John Nichols, Nation - Out in northwest North Dakota, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, rural Mountrail County backed Donald Trump, as did all but two of North Dakota’s 53 counties. And the city of Ross, population 97, voted a bit more heavily for Trump than the rest of the county and the rest of the state.
That’s notable because of the place Ross holds in the history of Islam in America.
It was in this farm town that in 1929 the first mosque purposely constructed as such in the United States was established. The Muslim immigrants who settled around Ross to farm in the early years of the 20th century would eventually be buried nearby. Their children and grandchildren have for the most part moved on. But the mosque, now reconstructed and sitting peacefully along a country road, can be found just beyond a simple fence featuring a star and crescent.
Before Donald Trump was born, mosques were being built in rural North Dakota and Iowa. Islam is an American religion.
I doubt that Donald Trump knows there is a Ross, North Dakota, let alone that Muslim immigrants constructed a mosque there before he was born. I doubt that his aides know that Muslims were living and worshiping in the United States before the founders drafted a Constitution that guarded against religious tests and then added an amendment designed to preserve freedom of religion in a country where Thomas Jefferson believed that a mantle of protection should extend to “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
But this history needs to be recalled, and respected, as President-elect Donald Trump begins to fill his administration with men like his incoming National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who has claimed that “fear of Muslims is rational.”
2 comments:
And we were at war with Muslims from the beginning of this country. So what?
I've been to the perched villages in the south of France...they were built to protect from the Muslim invaders coming across the Mediterranean.
It is highly irresponsible of you not to also report that Muslim terror groups such as ISIS have admitted publicly that they plan to infiltrate the US and other western countries by hiding in the waves of migrant immigrants.
It would be insane not to respond to that threat.
Islam was first practiced in the US by slaves. i saw a very intersting presentation about the many many slaves from Islamic parts of Africa poracticing islam here since teh 1700's. And ISIS is only a threat when the stupid American government kills people in their homes in the Middle East.,
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