WI: Large and historical Muslim minority in America

[lerk]

Sort of thinking how three of the biggest non Muslim countries (Russia, India, and China) all have a large and historical Muslim minority but America doesn’t. Suppose the POD is that Islam spreads to the coastal areas of West Africa and eventually supplants the polytheistic faiths there for good in a process that lasts from the 14th to 17th centuries. When the slave trade begins the slaves are brought to the United States but are not converted to Christianity (though I imagine a few would be - maybe a 75-25 ratio). How do the presence of Muslim slaves impact the history of the United States?

 

[SpanishSpy]

Sort of thinking how three of the biggest non Muslim countries (Russia, India, and China) all have a large and historical Muslim minority but America doesn’t. Suppose the POD is that Islam spreads to the coastal areas of West Africa and eventually supplants the polytheistic faiths there for good in a process that lasts from the 14th to 17th centuries. When the slave trade begins the slaves are brought to the United States but are not converted to Christianity (though I imagine a few would be - maybe a 75-25 ratio). How do the presence of Muslim slaves impact the history of the United States?

It is known for a fact that there were Muslim slaves in what would become the US - you need to find a way to prevent their Christianization - maybe 'Marranos' a la Suriname in the Great Dismal Swamp or Appalachians?

 

[lerk]

It is known for a fact that there were Muslim slaves in what would become the US - you need to find a way to prevent their Christianization - maybe 'Marranos' a la Suriname in the Great Dismal Swamp or Appalachians?

This should be easy - they aren’t Christianized so that the owners don’t feel bad about enslaving their own co religionists. Iirc many slave owners refused to Christianize them in order to get around this irl and I suppose that the relatively new converts to Islam in this story would feel more zealous than the polytheistic ones irl and thus won’t be Christianized as easily.

 

[Ricardolindo]

It is known for a fact that there were Muslim slaves in what would become the US - you need to find a way to prevent their Christianization - maybe 'Marranos' a la Suriname in the Great Dismal Swamp or Appalachians?

This should be easy - they aren’t Christianized so that the owners don’t feel bad about enslaving their own co religionists. Iirc many slave owners refused to Christianize them in order to get around this irl and I suppose that the relatively new converts to Islam in this story would feel more zealous than the polytheistic ones irl and thus won’t be Christianized as easily.

The problem is that the Muslim African American slaves had only very recently converted to Islam and practiced a very syncretic form of Islam as was the case with West Africans in general. That made them more susceptible to conversion to Christianity.

 

[lerk]

The problem is that the Muslim African American slaves had only very recently converted to Islam and practiced a very syncretic form of Islam as was the case with West Africans in general. That made them more susceptible to conversion to Christianity.

Well, supposing they don’t follow a syncretic version of it, then what? It’s not really the how but the results of this that I’m interested in.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Got a horrible feeling one of the first outcomes is a deliberate divide-and-conquer with black Americans.

Long term, you surely get a new interpretation of Islam in America in the same way black southern churches have developed differently.

 

[Nyvis]

Got a horrible feeling one of the first outcomes is a deliberate divide-and-conquer with black Americans.

Long term, you surely get a new interpretation of Islam in America in the same way black southern churches have developed differently.

Islam is also very open to having branching schools of thought, so it'd be very interesting to have an attempt at a full African American Islamic scholarly tradition. Also, African Americans making the Hajj sounds like a story.

I wonder what impacts this has on the fight for both abolition and later civil rights. Historically, quite a few of the progressive voices were religious and tied into the more progressive side of US protestantism, which is going to be much harder here. You might get a stronger self determination strain in civil rights movements

 

[Charles EP M.]

Absolutely assuming there's a bunch of established Muslim voices and preachers involved in civil rights work, conflicting with or working with the Protestant ones depending on who's doing what at which time

 

[Nyvis]

Absolutely assuming there's a bunch of established Muslim voices and preachers involved in civil rights work, conflicting with or working with the Protestant ones depending on who's doing what at which time

Would they develop a clear divide of Islamic radicals and Christian moderates (in the sense of accepting reform and cooperating with white progressives, they'll all want pretty ground breaking change anyway) considering the moderate strategy is much less likely to succeed for non Christians who will have a much harder time with normalization?

Funnily this could also introduce Islam to non black radicals in the US.

This could also have very interesting implications for the development of Islamic political movements in the rest of the world. With so long separated, American Islam is going to be wildly divergent, especially since West African Islam already was at the edge of the Islamic world. Progressive Islam could very well be helped by this, especially if American Muslims decide to involve themselves abroad.

I also wonder at the thoughts American Islam would have on the Hajj, considering the whole period where no one would have been able to do it.

 

[JesterBL]

Assuming the arc of American history remains the same is a big assumption. Does the moral suasion of abolition ring true in American churches when enslaved persons are imagined not as ignorant souls to be saved but instead as internal religious enemies?

 

[Gary Oswald]

There was generally a wariness of Muslim slaves by slave owners as being more likely to cause rebellions. The Historiography of the Haitian revolution was really warped by French assumptions of the Muslim slaves playing a much larger role than they actually did.

It'd be interesting the extent that would linger if slaves as a whole were much more Islamic.

 

[Nyvis]

Assuming the arc of American history remains the same is a big assumption. Does the moral suasion of abolition ring true in American churches when enslaved persons are imagined not as ignorant souls to be saved but instead as internal religious enemies?

We're still assuming a chunk of them get converted so there's Christians in there, and you're not going to remove the north/south divide on slavery. It could remain more of an opposition to the slave power than a fight over abolition, but once the slavers pick that fight, abolition is likely to end up on the table anyway.

Resettlement to Africa is likely to get more support though. Bigger Liberia?

 

[lerk]

I can imagine Civil Rights being pushed relatively earlier here because, as the Cold War approaches and Arab Gulf oil becomes more important, the American foreign policy establishment would push hard for civil rights so that Muslims in the world aren’t pushed away from supporting America.

 

[Thande]

It's not terribly realistic, but I remember some threads on the other place about the early US trying to follow up the Barbary Wars with actually establishing colonies in North Africa, and then you could have immigration from there, for an alternative to it being associated with the slave trade.

 

[lerk]

I can imagine Civil Rights being pushed relatively earlier here because, as the Cold War approaches and Arab Gulf oil becomes more important, the American foreign policy establishment would push hard for civil rights so that Muslims in the world aren’t pushed away from supporting America.

Going off this I wonder if the political power of this large Muslim community would be enough to sway America from being as pro-Israel as they are nowadays. I can imagine an India like situation emerging: America recognizes both Israel and Palestine, cooperates and has trade relations with the former, but would be more harsh when it comes to aggressions on the latter. Seeing as we’re stipulating that the slaves are majority Muslim then that means that Muslims would outnumber Jews in this alternate America and thus would have a lot more sway provided that America is a democracy.

 

[Nyvis]

Going off this I wonder if the political power of this large Muslim community would be enough to sway America from being as pro-Israel as they are nowadays. I can imagine an India like situation emerging: America recognizes both Israel and Palestine, cooperates and has trade relations with the former, but would be more harsh when it comes to aggressions on the latter. Seeing as we’re stipulating that the slaves are majority Muslim then that means that Muslims would outnumber Jews in this alternate America and thus would have a lot more sway provided that America is a democracy.

I think this is a bit too convergent. Who's to say there's an equivalent Zionist project there?

But we can try charting out what American Islam's relation to Middle Eastern Islam is. I'm not sure it's going to be positive. It's necessarily going to be a very divergent form of Islam, and it's likely to have American exceptionalist thoughts about its place within the faith that don't gel well with an attempt at leadership from the holy cities, so there could easily be competition there. But you could also get more religious-progressive movements in the Middle East due to American Islam influence rather than the domination of Saudi money we see OTL.

I also think the American Muslims will remain at the radical edge of American politics so I'm not sure they'd be that influential on the main parties' foreign policy.

 

[Thande]

But we can try charting out what American Islam's relation to Middle Eastern Islam is. I'm not sure it's going to be positive. It's necessarily going to be a very divergent form of Islam, and it's likely to have American exceptionalist thoughts about its place within the faith that don't gel well with an attempt at leadership from the holy cities

Images of people with very white teeth from Megamosques going over to Baghdad to tell them that what really matters is how some presidential candidate's views on something-or-other is totally going to bring Yawmuddin this time, guys.

 

[Roger II]

I

I think this is a bit too convergent. Who's to say there's an equivalent Zionist project there?

But we can try charting out what American Islam's relation to Middle Eastern Islam is. I'm not sure it's going to be positive. It's necessarily going to be a very divergent form of Islam, and it's likely to have American exceptionalist thoughts about its place within the faith that don't gel well with an attempt at leadership from the holy cities, so there could easily be competition there. But you could also get more religious-progressive movements in the Middle East due to American Islam influence rather than the domination of Saudi money we see OTL.

I also think the American Muslims will remain at the radical edge of American politics so I'm not sure they'd be that influential on the main parties' foreign policy.

I'm a little skeptical of assumptions that American Islam is going to be as automatically divergent as people say it is, we're talking a time frame just before there's an explosion in interconnectedness and communication within the Muslim world and in a country with fairly extensive trans-Atlantic ties. We're not looking at centuries of relative isolation and divergence.

 

[Nyvis]

I'm a little skeptical of assumptions that American Islam is going to be as automatically divergent as people say it is, we're talking a time frame just before there's an explosion in interconnectedness and communication within the Muslim world and in a country with fairly extensive trans-Atlantic ties. We're not looking at centuries of relative isolation and divergence.

Good luck sending scholarly letters from slavery. Because that's the isolating part as work here. Sure, there might be freedmen who have a few more means to keep active ties, but there aren't going to be that many, and they're not going to be in the places with the slave population.

And as I said, west African Islam was already pretty divergent. Islam doesn't require a cut in communication to diverge because it has no central authority. It's a lot more similar to protestantism than catholicism in that it tend to be shaped by what scholars you listen to and what traditions you draw from. Their initial ones are already divergent and different conditions plus a population large enough to support its own scholars is likely to make it diverge further.

It's also worth remembering that a lot of internal divisions erasing in the modern day has happened because the Saudi put a lot of efforts into pushing their global vision of Islam using oil money.

 

[Catalunya]

I


I'm a little skeptical of assumptions that American Islam is going to be as automatically divergent as people say it is, we're talking a time frame just before there's an explosion in interconnectedness and communication within the Muslim world and in a country with fairly extensive trans-Atlantic ties. We're not looking at centuries of relative isolation and divergence.

They’re pretty much an entire world away from the rest of the Ummah, and the entirety of America’s Islamic population is being persecuted by the dominant White Christian race.

I find it near impossible to theorize how a society would look with a POD that far back, as a lot of the theories and stuff are butterflied away. If whatever alternative to Marxism is more based on Spinoza’s ethics, rather than Hegel’s dialectics, I can easily imagine Islam being a lot more compatible with whatever this world has as an alternative for socialism. Islam is imo a lot less rigorous, and can be interpreted in more manners than Christianity. The wish for equality and freedom that will still be central in forming African-Americans identity, and thus I like to imagine that American Islam could slowly fuse with this world’s socialism.