Bloomsbury American and Muslim Worlds (Islam of the Global West)

At a time when American politicians freely float the idea that Muslims can somehow be ""banned"" from the United States or hermetically sealed out of existence, this book is a timely reminder that the ""long view"" matters. It challenges the prevailing assumption that when we talk about ""American and Muslim worlds"", we are always talking about two entities that have come into conflict and confrontation with each other in the late twentieth century in the form of wars, radicalism, terrorism, imperialism, or petro-politics. Instead, this book shows there is a long and deep seam of history, which provides an important context for contemporary events, but which is also important in its own right. Readers are reminded that some of the earliest American Muslims were the African slaves working in the plantations of the Carolinas - and that some of them even wrote memoirs in Arabic. We are told that Thomas Jefferson was frequently called an ""infidel"" with hidden Muslim sympathies by his opponents. Whether through the sale of American commodities in Central Asia, Ottoman consuls in Washington, orientalist themes in American fiction, the uprisings of enslaved Muslims in Brazil, or the travels of American missionaries in the Middle East, this book shows there was no shortage of opportunities for Muslims and inhabitants of the Americas to meet, interact and shape one another from an early period.