This post was originally published on this site.
—
California imam Amir Abdel Malik Ali told a congregation that Islam existed in the Americas before Christianity, claimed Christopher Columbus saw a mosque when he arrived, and declared that Islam is “what’s going to save America.”
Ali, the longtime CEO and imam of Masjid Al-Islam in Oakland, made the remarks during a May 1 sermon at the Islamic Center of San Gabriel Valley.
“Islam was in the Americas before Christianity was,” Ali said, according to a video published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Ali told the congregation that when Muslims are told to “go back home,” they should respond that Islam was already present in the Americas before Europeans arrived. He insisted Columbus’s diary proved it.
According to MEMRI, Ali claimed that on October 8, 1492, Columbus was sailing off the coast of Cuba when he “looked up on a mountain and saw a mosque.” He also claimed that Columbus encountered indigenous people whom he described as “dressed like Mohammedans.”
Ali’s account, however, does not match the historical record.
Columbus did not reach Cuba until October 28, 1492, weeks after the October 8 date Ali reportedly cited.
As researcher Jason Colavito has noted, in an October 29, 1492, diary entry, Columbus compared the shape of a Cuban mountain to “a graceful mosque,” according to an abstract of his journal preserved by Bartolomé de las Casas. The passage describes the appearance of the landscape, not the discovery of an actual mosque.
Ali used his account of history to argue that Islam will play an increasingly important role in the United States.
“There are major changes coming to this country,” he said. “Muslims or Islam will play a major role because they possess the solution. Allah has given the Quran and the Sunnah, and that is what will save America.”
The remarks are the latest in a long public record of radical rhetoric from the Oakland-based imam.
During a February 2005 speech at the University of California, Irvine, Ali appeared to justify Palestinian suicide bombers who targeted Israeli buses, arguing that Israeli soldiers traveled aboard the buses. He said the terrorists were “going after soldiers who are on those buses,” according to remarks documented by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
He referred to the attackers as “freedom fighters.”
During another appearance at the University of California, Irvine, Ali declared: “We’re gonna fight [the United States and Israel] and we’re gonna win. And it’s gonna be either victory or martyrdom, that’s how it goes.”
Ali also celebrated Hamas’s electoral victory during a 2006 Muslim Student Association conference in Sacramento and referred to two of the terrorist group’s former leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, as having been “martyred.”
“Our beloved Sheikh Yassin was martyred and then Sheikh Rantisi was martyred after him.”
