The Effects of Early Christian Attitudes and Beliefs -- Positive and Negative -- On the Development and Emergence of Islam in America

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1789

As the epigraph above makes clear, Americas Founding Fathers embraced religious tolerance to the point they codified it into law. Today, despite political and ideological differences between the United States and many Arab nations, there are about 30 million Moslems in America who enjoy positive relations with others in their communities and their reputation for generosity and compassion is well known. This eventuality was not always a certainty, though, and things could have turned out quite differently, especially given the massive impact that the jihadist terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 had on the national consciousness. To determine how Islam has achieved this outcome, the purpose of this study is to provide a systematic and critical review of the relevant literature concerning the effects of early Christian attitudes and beliefs, both positive and negative, on the development and emergence of Islam in America. To this end, an analysis concerning how race played out in the historical, doctrinal and liturgical of how the different Christian denominations respective stances towards Islam is followed by an examination concerning how the complexity the dynamics of these stances have contributed to religious pluralism in America. Finally, the study presents a summary of the literature review and important findings concerning these issues in the conclusion.

How race played out in the historical, doctrinal, and liturgical views of Christian denomination's stances toward Islam

Historical. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers were devout Christians, and they shared an early pressing interest in Islam as a result of the Barbary Wars in the early 19th century. In this regard, Guyatt (2016) reports that, Thousands of African Muslims fell victim to the slave systems of the Caribbean and the southern mainland in the 17th and 18th centuries. For the United States, Islam only became a question of national interest when the merchant vessel Betsey was seized by Moroccan pirates in 1784 (para. 7). In addition, heightened interest in Islam also served as the impetus for the evangelization efforts by American Christian missionaries to the Middle East. For example, according to one historian, Islam has a long history in America, going back to the earliest days of the country's founding (Williams, 2017, para. 2). Some historians believe that Moslems actually reached North America before Columbus and a few even place the date as long ago as the 10th century (Oren, 2007).

Regardless of the precise timing of the arrival of the first Moslems, things started to pick up pace during Americas colonial period when enslaved African blacks who were Moslem were brought to North America for the first time (Kettani, 2010). Over the course of 400 years, more and more African blacks would be brought to America against their will, many of them dying before they ever reached its shores while those who survived the transit were subjected to a cruel life where they amounted to mere chattel in the eyes of the law. While the U.S. Civil War was fought in part to emanicipate African American slaves, it did not succeed in changing everyones minds about the peculiar institution of slavery. In fact, the Confederacy was founded on the guiding principle that slavery was the natural condition for Africans and it was foolhardy to try to buck nature.

As the current heated controversy over the teaching of fact-based critical race theory clearly demonstrates, the introduction of enslaved Moslems from Africa would have a lingering but profound effect on the United States and its relations with Islamic countries. In this regard, Williams emphasizes that, In the past two-plus centuries, Islam and Muslim Americans have been intertwined with American history. That story is not well-known, and while admittedly that's in part because the Muslim population of the US has often been quite small, Islam still appears in ways that most Americans might find surprising particularly, for example, in the history of American slavery and emancipation (2017, para. 3).

Indeed, the Islamic population in the United States was comparatively small compared to the larger American population, even given the large number of African slaves that were transported to the new republic against their will, but their numbers began to accelerate during the early 20th century and this trend continues to the present day (Kittani, 2010). As noted in the introduction, there are currently about 30 million Moslems living in the United States, many of them second- and third-generation citizens. These individuals subscribe to different Islamic sects but they all share a common heritage and religious background that set them apart from Christian Americans, and it is little wonder that their experiences have included both positive and negative aspects and these issues are discussed below.

Liturgical

As noted above, the majority of the frst Moslems in the nascent United States were African slaves who had been converted to Islam (Oren, 2007), and it is not surprising that race was a significant factor in how Moslems were viewed by Christian in the early years of the United States. Nevertheless, and to their credit, the Founding Fathers made sure that even slaves had the constitutional right to worship as they saw fit, at least according to the Bill of Rights and notwithstanding the preferences of their Christian owners. For instance, according to Williams (2017), The most visible role of Islam in the America of the Founding Fathers was perhaps in the words and actions of the founders themselves, who deliberately sought to include Islam as they established the principles of religious liberty (para. 4).

There were a number of other actions that were taken by Christian organizations and individuals, including Catholics but most especially various Protestant denominations as well, during the first half of the 19th century that would have lasting racial and even foreign policy implications for the United States in the future. As Oren (2017) points out, The missionary movement had grown significantly since the early 1820s. Even the modest accomplishments in establishing schoolhouses in Syria could not account for the missionaries ability, a mere ten years later, to impact American policy toward the Middle East (2017, p. 201). Likewise, Christian evangelical organizations also deployed hundreds of zealous missionaries to the Middle East, among other foreign destinations. For example, Bayes (2011) reports that, Beginning in 1812, Americans steadily venture forth with their version of the gospel of Protestantism and American civilization, first to India, Burma, and Hawaii, then eventually to the Middle East, Africa, and to China, Japan, and Korea in the Far East (p. 5).

During the latter half of the 19th century, the numbers of American Christian missionaries of various faiths experienced a substantial increase to the point where there were approximately 5,000 serving abroad by the fin de sicle. In addition, many of the major Protestant denominations even went so far as to establishe missionary societies to encourage other congregants to travel abroad in an attempt to convert as many Moslems as possible. This trend was further accelerated by the addition of other mission-specific but nondenominational Protestant organizations that shred the common goal of sharing the Gospel with those of the Islamic faith. As Bayes points out, The religious impulse to form voluntary associations continued as well, with new nondenominational faith missions such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Sudan Interior Mission adding to the growing stream of American Protestants abroad (p. 5).

During the closing decades of the 19th century, there was also a move by missionaries to not only share the Gospel with Moslems in the Middle East, but to civilize them in the same fashion that slaveowners sought to civilize their Islamic slaves by inculcating American values in them as well. This same ethnocentric tendency has always characterized Americas foreign missions abroad, but the inclusion of this objective in the fundamental objectives of faith-based missionaries created some debate as to its appropriateness as well...…Muslim immigrants from Somalia have been welcomed and embraced by community members and where all of the defining key hallmarks listed above are present.

Conversely, many American communities not only reject immigrants in general and Moslems in particular as being incompatible with their traditional ways of life. A study by Trigg (2018), for instance, found that:

The rise of Salafi jihadism has emboldened those who maintain that Islam is incompatible with Western secularity. Liberal responses to this claim frequently appeal to the United States' allegedly Puritan past, suggesting that the United States is particularly well placed to deal with both radical Islamism and anti-Islamic prejudice because of the ecumenical pluralism that emerged from the colonial crucible of competing denominations. (p. 815)

The jihadist terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 added major support for this argument, and Islamic-inspired terrorist attacks in other Western nations have added more reinforcement for this view (Trigg, 2018).

Based on the findings that emerged from his analysis of contemporary American responses to religious diversity, Trigg (2018) concludes that, The modern rhetoric of religious diversity mirrors the eschatological structure of toleration, wherein Muslims are offered only temporary acceptance (p. 815). It is important to note that such temporary acceptance of Moslems in the United States is based on the firm expectation that they will naturally and willingly recognize the error of their ways after experiencing the benefits and luxuries of American society and make their conversion to Christianity and the American way of life on their own, or at least with little encouragement from others (Trigg, 2018).

In recent years, there has been some efforts made to resolve the rejection of religious pluralism in the United States, but the process and the issues that are involved are not only enormously complex, they are also fraught with danger when these efforts are misguided or based on ethnocentric views about other people. According to Meer and Modood (2015), the United States is wrestling with the extent to which they accommodate Muslims in ways that allow them to reconcile their faith and citizenship commitments (p. 526). While the people of the United States continue to wrestle with these issues, there remains the need for America to realize its commitment to religious plurality rather than simply accepting religious diversity in their country.

In sum, religious pluralism can be conceptualized as existing along a continuum, ranging from complete rejection of any other religious belies besides those practiced by mainstream society such as those that exist in many Islamic nations to the other extreme where even fringe religions are readily accepted as being as legitimate as any others and where these differences are embraced and even celebrated in a society. Although there are plenty of examples of the former in the modern world, there are no outright examples of nations that fully embrace religious pluralism simply due to the innate prejudices and misbeliefs about others that characterize the human condition.

Conclusion

The research showed that the United States and Islam share a long history that dates back to pre-colonial days. Then, as now, Americans distrust what they do not understand and fear that wave after wave of foreign immigrants threaten their way of life. The research also showed that while the United States is a land of religious diversity, the dream of achieving true religious pluralism remains elusive. Indeed, America is not only no longer a melting pot, even the salad bowl metaphor that has been applied to the modern United States is no longer applicable in many cases. People of different faiths are withdrawing into their own cultural and religious enclaves in an attempt to protect themselves from the violent mayhem they see increasing with severity and frequency throughout America society, and the dreams of achieving religious pluralism in the United States have taken a back seat to simply trying to survive the Mad Max mentality that is becoming commonplace today. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that the United States may never achieve real religious pluralism simply due to the nature of the human condition, but it…