AHC: Muslim President of the US in the Nineteenth Century

J. Westrate

Is there any feasible way to have a Muslim president of the United States before 1900? I suppose that if Orientalism had been more popular in the early United States, some ex-Deists could have converted to Islam due to the declining popularity of the Enlightenment and the appeal of the imagined Orient. It also could have become something of a political statement among the upper class of the Antebellum South as a reaction against Jacksonian populism and supposedly plebeian politics.

So, is this a thing that could have happened or should I prepare my straitjacket and tinfoil hat?
 

Deleted member 109224

J. Westrate said:
Is there any feasible way to have a Muslim president of the United States before 1900? I suppose that if Orientalism had been more popular in the early United States, some ex-Deists could have converted to Islam due to the declining popularity of the Enlightenment and the appeal of the imagined Orient. It also could have become something of a political statement among the upper class of the Antebellum South as a reaction against Jacksonian populism and supposedly plebeian politics.

So, is this a thing that could have happened or should I prepare my straitjacket and tinfoil hat?
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You would need more muslims, especially white muslims, for this to work out.

The Barbary Wars with Tripolitania and Algiers end more in the US's favor, resulting in the US getting a series of china-style concessions in various Maghrebi cities (Tripoli, Oran, Algiers, Benghazi, etc). American merchant and trading companies start spending a lot of time on these areas, and due to the already positive American-Moroccan relationship Morocco opens up more to US trade as well. North African traders start heading to the US as well. A small trickle of North Africans start immigrating to the US, and over time it becomes a norm for North African nobles and elites to send their children to American schools.

When France takes over Algeria, a large number of Algerians proceed to emigrate to the United States. Islam in the US is primarily seen as a religion of merchants and nobles as they comprise a disproportionate amount of the muslim population of the US. The knock-on effect is that during the second great awakening many people embrace Islam - the US population ends up 7% or 8% muslim by the mid-19th century. In the late 19th century, a muslim is elected US president.
 

Nivek

J. Westrate said:
Is there any feasible way to have a Muslim president of the United States before 1900? I suppose that if Orientalism had been more popular in the early United States, some ex-Deists could have converted to Islam due to the declining popularity of the Enlightenment and the appeal of the imagined Orient. It also could have become something of a political statement among the upper class of the Antebellum South as a reaction against Jacksonian populism and supposedly plebeian politics.

So, is this a thing that could have happened or should I prepare my straitjacket and tinfoil hat?
Click to expand...
You need a lot of muslim since day 1, even a founding father or his descedant is a muslim or converted during those times
 

Deleted member 109224

What exactly did early Americans think of Islam?

It'd be funny (in a peculiar way) if they were tolerant of Islam than Catholicism.


I've heard an analogy in which Sunnism is more similar to protestantism whereas shiism is more similar to catholicism.
According to Wikipedia, Luther was more critical of the pope than he was of the turks. The mutual opposition to what was perceived as catholic idolatry, greater emphasis on textualism, and putting gd on a higher pedestal than christ were seen as significant commonalities.
 
oshron

oshron

Jackson Lennock said:
What exactly did early Americans think of Islam? It'd be funny (in a peculiar way) if they were tolerant of Islam than Catholicism.
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truthfully, the American opinion of Islam at the time probably just amounted to "those weirdo Mohammedans in Africa and the Orient" at best and "heathens" at worst, probably having about the same opinion of them as "the papists" just by virtue of them being "the other"
 

Byzantion

J. Westrate said:
Is there any feasible way to have a Muslim president of the United States before 1900? I suppose that if Orientalism had been more popular in the early United States, some ex-Deists could have converted to Islam due to the declining popularity of the Enlightenment and the appeal of the imagined Orient. It also could have become something of a political statement among the upper class of the Antebellum South as a reaction against Jacksonian populism and supposedly plebeian politics.

So, is this a thing that could have happened or should I prepare my straitjacket and tinfoil hat?
Click to expand...
Maybe one that took a private interest in the religion and practice his whorship in privat ?
 
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha

Koprulu Mustafa Pasha

Gone Fishin'
Decent share of Muslims are needed. Maybe as a part of the US Force? Maybe the US Army feels likr using Tatars and Circassians as light cavalry in the Mid West. Several generations later and then it is a big maybe. Jews were more integrated but have still not a Jewish president for the US.
 

snerfuplz

Eivind said:
Is it even possible in the 20th. or the 21th? (Obama doesn´t count)
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I am going to have to say no without significant butterflies. Even without the Southern states the United States would need a far more radical national ideology (ex. universal radical republicanism without the anti-clerical element). You can count easily count the number of presidents that are not of Anglo-Saxon descent
 

Escape Zeppelin

A relevant item seems to be the Moors Sundry Act of 1790 which clarified that Moroccans were not subject to the same laws as blacks and slaves and were to be treated as effectively white. With more North African immigration in colonial and revolutionary America I think we'd see a clear social distinction arise between North African and "black" (whether it really existed or not). Depending on how it played out, I don't think Muslim statesmen would be unlikely. The first Jewish congressman was elected in 1845 after all.
 

David T

Both in Britain and the US, converts to Islam were not unknown in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were generally regarded as eccentrics (usually people who had spent too much time in the East and "gone native"). "... so in our time most Occidental adherents of that faith are accused of eccentricity ; in other words, something is always found to be wrong with the minds of such converts..." https://books.google.com/books?id=VT4MAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA92 In the US Alexander Russell Webb seems to have been the first convert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Russell_Webb Such converts were not necessarily hated but were at best objects of curiosity for their strangeness--definitely not the sort of person you would elect President.
 
Višeslav

Višeslav

Escape Zeppelin said:
The first Jewish congressman was elected in 1845 after all.
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Jews were not exactly well-liked, but they were still seen as European. Judaism was pretty well integrated into European society. Almost everyone knew a Jew. Muslims were rare, and thus foreign. Having more of them in the US and seeing north Africans as almost white both help, but the idea of Jews as "kind of similar" or "weird neighbours" goes back to Europe, where there were pretty much no Muslims (in fact, for a long time, Europe was basically defined as where the Muslims weren't).
 
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