Historically Islam has always been a part of America. Unbeknownst to me, a large proportion of the slaves that were sent over to early America (prior to the formation of the United States as a country). It seems so utterly absurd that the American people resent an important and even foundational characteristic of their country. This resentment even contradicts the idealized reason that people came to the Americas, for religious freedom. I was entirely unaware of the influence that Islam has had and I believe that a large percent of the current population is similarly unaware. One example would be the songs that slaves sang had the same model as Islamic poetry and music. Those same songs then continued to evolve and morph into modern music like hip-hop that we have today. Famous musicians like Mos Def are Muslim and we applaud their works without thinking of their influences. The American Religious Identification Survey in 2008 (the most recent survey I could find) listed that around one million and three hundred thousand people self-identified as Muslim out of the 54 million people surveyed. That is roughly two percent of the population surveyed. The Muslim population in America is growing and will continue to grow. As a culture we cannot continue to oust and attack a major part of our society.
Ultimately, I chose to create this American colonial flag containing a crescent and stars as a final reflection on the blog that I have created as well as a final reflection of this course. The image itself may not be fairly obvious in its message or perhaps it is overly simplistic. However, I am hoping that the image will at least cause people to wonder why this image was created. As I have stated in my introduction, the ultimate goal of this blog was to make people re-examine their thinking and understanding of Islam.