Islamophobic Experience and How Islam Came to the West

Can you tell me a story? I guess really, if you just want to talk about, like, a personal story about Islamophobia, and you have you, I'm very sure you've been randomly selected somewhere, yes, I mean, I do a lot of traveling. So therefore I find myself, you know, being pulled aside and, you know, selected on planes, you know, to go through, I know why they they pull me out that line. But I've had individual cases of it, because I normally wear is my own way of appearing like a Muslim in public ever since I accepted Islam. Zers. And so, I had the case of coming into an office and, you know, getting into a slight argument with a person, that person just said to me, why don't you go

home? Go back to your people. So then I turned to the President go back to my people, I'm African American, my grandmother's native. So, you know, where were we supposed to go? We've been here for 1000s of years, we're home. So where am I supposed to go? But the ignorance of that person seeing the coffee CEO, seeing my, you know, my clothing, and swearing that I must be, you know, from somewhere, you know, in the Middle East or in Africa. That's the ignorance of Islamophobia. Especially if you've also made this argument before, like, I guess, really, about the fact that Islam actually existed in North America for a lot longer than we actually assume. Right? I know,

there's not really a part of what we're talking about here. But if you just want to give me a little bit of, I guess, really tell me a little bit about that. What are your What are your findings about how Islam actually arrived and how you arrived here to North America way before the Europeans? Well, I've spent years studying the waves of Muslims who came across the Atlantic and other people who came across the Pacific. And I found that long before Columbus, Muslims from Al Andalus, Spain, Portugal, and then from West Africa, actually made it across we have documented proof, because you can cross the Atlantic, especially from West Africa, Senegal, the current state you right from

Senegal, into Brazil, into the Caribbean. And so Muslims came across, it's documented. They went into Central America and into North America, even a Harvard University Scholar Leo whiner in his book, Africa and the discovery of America, you know, showed that, you know, Muslims were here long before Columbus.

But then also, there were Muslims who came during the slavery period. So so we have some in some areas, 1/3 of the African enslaved people were Muslims. And so it's it's was deep within the fabric of society. Then there have been, you know, migrations, economic migrations, indentured labor period, when when Indian Muslims came to the Caribbean and other places, and then you have Turks and Arabs and other people from the Ottoman Empire, coming into America, you know, coming into Canada, so therefore, there's been a constant movement of Muslims into this part of the world. Unfortunately,

the Spanish started this, they wiped out all records they could find. And so the history was distorted it was taken out of the books, and then people completely wiped out the presence of Muslims historically, until the the average person for a long time actually thought that Columbus discovered America.