Islam as a Major US Minority Religion

While "working" on homework (sorry if I haven't made any AH's) I thought of this:

How could, by at least the year 1885, could the United States of America be at least 5% percent Muslim, although I would like to see it at around 10-20 percent.
 

Jasen777

Donor
Well, they could import slaves from a Muslim part of Africa, which Brazil did to an extent. Of course there's a few problems with that...
 
Well, they could import slaves from a Muslim part of Africa, which Brazil did to an extent. Of course there's a few problems with that...

Well weren't there quite significant Muslim slaves in America ? But I think that there are almost none of their descendants that still profess Islam today....
 
Well weren't there quite significant Muslim slaves in America ? But I think that there are almost none of their descendants that still profess Islam today....

AFAIR Muslim slaves were disliked as a rule because they could communicate with each other in their own language, often were literate, at home in more sophisticated cultural setups and because they felt superior to the Christian owners. People from purely tribal societies were easier to break.
 

Jasen777

Donor
Well weren't there quite significant Muslim slaves in America ? But I think that there are almost none of their descendants that still profess Islam today....

I don't know the answer to that for some reason, but I never got the idea that the U.S. did import any significant number of Muslim slaves. Brazil did, and they handed the country their worst slave rebellions (other than the Quilombolas, which were more runaways than classic rebellion), for the reasons carlton_bach mentioned.

The U.S. was one of the few places were slaves had a natural population increase, and so they were less dependent on importing slaves, and did pretty much end the practice, unlike some other countries, after international slave trading was officially banned.
 
There were muslim slaves. Would they keep thir religion, though?

Could we get workers from the Middle East instead of China, perchance?
 
My understanding is that some of the slaves who were brought from Africa to North America/USA were Muslim, but their numbers were fairly small. And even for those who were muslim, once they got here their religion was forced on them by their White masters who were Christians. Few of the slaves who were born here were willing to risk adopting Islam or any other religion except Christianity fearing their master's reaction.

Also, there wasn't much chance for a significant "White" population from Muslim countries to come here and settle, and even if they had, they would have been pretty much set aside and even ostracised by mainstream American society of the time. So there wasn't much chance for a significant Muslim minority to develop in The USA at that time.
 
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