Islam in America Timeline
1619-1800s
10 million Africans are brought to North America as slaves. About 30% are Muslim.
1775
Former slave Peter Saleem fights in the Battle of Bunker Hill and throughout the American Revolution
1856
The U.S. Cavalry hires Hajji Ali, a Muslim, to experiment with raising camels in the Arizona desert.
1893
Journalist Mohanned Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest white Muslim-American converts, founds the American Islamic Propaganda Movement.
1898
Kawkab Amnika (Star of America), the first Arabic newspaper in the United States, begins daily publication.
1908
Large numbers of Muslims immigrants pour into the United States from parts of the Ottoman Empire, including what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
1913
Noble Drew Ali founds the Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, N.J. The group claims to be an Islamic sect but incorporates influences from many religions
1919
First Islamic Association is found in Highland Park, Mich., where many immigrants found work in auto plants.
1920
The Red Crescent, a Muslim charity modeled after the International Red Cross is established in Detroit.
1934
The Mother Mosque, the first building in the United States built specifically to be a mosque, is established in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
1957
The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., a mosque and cultural center is dedicated. President Eisenhower and first lady Mamie Eisenhower attend the ceremony.
1964
Heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay changes his name to Muhammad Ali as part of his conversion to the Nation of Islam.
1965
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published soon after it subject’s assassination, tells the story of conversion to Islam in the context of the African-American experience.
1975
Nation of Islam founder, Elijah Muhammad dies, causing a split in the organization that launches the controversial anti-white movement of Minister Louis Farrakhan.
1980
The American-Arab anti-discrimination by Senator James Abourzek, D-S.D., a Christian to “defend the rights of people of Arab descent.”
1991
The Islamic Cultural Center id completed in New York City. The first building erected there as a mosque, it regularly draws more than 4,000 for Friday prayers.
1991
Charles Bilal is elected mayor of Kountze, Texas, the first Muslim to head a U.S. municipality.
1993
Abdul-Rasheed Muhammed is appointed the U.S. Army’s first Muslim chaplain.
1996
The first celebration of Eid al-Fitr takes place at the White House
2001
The U.S. Postal Service issues the first stamp honoring a Muslim holiday.
2001
A series of coordinated suicidal attacks by al-Qaeda Muslims upon the United States occurs on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda Muslim terrorists hijack four commercial passenger jet airliners, crash two of them into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashes in Pennsylvania as passengers sacrifice their lives to thwart an attack on the White House. The 9/11 terror attacks fuel a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment across America that continues today.
2001
Muslim Richard Colvin Reid (born August 12, 1973) commonly known as the shoe bomber, a self-admitted member of al-Qaeda, attempts to bomb flight 63 with explosives concealed in his shoe. In 2002 he pleads guilty in U.S. federal court to eight criminal counts of terrorism stemming from his attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight.
2002
The FBI reports that hate crimes against Muslims have risen 1,600 percent since 2000.
2003
FBI leaders tell field offices to count all of America’s mosques and detail their membership. Faced with protest from Islamic advocacy groups the agency drops the plan.
2003
U.S. Army Sgt. Asan Akbar, an African American Muslim, who is alleged to have committed a grenade attack on fellow U.S. soldiers in Kuwait, killing one American and wounding 15 others, will likely be charged with murder and possibly treason. The fragging incident raised intense speculation that Akbar allegedly committed his deadly attack because he felt persecuted by Army brass for his religious beliefs, or harbored resentment for being required to fight a war against other Muslims
2004
Daniel Pipes, a President George W. Bush appointee to the Institute for Peace, establishes the Islamic Progress Institute to “articulate a moderate, modern, and pro-American viewpoint” on behalf of U.S. Muslims.
2004
The Treasury Department appoints Mahmoud El-Garnal to advise the federal agency on Islamic banking and Shariah finance.
2005
A mother-daughter team founds the first Muslim national sorority in the United States, Gamma Gamma Chi, to help improve the image of Muslim women.
2006
Keith Ellison of Minnesota becomes the first Muslim elected to Congress.
2007
President George W. Bush participates in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Islamic Center of Washington.
2008
Imam Warith dies. Known as “America’s Imam”,” he was the first Muslim to offer the U.S. Senate’s invocation in 1990. He also offered prayers at President Bill Clinton’s inter-faith prayer services.
2009
President Barack Obama names Rashad Hussain, an American Muslim of Indian origin, as deputy associate counsel.
2009
An American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opens fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 people and wounding 31 others. Hasan had tendencies toward radical Islam since 2005 and had e-mail communications withAnwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki, born April 22, 1971 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen, and of Yemeni descent. He is an Islamic lecturer, spiritual leader and former imam who has purportedly inspired Islamic terrorists against the West.
2009
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Muslim Nigerian citizen, (also referred to as Umar Abdul Mutallab and Omar Farooq al-Nigeri; born December 22, 1986, in Logos, Nigeria) attempts to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan on December 25, 2009.
2009
Obama appoints devout Muslim, Arif Alikhan as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development. to Homeland Security Post. Arif comes from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa’s office, where he served as Deputy Mayor for Homeland Security and Public Safety. Mr. Alikhan was instrumental in taking down the LA Police Department's plan to monitor it's Muslim community. Alikhan is affiliated with MPAC, the "Muslim Public Affairs Council".
2009
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) announces that at a ceremony held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swears in ADC National Executive Director Kareem Shora as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). He is a leader of an Arab group that hailed jihadists as 'heroes'
2010
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf champions Park51, also known as the ground zero mosque, a multistory Islamic Community center two blocks from the New York World Trade Center site.
2010
Worldwide outrage is triggered when a Florida preacher announces plans to burn the Koran in protest against the ground zero mosque. He later cancels the event.
2010
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the "multikulti" concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany.

At "the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country," said Ms. Merkel at the event in Potsdam, near Berlin. "We kidded ourselves a while. We said: 'They won't stay, [after some time] they will be gone,' but this isn't reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other ... has failed, utterly failed."

The crowd gathered in Potsdam greeted the above remark, delivered from the podium with fervor by Ms. Merkel, with a standing ovation. And her comments come just days after a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank (which is affiliated with the center-left Social Democratic Party) found that more than 30 percent of people believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners" who had come to Germany chiefly for its social benefits.

STORY: Why 13 percent of Germans would welcome a 'Führer'

The study also found that 13 percent of Germans would welcome a “Führer” – a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler – to run the country “with a firm hand.” Some 60 percent of Germans would “restrict the practice of Islam,” and 17 percent think Jews have “too much influence,” according to the study.

"The findings signal that Europe’s largest nation, freed from cold-war strictures, is not immune from the extreme and often right-wing politics on the rise around the Continent," writes the Monitor's Europe Bureau chief, Robert Marquand. "The year 2010 is marking a clear shift toward extremist politics across Europe, analysts say. An uncertain economy, a gap between elites and ordinary Europeans, and fraying of a traditional sense of national identity has just in the past month brought more hard-line politics and speech, often aimed at Islam or immigrants – into a political mainstream where it had been absent or considered taboo."