Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2009, page 68
Book Review :
Al’ America: Travel Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots.
By Jonathan Curiel, The New Press, 2008, hardcover, 246 pp. List: $25.95; AET: $18.
Reviewed by Jamal Najjab
WHILE MY father was alive, no matter what the situation or the topic, he would invariably tell us with a great sense of pride, “You know, that came from the Arabs.” As a child I was amazed how little the West had contributed to the development of mankind.
My generation is now more fortunate than my father’s when it comes to telling our children about the gifts Arabs and Muslims have given this country, because of San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Jonathan Curiel’s wonderful new book, Al’ America: Travel Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots.
Curiel’s discoveries are equally important for the average American, as demonstrated by a recent Gallup poll finding that four out of ten Americans say they dislike Muslims—even though 60 percent say they have never even meet a Muslim. Despite this fact, Curiel illustrates how Arab and Muslim culture have played a part in what we know as America. “It’s not ‘their’ culture,” he writes, “but ‘ours.’…The culture of America.”
According to Curiel the influence of Arab culture is as American as apple pie—or, more specifically, as an ice cream cone. When the World’s Fair came to St. Louis in 1904, Abe Doumar was there as well. He had come from Syria to sell holy water from the land of Christ. Next to Doumar’s booth was Ernest Hamwi’s stand. Hamwi was a fellow Syrian who was selling zalabia, a flat waffle-like sweet, which was and still is very popular in the city of Damascus. As fate would have it, the fair’s ice cream vendors served their product in dishes which had to be returned and washed for the next customers. The demand for ice cream was so great that soon there were not enough dishes. Doumar came up with the brilliant idea of forming the zalabia into a cone shape and filling it with ice cream. And with that the ice cream cone was born.
But the Arab/Muslim connection with America goes back even further. Christopher Columbus, who lived most of his adult life in Spain, spoke the Arabized Spanish of his time. When signing any document he gave himself the title of “Almirate,” which in Spanish means commander, its root being the Arabic word “al-emir,” the prince. Columbus gave credit where credit was due for his navigational skills: “The Jews and the Moors have influenced me for the better.” When he landed on what is now Cuba, he wrote that he’d discovered a beautiful hilltop that would be a wonderful place to build a “mezquita,” a mosque.
As Spanish explorers conquered the new world and colonized the land, they brought along parts of the Muslim culture that had dominated their country for almost 700 years, especially the architecture. A striking example of Islamic inspiration is the doorway of the Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, built like the doorway of a mosque.
Many of the African slaves forcefully transported to this country brought aspects of Islam with them as well. Curiel tells of a slave, Omer Ibn Said, who came from West Africa, laboring as someone else’s property for five decades in the Carolinas. When he reached 80, he wrote his autobiography—not in English, which would have been illegal for him to learn, but in perfect Arabic.
Curiel believes the roots of the music we know as the Blues also originated in West Africa, with its rhythm stemming from the Muslim call to prayer. He quotes the well-known Muslim musician Ali Farka Toure from Mali who speaks of the link between his form of music and those performing the Blues in America: “I am the root and the trunk, and they the branches and leaves.”
These are but a few of the many fascinating findings—all footnoted—Curiel presents in his entertaining book, which he was inspired to write in response to 9/11. He says the world can’t be described in stark black and white terms. Even in these very uncertain times, he explains, people—no matter where they live—have more in common than they understand. We all need to search for those gray areas, and Al’ America is one place to start.
Jamal Najjab is administrative director of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
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