El-Sayed breaks barrier for Muslims who've been in U.S. for half a millennium

Muslims have never been strangers to this country, contrary to the skewed perception of many Americans. In 1528 — nearly a century before English colonists arrived in Jamestown and the Mayflower dropped anchor in Cape Cod — Mustafa Zemmouri, a Muslim Moroccan, also known as Estebanico or Estevanico, set foot on what is now the United States. The enslaved, Arabic-speaking explorer, whose last name is also written Azemmouri, walked across the American South, Southwest and into Mexico, serving as a translator and cultural mediator between the Indigenous communities and the Spaniards he traveled with. Zemmouri, who may have been killed by the Zuni tribe or faked his death to escape bondage, wasn't an anomaly. Scholars estimate that as many as 30% of the thousands of other Africans brought to our shores against their will shared Zemmouri’s Islamic faith, which they were forced to practice in secret or abandon.

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