many of those other “first Muslims” were able to buy their freedom and a house, and have their portrait painted by a famous artist.

THREE: Muslims and the Civil War

This 22:25 minute documentary focuses mainly on the exploits of Muhammad Kahn, a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan who traveled to the United States in 1861 and ended up joining the Union Army’s United States Colored Troops and fighting in the Civil War.  His enlistment was not exactly altruistic, as he stated that he had “been persuaded to enlist while under the influence of liquor” (Time 4:14).  Also briefly mentioned is another Muslim African immigrant, Nicholas Said, who also fought with the Union Army.

At the 10:55 mark, the narrator, Malika Bilal, gives us a lesson on Islamic Doctrine.  She stated:

As a Muslim, Khan may have been inspired by traditional Islamic teachings about slavery.  These urged Muslims to treat enslaved people with dignity and work for their freedom.

In reality, the “traditional Islamic teachings about slavery” are 180 degrees away from Bilal’s claim.  The Koran acknowledges and accepts the Muslim possession of slaves.  And Muhammad, the perfect example for Muslims, was a slave owner and dealer, and there are numerous authoritative reports in which Muhammad was personally involved in possessing, buying, selling, and giving away slaves.[6]  Muhammad did not free his own slaves until the day before he died.^[7]

FOUR: Unexpected Unions

This 23:38 minute documentary focuses on the story of Mir Dad, “a South Asian” Muslim who came to the United States in 1917.  He settled in the American southwest, married a Mexican girl, later became a U.S. citizen, and they lived in California and Arizona.  He contributed money to help build the Jame Masjid in Sacramento, CA, in 1947; this was the first mosque on the west coast of the United States.

In 1949 Mir Dad’s daughter Olga married Salim Khan in “the first formal wedding” that took place in the mosque.  Olga wore a white bridal gown with a sheer bridal veil, her bridesmaids wore white dresses and white brimmed hats, Salim and the groomsmen wore bowties and white tuxedo jackets, Mir Dad wore a dark suite with a tie and walked Olga down the aisle behind two flower girls also in white dresses, and Mir Dad’s wife wore a simple white dress.[8]  It was thoroughly “western” attire for the bridal party and the guests.  Judging from the mosque’s current Facebook page photos, it wouldn’t be happening like that today.

FIVE: Muslims at the Nation’s Founding

This 24:44 minute documentary starts out with the narrator, Aymann Ismail, entering the Library of Congress to look at two books “that offer very different views of the early United States and the place of Muslims within it.”

The first book is George Sale’s two volume English translation of the Koran that was owned by Thomas Jefferson: The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed.[9]  The other book was written in 1831 by Omar ibn Said, an enslaved African man who had been brought to the United States in 1807.  It was titled“Oh ye Americans”: The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said.[10]

It is interesting that PBS focused on “Jefferson’s Koran.”  In the first volume of this translation Sale wrote that the Koran “pretends to be the word of God” and criticized Muhammad for “imposing a false religion on mankind.”  And Sale believed that Islam was simply a “human invention” based on violence; he wrote:

…Mohammedism was no other than a human invention, that it owed its progress and establishment almost entirely to the sword…[11]

Nevertheless, to find out more about Jefferson and his ideas about Islam, Ismail went to Jefferson’s home, Monticello, and met with “historian” John Ragosta.

The First Iftar Dinner in the White House

At the 9:22 mark Ragosta brings up the story of the “ first Iftar dinner in the White House.”  Ragosta explained that Jefferson had set the time for a state dinner with the Tunisian Ambassador Sidi Soliman Mellimelli at 3:30 PM.  Jefferson was later advised that it was Ramadan, so Jefferson stated that dinner would begin “at sundown.”  Ragosta stated,

And Mellimelli arrives very shortly after sundown, and then they break bread and have an Iftar dinner.  This is often referred to as the first Iftar dinner in the White House, and it’s happening in Jefferson’s presidency.

Let’s flesh out that statement.  On December 6, 1805, Jefferson sent out invitations to a small group of individuals to join him for dinner on December 9^th.  As we can see from the wording that was on the invitation to Representative Joseph Nicholson, the time on this invitation was originally 3:30 PM, but it was changed:

Th: Jefferson requests the favour of Mr. Nicholson to dine with him on Monday the 9^thinstant. at half after three.  Dinner will be on the table precisely at sun set.[12]

In what appears to be an invitation done subsequent to Nicholson’s, also dated December 6, 1805, and going to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, the time for the dinner is “sun set”:

Th: Jefferson requests the favour of Dr. Mitchell to dine with him on Monday the 9th instant. Dinner will be on the table precisely at sun set.[13]

So it appears that after starting Nicholson’s invitation, Jefferson became aware of the issue of Ramadan and changed the dinner time to sunset to accommodate Mellimelli.  But was it an actual “iftar dinner?”

John Quincy Adams was a U.S. Senator at that time and had also been invited to the December 9^th dinner.  As we can see from Adams’ diary entry below for December 9^th, no dietary accommodation was made for Mellimelli and wine was served with dinner.

By the invitation, dinner was to have been on the table precisely at sunset — it being in the midst of Ramadan, during which the Turks fast while the sun is above the horizon. He [Mellimelli] did not arrive until half an hour after sunset, and, immediately after greeting the President and the company, proposed to retire and smoke his pipe. The President requested him to smoke it there, which he accordingly did, taking at the same time snuff deeply scented with otto of roses. We then went to dinner, where he freely partook of the dishes on the table without enquiring into the cookery. Mrs. Randolph the President’s daughter, and her daughter, were the only ladies there, and immediately after they returned to the drawing-room after dinner the ambassador followed them to smoke his pipe again. His secretaries remained after him just long enough to take each a glass of wine, which they did not venture to do in his presence.[14]

So there was no “iftar dinner.”  Jefferson had simply changed the dinner time to “sunset” out of consideration for the beliefs of his guest.

George Washington Had Two Muslim slaves? – Changing the Names as You Watch

At the 14:22 mark, Ismail goes to Mount Vernon to see “evidence that George Washington had two Muslim slaves. “  He meets with Mary Thompson, Research Historian Emerita Mount Vernon, and she shows him a page from Washington’s 1774 Tithable List.  Thompson states.

…this is the first document that shows a person with a Muslim name.  Right in here you can see the name Fatimer, and under here is Little Fatimer.

Ismail quickly responds, That’s the name of the prophet’s daughter, to which Thompson agrees.  Thompson continues,

The idea that there would have been a Fatima and a Little Fatima, that suggests strongly that there was a mother and daughter.

Thompson then reads from a ledger recording the sale of some slaves.  Among the names of the slaves being sold is the name Fattimore.[15]

Ismail asks: Do we know anything else about Fatima?

Thompson replies: It gives you an idea of how hard, maybe, in a family situation, it might be to pass on Islam in a family, because if they are a mother and daughter, they are being split up here.

For Ismail, this meeting with Thompson established that Washington had some Muslim slaves.

However, the name “Fatima” was never written in any of the records presented in this documentary.  Nevertheless, Ismail and Thompson quickly, and without any basis, equated the name “Fatimer” with the name of Muhammad’s daughter “Fatima.”  After that, they referred to the “Fatimer” listed on the Tithable List as “Fatima” and concluded that the correspondingly renamed “Little Fatima” was her daughter.  Thompson then read a list of names of slaves sold and found the name “Fattimore.”  Ismail and Thompson then baselessly equated that name too with “Fatima,” and Ismail asked, “Do we know anything else about Fatima?”  Thompson replied that it appeared that the mother and daughter were being split up.

This changing of names to apparently fit a narrative would not have been possible if Ismail and Thompson had been looking at the online, alphabetically arranged, data base titled “Database of Mount Vernon’s Enslaved Community.”[16]  On p. 51 of that data base we find the names Fattimore, Fattimore A, and Fattimore B.  By clicking on “Primary Source” we find the following: Fattimore is the person listed among the slaves that Thompson mentioned being sold.  Fattimore A is actually Fatimer, and Fattimore B is Little Fatimer, with the source for this information being the July 1774 Tithable List.[17]  There was no record in this data base of a slave named “Fatima” at Mount Vernon.

Omar Ibn Said

At the16:40 mark we find Ismail returning to the Library of Congress to look at the book written by Omar Ibn Said, titled “Oh ye Americans”: The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said.  Ismail met with Lanisa Kitchner, Chief, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress.  She explained to him,

This is the only autobiography that we have written by an enslaved man in this country in Arabic.  So it is short, small, tiny, but incredibly powerful in terms of what it can tell us about history….

They discuss the book, noting that it starts out with a chapter from the Koran.  The discussion briefly turns to another enslaved African who was actually set free, in contrast to Ibn Said.

Kitchner then continues at the 20:03 mark:

Omar Ibn Said, despite however exalted he may have been as an enslaved African man, as an enslave Muslim African man, he was never made free…this is a piece of history, a missing piece of history, written by a man in his own hand, who not only survived the Middle Passage, who not only survived the plantation system, but lived to write about it.  So this is American history at its finest.  But it’s also Senegalese history, it’s also African history, it is also Islamic history.  It is world history.

Kitchner’s expansive accolades are for a book that, translated into English and with pictures, is only four pages long.  The first 1 ½ pages consist of a recitation of Al-Muk, Chapter 67 of the Koran.  Over the remaining 2 ½ pages ibn Said talks almost exclusively about his life in the United States and the numerous individuals he had met.  He also mentions that he converted to Christianity.  He was described as “a devout Presbyterian” and a “Free Mason.”  Ibn Said’s book is largely a human-interest story.  In spite of the various histories attributed to it by Kitchner, there are only about fourteen lines in the book that deal with his life outside the United States.

SIX: How Islam Influenced Black Americans in 1920s Chicago

In describing this 23:45 documentary, PBS noted:

The 1920s saw a revival in Islam among Black Americans fleeing poverty and persecution in the Jim Crow South. In Northern cities including Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, and New York, they found strength and security in a range of Muslim organizations, from the India-based Ahmadiyya movement to the homegrown Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam.

Are these three really “Muslim organizations”?

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and initially headquartered in Qadian, India.  The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA was established in 1921.  In reality, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a small, fringe group that is widely rejected by the world’s Sunni Muslim community.  Muslim countries, and Muslim organizations and scholars around the world do not consider the Ahmadiyya to even be Muslims.[18]

The Moorish Science Temple was founded in the United States:

The Moorish Science Temple of America was founded by Noble Drew Ali in 1913. The organization was based on a combination of black nationalism and a religious philosophy which blended Christianity and Islam…He claimed to be the prophet Muhammad reincarnated…The actual religion developed by Ali was largely based on Christianity though it claimed to be an Islamic faith. Ali published The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple in approximately 1927, a book which combined the Qu’ran, the Bible, Marcus Garvey’s and Ali’s own ideologies…Following Ali’s death the movement factionalized. Two members claimed to embody Ali’s reincarnated spirit: John Givens El, and W.D. Fard. Fard went on to form the beginnings of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, worked with Fard and was appointed First Minister of Islam by the latter.[19]

The Nation of Islam:

The Nation of Islam (NOI) was formed in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard…NOI purports to fight systemic oppression of, and discrimination against, Black Americans by preaching Black

racial supremacy. The group mixes tenets of Islam with conspiracy theories and mythology deeply rooted in racism, antiSemitism, and anti-LGBT beliefs…While NOI claims to be Islamic, many of its teachings contradict traditional, core Islamic doctrine. Most glaring, NOI

claims that Allah “appeared in the Person” of the group’s founder, Wallace D. Fard, and that Fard’s appearance on Earth signaled the coming apocalypse which would overthrow the White “devil”…NOI’s version of the Shahada—the central creed of Islam—states, “There is no God but Allah, who appeared in the person of Master [Wallace] Fard Muhammad, and I bear witness that the most honorable Elijah Muhammad is the exalted Christ, and that the honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is our divine reminder, warner, and servant among us.” By contrast, more orthodox schools of Islam hold that Allah does not assume human form, and the traditional Shahada simply states, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.”[20]

It is either a glaring lack of knowledge about the Ahmadiyya movement, the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and Islam itself, or a pressing need to create one more documentary, that would move PBS to use these groups as examples of “Muslim organizations” encouraging “a revival in Islam.”  Try selling that idea in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

Conclusion

“American Muslims: A History Revealed” is a series of short documentaries that unfortunately promises more than it produces.  When the focus is on an individual or a family it can be interesting.  But when it moves beyond that, don’t hesitate to question what you hear.

Dr. Stephen M. Kirby is the author of six books and numerous articles about Islam. His latest book is Islamic Doctrine versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials.

[1]           https://www.americanmuslimsfilm.com/

[2]           https://canarymission.org/individual/Maytha_Alhassen

[3]           https://canarymission.org/professor/Edward_Curtis

[4]           https://canarymission.org/professor/Zareena_Grewal

[5]           https://canarymission.org/professor/Salah_Hassan

[6]           For more information about slavery being allowed under Islam, see my book Islamic Doctrine Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials(Washington D.C.: The Center for Security Policy Press, 2019), pp. 93-101.  Also see my article “CAIR Condemns 19th Century Slavery in the United States, But What About Muhammad?” Jihad Watch, January 19, 2022, https://jihadwatch.org/2022/01/cair-condemns-19th-century-slavery-in-the-united-states-but-what-about-muhammad.

[7]           Safiur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, The Sealed Nectar (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 2008), p. 555.

[8]           Screenshots of the wedding pictures that were shown in the documentary are here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14zfEf17wUSJ9V2vyoGlAAm1KomUUCMaS/view?usp=sharing.

[9]           This two-volume set was printed in 1764.  In Volume 1 Sale had three sections preceding his actual translation of the Koran: Dedication, Introduction, and Preliminary Discourse.  Volume 1 had Koran verses 1-9; Volume 2 had Koran Verses 10-114.  Here are the two volumes:

Volume 1 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WSOLXubKu_YG8_zrYBH8GyKtm29iFJd6/view?usp=sharing

Volume 2 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kxWnNmGTwImi2FhuxG3OBOMfy3GyF5mK/view?usp=sharing

For more information about Jefferson’s Koran, see my article “Congressman Ellison and Jefferson’s Koran,” Front Page Magazine, April 19, 2015, https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/congressman-ellison-and-jeffersons-koran-dr-stephen-m-kirby/.

[10]         https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/community/text3/religionomaribnsaid.pdf

[11]         “Congressman Ellison and Jefferson’s Koran.”

[12]         Thomas Jefferson’s dinner invitation to Representative Joseph Nicholson dated December 6, 1805, https://images.mohistory.org/images/d04415_0001/original.jpg.

[13]         Thomas Jefferson’s dinner invitation to Dr. Mitchell dated December 6, 1805, https://goldin.co/item/1805-thomas-jefferson-signed-dinner-invitation-export-china-serving-bo10piw?queryId=eyJjYXJkSW5kZXgiOjR9.

[14]         John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary From 1795 to 1848, Vol. 1 , Ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1874), p. 378, https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/memoirsjohnquin31adamgoog/memoirsjohnquin31adamgoog_text.pdf.

[15]         Screen shots of the Tithable List and the Slave Sales List are available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_GYZjBk1PSkjNjaMGd6sBmmE4oztLa3n/view?usp=drive_link.

[16]         https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery-database

[17]         https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery-database?gender=&location=&owner=&person=&purpose=Slave%20Purchase&skill=&time=1780-1789&page=50

[18]         Some years back I wrote about the Ahmadiyya community: “Do Ahmadi Muslims Really Speak for Islam?” Jihad Watch, December 1, 2015, https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/do-ahmadi-muslims-really-speak-islam-dr-stephen-m-kirby/; and “Ahmadi Muslims Hijack Islam,” Jihad Watch, December 30, 2017, https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/12/ahmadi-muslims-hijack-islam.

[19]         Moorish Science Temple of America Collection, 1926-1967, https://archives.nypl.org/scm/20888.

[20]         “Nation of Islam (NOI),” Counter Extremism Project, October 30, 2020, pp. 1-2, https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/threat_pdf/Nation%20of%20Islam%20%28NOI%29-10302020.pdf.