What One Illinois Speaker Said About Islam and America Has People Talking

The video, which began circulating on Wednesday and has over 560,000 views as of Thursday afternoon, is arresting on a number of levels. It shows a woman wearing a hijab and leading a prayer at the Illinois General Assembly, which is not all that odd in itself: The General Assembly often features clergy of various religions leading the assembled legislators in prayer. Muslim clerics, however, are universally male, and so in this case, we have a Muslim layperson leading the solons in prayer. What she says, however, is far more striking than the event itself.

As the lawmakers bow their heads piously, the woman prays:

Bismillah al-rahman al-raheem. We turn to you in gratitude and remembrance. O Lord, remind us that the history of Islam in America is not a story that began in 1965, nor one that arrived upon distant shores in the twentieth century. It is woven into the very tapestry of this nation. It is part of black American history. A story not only of bondage, but of spiritual emancipation, a freedom of the soul that existed long before its material counterpart was realized. Let us honor that truth with fortitude and clarity. O sustainer, remind us that this story is stitched into the fabric of our land, and carried in the sacred inscriptions…

The speaker claims that the history of Islam in America didn't begin in 1965 (when immigration laws changed, allowing for much more immigration from non-European countries) or anytime in the 20th century. She claims Islam is “woven into the very tapestry of this nation.” Yet where is it? Where are the Muslim Founding Fathers? Where are the Muslim signers of the Declaration of Independence? Where are the Muslims who fought in the Civil War (on either side)? Where are the Muslim veterans of the Spanish-American War, or World War I, or World War II, or Korea? There might be a handful for Korea, and subsequent conflicts, but the fact is that otherwise, Islam has had no significant presence in the U.S. until September 11, 2001. And it was only after that date that mass Muslim migration began, so most Muslims in the U.S. have been here less the 25 years.

The claim is actually based on the contention that a large number, if not all, of the black slaves in antebellum America were Muslims. This is an increasingly popular claim among the leftists who insist that “black and brown people built this nation,” but it is as unlikely as it is widely circulated. The uncomfortable fact is that Muslims in Africa often captured non-Muslim Africans and sold them to the Atlantic slave traders; they didn’t generally capture or sell their fellow Muslims, as that would have been against the Qur’an’s injunction to be “ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another” (48:29).

A few Muslims, however, were caught and sold to slave traders who brought them to the United States, and now, two hundred years after they lived, they are celebrities. In 2025, PBS produced a fanciful series of documentary films, American Muslims: A History Revealed. One focused upon a Muslim named Mamadou Yarrow, who was brought to the American colonies as a slave in 1752, and bought his freedom in 1797. PBS says that his story reveals “the little-known story of America’s first Muslims, whose labor helped build the economic foundations of the early United States.” 

This claim is doubtful both because the vast majority of the slaves in colonial America and the early United States were not Muslims, and because attributing the nation’s economic foundations to slave labor ignores the fact that the nation was divided on slavery from the beginning, with half the country outlawing it, and only a small percentage of people owning slaves in the areas where slavery was legal.

Related: Muslim Leader Crows That ‘America Is Being Divided’ — and Names the Culprits

PBS also tells the story Muhammad Khan, a world traveler from, of all places, Afghanistan, who arrived in the U.S. in 1861, just in time to join the Union Army and fight in the Civil War. He explained later that he had “been persuaded to enlist while under the influence of liquor,” which makes him an unlikely poster child for the idea that Islam is woven into the tapestry of this nation. In any case, whatever Muhammad Khan was, one thing is certain: he was unusual. The U.S. wasn’t the residence of any significant number of Afghan migrants until Old Joe Biden opened the floodgates. They were never part of the fabric of the nation.

The purpose of making fanciful claims such as the one this woman makes is to stymie efforts to resist Sharia or end Muslim migration into the U.S. It is there home, it has always been their home, and Sharia is as American as apple pie. Yet once the Muslim community grows large enough and powerful enough, it will begin to assert its rights at the expense of other communities. Islam in power is not interested in being part of a tapestry. It is the whole thing, with no room for anything else.