Not sure it's going to end up all socialism all the way, but you're certainly going to get Islamic speakers friendly to socialism in the same vein as Christian ones during the civil right era.
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WI: Large and historical Muslim minority in America
- Thread starter lerk
- Start date
Not sure it's going to end up all socialism all the way, but you're certainly going to get Islamic speakers friendly to socialism in the same vein as Christian ones during the civil right era.
The only way I could see an Islam not extremely divergent and, from the perspective of Arab and Turkish Muslims, highly Christianized, is if you had some post-emancipation movement to some sort of convergence. The Ottomans sent an envoy to assist the Cape Malays in following “proper Islam”. I don’t think the US would appreciate them something similar in their territory, but there might be some sort of movement for following the “proper Islam” of Arab and Turkish Muslims.
Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
Part of the problem is geography. Most muslims aren't in parts of the world with a lot of boats to the United States.
Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States, and the US went to war with Tripolitania under Jefferson. Commercial and diplomatic ties prompting a small but significant Maghrebi migration might do the trick.
I don't think the Americans were all that interested in colonies at this point. Maybe treaty ports could do the trick.
Henry Ford apparently liked recruiting Yemenis to work in his factory because he was a teetotaler and they didn't drink. Some sort of whacky chain of events having to do with prohibition and muslim immigrants could produce a sizable muslim minority. Maybe Henry Ford decides to recruit a bunch of people from Mindanao during the colonial period, and the US government supports this because it wants fewer Moros.
Apparently muslim African slaves were a curiosity to many southerners, since they tended to be more educated than their animist counterparts. Muslims could often read and write, albeit not in English. Some slaveholders getting innovative and creating a muslim middle-management class could mean a sizable muslim population.
Some Americans got a lease on Sabah briefly before selling it. Aceh also sought to be a US protectorate at one point I think.
Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States, and the US went to war with Tripolitania under Jefferson. Commercial and diplomatic ties prompting a small but significant Maghrebi migration might do the trick.
I don't think the Americans were all that interested in colonies at this point. Maybe treaty ports could do the trick.
Henry Ford apparently liked recruiting Yemenis to work in his factory because he was a teetotaler and they didn't drink. Some sort of whacky chain of events having to do with prohibition and muslim immigrants could produce a sizable muslim minority. Maybe Henry Ford decides to recruit a bunch of people from Mindanao during the colonial period, and the US government supports this because it wants fewer Moros.
Apparently muslim African slaves were a curiosity to many southerners, since they tended to be more educated than their animist counterparts. Muslims could often read and write, albeit not in English. Some slaveholders getting innovative and creating a muslim middle-management class could mean a sizable muslim population.
Some Americans got a lease on Sabah briefly before selling it. Aceh also sought to be a US protectorate at one point I think.
A sizeable chunk of southern American bureaucracy being written in Arabic by literate slaves (I assume that's the script they use, if not the language) would be hilarious.
A successful Anglo-Arab script would have very interesting consequences for the non-Arabic Muslim world where it was often argued that the Latin alphabet is the alphabet of the masses, while the Arabic alphabet is too hard to teach to common folks.
In general, a somewhat successful Western group of Muslims would radically alter the way Muslim intellectuals viewed the Islamic world from the 19th century onwards.
TBH this was sort of my default assumption-most slaves coming over on the same timeline as OTL, a wave of Muslim slaves in c. 1780-1808, and emancipation on approximately OTL's timeline coinciding with improved communication, the rise of the Arab/ Persian/Hindustani presses, and revivalists like the Deobandis and their predecessors, Afghani, etc. Plus possibly relief efforts for Muslim slaves and impoverished Muslim freedmen by major Muslim powers looking for a bit of goodwill overseas.
Somewhat successful, yes, but also oppressed, so it could easily make them even more reflexively anti western.
Come to think of it, you could also have much earlier emancipation leading to the social trajectory of the US and African-Americans changing to the point that by the 1870s and 80s the US is a mildly attractive destination for African emigrants, including Muslims. Which honestly seems like it would be a much more interesting timeline project.
Minarets of Atlantis is this isn't it, kind of?
Interesting but how would that work? Are you implying that Reconquista is delayed or never happens or that Andalusian Muslims manage to find an escape route to the Americas?
I was thinking of the second one tbh - just change Spanish colonial policy to where they are more tolerant of minorities leaving the country to form their own colonies (sort of like the English) - maybe we could see Moors fleeing from Spain and forming a colony around the Rio Grande/Southern Texas.
JesterBL
Gastronaut
- Location
- Flyover Country, USA
- Pronouns
- he/him
That's a huge change- so much so as to make the entire project of Spanish colonial conquest completely unrecognizable. The entire legal and cultural basis of Spanish conquests in America was forged in the Reconquista- conquistadors literally read a message originally written for the Emir of Grenada to Indigenous nobles as part of their legal justification for conquest. A Spain which is more tolerant of minorities is likely one that isn't as successful at conquest and freebooting in the New World.
And that's before we get to the fact that the Native peoples of the Rio Grande and South Texas were some of the last subdued by the Spanish (if you can assert they were subdued at all), so how they would end up being wiped out easily in favor of Moors is an open question.
Really, I think you have to figure out how to arrive at a large (and we're talking what, 10% to fit the Russia example) Muslim minority. The largest in the Western Hemisphere is just a little bit north of that in one the least populous and least populated countries on earth (Suriname, 13-14%) and the origin of Islam in Suriname was from the importation of indentured labor from Southeast Asia, not from any lingering West African tradition.
That gives us one avenue- keep the American South plugged into the British global system and when/if manumission comes, you pour a bunch of 'Coolies' into the American South. That removes most of the speculation above however because it more or less assures you you won't end up with anything resembling a United States of America. You would have an American South which in rough contours would more closely represent the Caribbean, and that would carry the possibility of more Muslims (and Hindus and just non-Christians in general).
The other possibility is immigration and natural growth and this one would have the least knock-on impacts- divert the Lebanese and Syrian immigrants who went to South America is the early and mid 20th centuries to America, and see what blooms. It probably doesn't get you close to 10%, but definitely gets you closer.
You don't necessarily need to wipe them out in favor of Andulasi Muslims I think-just allow for some level of conversion through contact/being Plugged Into a World System along Central Asian, South Indian or Balinese lines. In fact, maintaining native political autonomy is probably helpful here, since they have a better shot at staying independent players in the "North American World System" and religious conversion is more just something some (but not all) people do because it's politically or economically. You'd wind up with a mix I think of Islamized *genizaros, Andulasis and their more or less assimilated descendants, and some modest but notable % of settled natives converting because it's politically advantageous in dealing with neighboring Muslim states or because now there's quite a few very well-off people more willing to do business with you.
JesterBL
Gastronaut
- Location
- Flyover Country, USA
- Pronouns
- he/him
See, but that's the thing- a Spain which is tolerant of religious minorities on their frontier is already so far removed from real history so as to be unrecognizable but even that scenario would at its basis give no reason to convert to Islam. It wouldn't connect you to the Spanish missions and the trade and resources they would control. It wouldn't give you any legal protections with the governor, the viceroy or the far-off king. It wouldn't connect you to the French trade networks penetrating the region. It would connect you to- what exactly? Some despised yet tolerated minority that has an equally alien and foreign mindset to you as do the Christians but also no material advantages to offer you?
(And it also results in nothing recognizable as the US)
(And it also results in nothing recognizable as the US)
OOOF I was thinking of the scenario where there's an actual Muslim state involved with the Americas. Carry on.
How about the other possibility of a significant unenslaved Islamic minority in the USA? Say, if significant numbers of emigrants from Morocco (the first country to recognize US independence and establish diplomatic ties with them) or the Ottoman Empire had travelled across the Atlantic to settle in the USA?
That'd be interesting, just needs a POD for why they're emigrating in large numbers but didn't OTL. (And when that happens would affect which states get the large established Moroccan communities)
Well, IOTL, Moroccan settlement of the current United States began Estebanico Al Azemmouri (also called Estevanico), the first African to explore North America- a Muslim Moroccan of Gnawa descent, who participated in Pánfilo de Narváez's ill-fated expedition to colonize Florida and the Gulf Coast in 1527. IOTL, only Azemmouri and three of his comrades survived during the long and arduous 5,000 mile journey from Florida to Texas; finally encountering other Spaniards near Sinaloa, Mexico, in 1536, then travelling to Mexico City, arriving on July 25, 1536. He subsequently accompanied Marcos de Niza as a guide in his search of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola ahead of Coronado, and according to Marcos de Niza's account, was reportedly killed along with the large group of Sonoran Indians who'd become his personal entourage when trying to make contact with the Zuni village of Hawikuh (though modern historians believe that the Zuni did not kill Estevanico, but rather he and his friends remained among the Pueblo peoples rather than returning to the Spanish and being enslaved once more, with the Sonorans helping him fake his death so he could regain his freedom, and official account of his demise providing the cassus-belli for the Tiguex War). And it's also worth mentioning that he first American Jew to serve in the Senate was David Levy Yulee, who was of Moroccan descent and served as Florida's first Senator from 1845 to 1851 and again 1855–1861; with the Moroccan American community having historically been most significant in Florida, and comprised predominantly of Sephardic Jews.
Thinking about it though, the Jews' migration to America began with the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic Monarchs, in 1492; but the Portuguese equivalent, issued in 1496 by Manuel I, was an edict of expulsion for both Jews and Muslims. Might the solution be having the Spanish issue an edict of expulsion for Muslims as well, or forcibly exile them to penal colonies in the New World? For instance, after King Philip II directed Moriscos to give up their Arabic names and traditional dress, and prohibited the use of Arabic in 1567, there was a Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras from 1568 to 1571, and in the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled the Moriscos, with the historian Henri Lapeyre estimating that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants, and some more recent estimates going up as high as one million. IOTL, the great majority of these were transported to North Africa, though at least 5% were sent over the Pyrenees Mountains to France (with the French then sending most of them off to the port of Agde).
But what if they'd followed the suggestions of the Archbishop of Valencia, Juan de Ribera, who considered the Moriscos as universally heretics and traitors, and who played in instrumental role helping The Duke of Lerma (who'd made several early proposals to King Philip III to banish or otherwise end the Morisco problem, and even recommended genocide) to eventually convince King Philip III to expel the Moriscos in the first place? Not only in order to confiscate the assets and properties of the Moorish population, thereby providing a dramatic one-time boost to the royal coffers, but to also enslave all of the Moriscos for work in Spain's galleys, mines, and abroad, since he could do so "without any scruples of conscience" (as well as lobbying against the exemption from exile for Morisco children under the age of 4, which was later increased to the age of 16- with Ribera insisting that at the very least the children should be separated from their parents, enslaved, and Christianized "for the good of their souls")?
These proposals were rejected IOTL, but in an ATL where they weren't, a good portion of the Spanish Moriscos would've been enslaved and shipped off to exile colonies in the New World instead of being ferried to North Africa- with Florida being the most likely to be earmarked for this purpose, but with Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California also being distinct possibilities as well. And if Spain had expelled the Moriscos, or any significant percentage of them, to North America rather than North Africa, then you'd certainly have wound up with large, well-established Moorish communities, engendered by the Spanish being ever-so-slightly LESS tolerant of Muslims ITTL than they were IOTL...
There's an old TL at the other place, Overview of Muslims in America by Avicenna, that posits sustained Middle Eastern immigration to the US starting in the mid-19th century, resulting in roughly one-fifth of the population being Muslim by the turn of the 21st century.
Max Sinister
Well-known member
- Location
- The Chaos Timeline
But about polytheism?