Reaction to Stuart Jeffries’s article “The Muslims Who Shaped America – From Brain Surgeons to Rappers.”[1]
The handful of names turned up by Stuart Jeffries is statistically insignificant. Mr. Jeffries has not managed to marshal anything close to a damning indictment of the supposed ignorance of Donald Trump regarding the issue of Muslims-in-America.
Relevantly, a quick-and-dirty search turned up the interesting information that the alleged Islamic affiliation of the Revolutionary-era persons mentioned in the Guardian's article is questionable. The Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History states that "...Bampett Muhamed; Yusuf Ben Ali, whose slave name was Joseph Benhaley; Salem Poor; and Peter Salem, whose slave name was Peter Buckminister" are listed as "four Americans who may have been Muslim".[2]
The author goes on to note: "Much of the research on Muslims in the military [in the relevant period] depends on identifying Muslim last names. This does not guarantee that the bearer was a Muslim, since some may have converted to Christianity or have had no religious beliefs."[3]
Of course, it is possible that at least one of the people named was a Muslim. In passing, however, I note that in other contexts, researchers run the risk of being labeled "anti-Semitic" for alleging that persons are adherents of Judaism merely on the basis of their possession of "Jewish-sounding names." At least part of the reason to object to such onomatological inferences might be that names alone do not entail that their possessor's subscribe to particular faith-professions. However, if this is correct, then it ought to generalize to the present cases.
Given the level of uncertainty concerning these individuals' alleged Islamic connections, it is irresponsible of the Guardian to represent these conjectures as established fact.
In any event, With the obvious exception of Cassius Clay, Jr. (alias "Muhammad Ali," who was of course born in the U.S. and only converted to Islam), the remainder of the immigrants cited by the article[4] do not seem to me to impel one to endorse the anything like a more-or-less "open door policy" for people seeking exit from Islamic countries.
It might be prudentially justifiable for the U.S. to try to encourage "brain drain" emigration in particular, carefully-chosen instances. This would demand, however, that citizenship applicants be able to demonstrate themselves to be of the caliber of the engineers and neurosurgeon spotlighted.
The idea that without the scattered persons named “the country would be a much poorer place” has hardly been established.
Notes:
[1] Guardian [U.K.], Dec. 8, 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/08/donald-trump-famous-muslims-us-history>.
[2] Edward E. Curtis, Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History, New York: Facts on File; Infobase Publishing, 2010, p. 561; emphasis supplied; archived online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=owZCMZpYamMC&pg=PA561>.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The “rapper”-angle is too foolish to warrant much by way of comment.
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