History Lesson from KGIA Advisory Imam - Muslims Discovered America!

16 Days until KGIA opens. Time to get into that back-to-school spirit, so we’ll be posting new KGIA “Likely Lessons” . Today’s history lesson, from KGIA Board of advisors member Imām Al-Hājj Tālib ‘Abdur-Rashīd: Muslims discovered America!

KGIA acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg, advised by KGIA designer and founder Dhaba Almontaser, chose Abdur-Rashid for the KGIA Advisory Board. Chancellor Klein and the entire New Visions school office either 1) knew and approved of this history lesson from their chosen advisor, or 2) did zero due diligence on KGIA’s advisors and potential curricula. Either way it explains their refusal to disclose any lesson plans or handouts other than the Executive Summary. Whether their cover-up is meant to hide their approved lesson plans or their apparent negligence, it’s still a cover-up. And we’re just getting started exposing it.

Remember to take notes. Principal Danielle Salzberg might give a quiz. Correct answers are important. Politically correct, that is.

P.S. - Note the last paragraph in the excerpts below - the Imam doesn’t approve of Thanksgiving either. Will KGIA kids be allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving? That’s an open question - and they just keep coming.

You can also view this webpage as a pdf (Imām Al-Hājj Tālib ‘Abdur-Rashīd History Lesson), and also screenshots saved as a pdf file on August 18, 2007 (Imām Al-Hājj Tālib ‘Abdur-Rashīd History Lesson Screenshots). Excerpts below…the emphasis is ours.

“The Pre-Columbian Presence of Muslim-Africans in America is No Myth!”

[Below are excerpts - the original article is long, but we urge you to read it in entirety.]

“The misguided activist obviously thinks more of his own unlearned opinion than he does of the oral traditions, scholarly writings, and academic research of experts ranging from centuries ago in the ancient world, to the present. The truth is that there is such a constantly growing, extensive body of cultural, archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic evidence of Western and Northern African Muslim pre-Columbian American (and Caribbean) presence, that those who study the evidence and continue to deny the obvious, reveal themselves to be rooted in old, racist, European renditions of American history.

It is one thing to read about towering figures in the ancient Muslim world like Al-Idrisi, Al-Biruni, Al-Mas’udi and many, many others whose contributions laid the foundations of the modern sciences of history, geography, cartography, and sea navigation. It is another to actually study their work. Both Idrisi and Mas’udi wrote of Muslim African trans-Atlantic excursions to the Western world. Al-Idrisi did so around 956 C.E. Al-Mas’udi wrote in the 12th century. These accounts were written centuries before Columbus’ voyages!”

…..

“These references and more all point to what the non-expert activist dismissed as “wish-fulfillment”. On the contrary, ancient Arabic language maps, Native American tribes with African names and words clearly embedded in their languages, statues, diaries, artifacts, etc. destroy European imperialistic notions of history rooted in White Supremacy. One such notion is that African peoples’ history in America begins with slavery. ..These works compliment references in the writings of Christopher Columbus, Balboa, and other European explorers, to those very same Muslim African explorers (specifically The Mandinka -the people of Kunta Kinte, ancestor of Alex Haley, author of Roots, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X) who were already present in the Carribean and North America, before the bearers of the Cross arrived (e.g. Narrative of the Third Voyage, The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Lionel Cecil Jane).

One would think that Carroll, being an American of European descent, would at least check his facts and do some substantive research, allowing that academic work to inform his opinion and sensitize his tongue, before offering his non-professional reflections as a Muslim (White) American, about the professional works of Muslim African and African American people, who are writing, after all, about their own history! It seems that there are Muslim “White Liberals”, who, like their non-Muslim counterparts, think they know more about black people and other people of color, than those people know about themselves.

The activist declares, “Afrocentric Muslims might be surprised that many Native Americans consider the diffusionist views of pre-Columbian Muslims to be essentially racist”. First all of all, to state that a relative handful of Muslim explorers came to the land of the Original Americans, met them, peacefully interacted with them, traded with them (see the above depiction of such a meeting by the African American artist, Earl Sweeting), inter-married with them, and perhaps even gave another relative handful of them da’wa is hardly diffusionist.

America is the land of those indigenous inhabitants, called “Indians”. It was their God-given custodial land - the land of the “Red Man”, before the “White Man” stole it, committed genocide against its true people, stole the “Black Man” from Africa and brought him to the stolen land against his will, and it was he, “The White Man”, who populated the land from Europe. To this day “he” grants reluctant access to “his” country, to the “Brown and Yellow Man” of Asia, and all other peoples, Muslim and Non-Muslim. That is the historical fact. To cite the history of Muslim Africans’ pre-imperial, pre-colonial, pre-genocidal presence amongst the Native Americans, is not to diffuse the history of the original “People of the Land”. It is to add to it!”

…..

“Further, each year at our mosque for more than a decade, when many other Muslim Americans are celebrating so-called Thanksgiving (Where’s the daleel for that?), many members of our congregation, who are aware of and openly acknowledge our African and/or Native American heritage, gather in order to listen to talks and lectures, eat food, and get to know each other. We have done this for a more than a decade, as an act of cultural affirmation of our true history, beyond European colonial misguidance.”

…..

“Imām Al-Hājj Tālib ‘Abdur-Rashīd (third from the right, rear) is the spiritual leader of The Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood Inc., and the author of the forthcoming work, Reclaimed Legacy: The True History of Al-Islam in America”

Imām Al-Hājj Tālib ‘Abdur-Rashīd is close to Chancellor Klein. According to his biography at the Muslim Consultative Network, which he founded before he helped found KGIA, he also serves on “the N.Y.C. Dept. of Education Chancellor’s Interfaith Advisory Committee to the NYC Dept. of Education.“

So Chancellor Klein has known of his views for some time.