Pakistan has been a US ally -some would say a client state- for a long time. It has paid the price of its loyalty in the form of a drug and gun culture born amidst the throes of the Soviet-Afghan War. Daily it counts the cost as radical Islamist terrorists strike in the country’s alleys and streets. These are the very same “mujahedeen” trained and armed by the US (and their willing ally Pakistan) to bring the Soviet empire to its knees, and then abandoned when the purpose was achieved. Both the American people, as well as the people of Pakistan, have paid dearly for this mistake in the shape of a global goliath of terrorism now stalking our dreams.

Truly our dreams drive our decisions-as well as our delusions. And assuredly they have shaped the love-hate relationship that has characterized Pak-US relations. Thus while many of us have hated Americans for our perceptions about the fickleness of their government’s promises or the over riding greed and ambition of their politicians and capitalists; none of us has ever failed to be inspired by the ideals of its peoples. Despite the roller-coaster state of our relationships, many in Pakistan still stand by America because for them the ‘American Dream’ is their dream. And while we have yet to attain it here, we all have heard of a great America, where anything is possible, where dreams come true.

This US election is for many Pakistanis another manifestation of that dream. The people of Pakistan like many in the US are looking for change; we have had some very tough years, and will surely have tougher years ahead. But after bleeding and suffering together with the American people for so long, we are hoping to see a friend in the White House. A friend who sees our sufferings and limitations along sides the dreams and opportunities to forge a bright future for our two great peoples.

It is in this context that the US elections are so vitally important for us. America’s polices here effect us as much or more then they affect the Americans. The war is being fought in our streets, in our backyards; it we who have to look over our shoulders every few minutes to make sure we will not be butchered in cold blood for dreaming the American dream. We therefore hope for an intelligent American President, who will understand our culture, our feelings, our issues; and work with us to solve the problems that have risen from years of misunderstanding, miscommunications, and cooperation.

This is why the people of Pakistan are so intrigued by this American election. We are glued to our TV screens, watching C-Span on our computers- and staying up nights to catch the live debates. We accept the fact that as Pakistanis whatever we say or do will not make a difference to the outcome; yet all of us here are hoping for a president who save us from our common night mares –and help achieve our dreams.

So we display support banners and buttons for our candidates on our persons, on our blogs, our web pages and on our facebook profiles. We await the outcome of this American election as anxiously as anyone in America. It makes us acutely aware of the fact that voting the right person into office is a global responsibility thrown on the shoulders of each American. Each American must know that his vote not only affects his neighborhood but also those around globe.

Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, was probably a Melungeon. The people were thought to be of mixed American and Red Indian blood. Yet modern research is proving that these people were descendents of Muslims who may even have preceded the arrival of Columbus himself. It seems America’s greatest President may have had Muslim blood flowing through his veins!

In 1990 Dr. James Guthrie, conducted gene frequency research on 177 Melungeon blood samples. He found no significant differences between the Melungeon people, and the people of Morocco, Algeria and Libya and the Calician mountains of Spain and Portugal, Iraq, Cyprus, Malta, the Canary Islands, certain South American Indians and last but not least, the Turks!

The term “Melungeon”itself has been found to derives from the Turkish melun can (from Arabic “mal`un jinn” ملعون جنّ) which means “damned soul”.In Spain and surrounding regions in the days of the Inquisition the Muslims were also known as Mudajjan. As we shall soon see, this turns out to be a most significant relationship.
The Spanish Inquisition forced many Muslims to flee spain. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim exiles escaped to their ancestral homelands of Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. The well-known Barbary Coast Pirates of North Africa sprang from this group, and gained renown as along with their Turkish compatriots, they sought revenge against the Spanish and Portuguese in ferocious Mediterranean Sea battles. Thus other Muslims-Berber - made their way to the Canary Islands. Interestingly enough wherever these exiled Berbers went, they identified themselves as ‘Portuguese.”

In a previous article Does America Have Muslim Roots? I have already shown how Muslim sailors had discovered and mapped the new world even before Columbus. It now appears that as a result of the inquisition many escaping Muslim sailors as well as “Conversos”of Muslim and Jewish descent also found their way to the new world - either on their own or as sailors on Spanish and Portuguese ships. Once there the later formed part of the laboring classes on the Spanish or Portuguese settlements.

The first European settlement in the New World was Santa Elena, South Carolina –established by the Spaniards in 1566. Many of the Santa Elena colonists were Berber Muslims and Sephardic Jews, recruited by the Portuguese Captain Joao Pardo from the heavily Berber Galician Mountains of northern Portugal. The colony thrived for more than twenty years until it was overrun by the English in 1587.

Since the English won the battle, Santa Elena was conveniently left out of American history books. But what happened to the survivors of Santa Elena? It appears that after the fall of the settlement many of its inhabitants-including its converted Jews and Muslims-escaped into the mountains of North Carolina. There they survived, intermarrying to some degree with Native Americans and with the earlier Muslims already there. Eventually a second group arrived and merged with them the same year.

This happened when in 1586, after Sir Francis Drake-an English pirate, raided Spanish and Portuguese settlements on the coast of Brazil. Amongst his prisoners were 300 Moorish and Turkish galley slaves, and a smaller number of West African Muslims. When he stopped at Roanoke Island, he found the English colony of Ralph B Lane he had enough of the New World and wanted to go home. To make room for them he took only 100 Turks back to England. Research indicates that Drake left the remainder on the island, assuring that he or someone would be back for them. Yet when Sir Walter visited the island two weeks later he found no trace of them. Where did they go?

Fearing for their safety from the pursuing Spanish or Portuguese they made their way the short distance to the mainland, probably utilizing the small boats left behind by the English. They then steadily moved inland, along the way intermarrying with Native Americans, mostly Powhatan, Pamunkey, Nansemond and Hatters. Within the next decade or so they encountered the remnant of the Santa Elena colony, many of whom shared their Muslim heritage. And there thousands of miles away from their homelands, these two surviving groups became one people. Christians, Jews and Muslims- literally the people of the book- living and worshipping the God of Abraham together. We find many proofs of this in American accounts:

•In 1654, English explorers learnt of a colony of bearded people wearing European clothing, living in cabins smelting silver and dropping to their knees to pray many times daily, wherever they might be. A people who did not speak English, but claimed to be “Portyghee” .They lived amongst the Powhatans and related tribes of eastern Virginia and North Carolina who were described as dark like Indians, but called “Portugals” A similar people in South Carolina called “Turks”.

•In the 1690’s, French explorers reported finding “Christianized Moors” in the Carolina mountains. When the first English arrived in the mid- 1700’s, large colonies were already well established in the Tennessee and Carolina Mountains. And, in broken Elizabethan English they called themselves “Portyghee,” or by the more mysterious term “Melungeon”. Tennessee Governor John Sevier records a 1784 encounter in what is now Western North Carolina with a dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people supposed to be of Moorish descent who claim to be Portuguese.

•In east Tennessee in late 1700’so Jonathan Swift, an Englishman married to a Melungeon woman utilized Melungeon men in his own silver mining operations. His dark-skinned companions were known as “Mecca Indians.”

Over the years, land grabbers pushed the Melungeons higher and higher into the mountains. The Melungeons, pushed off their lands, denied their rights, often murdered, always mistreated, became an embittered and nearly defeated people. Their claims of Portuguese and Melungeon heritage were increasingly ridiculed. Even the word Melungeon became a most disparaging term. In fact, to be legally classified as a Melungeon meant in the words of one journalist, to be “nobody at all”.

Over the ensuing decades- in a vain effort to fit in with their Anglo neighbors, they lost their heritage, their culture, their names and their original religion but not their genetic structure. Melungeon: meaning “one whose life or soul has been cursed”; were indeed appropriate words for a people far away from their loved ones. Yet the descendants of the Melungeon people are now everywhere in America , specially those who have ancestors from the SE US, with any of the following surnames: Adams, Adkins, Bell, Bennett, Berry, Bowling, Chavis, Coleman, Collins, Gibson, Goins, Hall, Jackson, Lopes, Moore, Mullins, Nash, Robinson, Sexton and Williams.

Americans with such roots -though most of them today are Christian - are a living legacy of Islam’s first wave of immigration to the New World.

In the year 889, Muslim sailor Khishkhash ibn Said ibn Aswad Al-Qurtuby (of Cordoba) set sail from the port of Palos in Muslim Spain and reached a certain land in the west. He returned home with huge treasures. He drew a world map calling these areas in the Atlantic Ocean “the unknown land”. The Muslim geo-historian Al-Masoudy records this in his book “Muruj-al-Dhahab wa Maadin Aljawhar”(956 AD).

A Chinese Muslim Admiral Zeng is said to have discovered America before Columbus. A Chinese document known as the Sung Document (1178) records this voyage of Muslim sailors to a land known as Mu-Lan-pi (America).

150 years later in 1310 Abu Bakri (Abu Bakar), a Muslim king of the Malian Empire, spearheaded a series of sea voyages to the New World. [They Came Before Columbus (1976) by Ivan Van Sertima].

Two years later (1312) Mandinga, African Muslims, from Mali and other parts of West Africa arrived in the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of America’s interior using the Mississippi River as their access rout.[ African Presence In Early America by Ivan Van Sertima ].

Columbus sailed from Spain (formerly Muslim Andalusia) much later in 1442.In his days Spain was full of Muslims. He had Muslims Spaniards and Muslim Moors on his ships. Panzone Brothes who captained two of his ships was a Muslim. For the voyage he used Muslim Maps.

On his fourth voyage in 1502 he records two important discoveries:

•On July 31, 1502, off the island of Jamaica, Columbus encountered strange people on a strange ship that western historians have generally considered to be Mayan Indians. From a distance, Columbus thought it to be uncannily like the Moorish galleys he had so often seen in the Mediterranean. There were approximately forty men and women on this galley and unlike the Jamaican Indians, these people wore clothing with showy colors and designs like those Columbus had seen, in Muslim Granada. Columbus observed that the women aboard this galley “covered their faces like the women of Granada.” Were these people Muslims who had reached the New World before him? As we shall see next Columbus certainly considered the possibility.

•The Canaries, a Portuguese possession, was a favorite dumping ground used by the Spanish Inquisition for dumping ‘Conversos’ of Muslim Berber origin. On the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Columbus discovered an iron pot and an old ship’s mast which he determined could have their origin only in the Canary Islands.

Treaties between US government and the Cherokees Indians in 1787 signed on the Delaware River bear the signatures of Abdel-Khak and Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. This treaty details their continued right to exist as a community in the areas of commerce, maritime shipping, and continue their form of government which at that time was in accordance with Islam. The traditional dress code for Cherokee Red Indian women included the kimah and long dresses. For men, the standard fare was turbans and long tops that come down to the knees. If you read any of the old books on Cherokee clothing up until 1832, you will see the men wearing turbans and the women wearing long head coverings.

Cherokee oral traditions indicate that the Cherokee people had some form of written language, but its use progressively decayed in the period between sixteenth and eighteenth century due to their changing fortunes, and subsequent migration to the mountains in the southeast, and continued isolation of their people in various parts of the Americas. By the mid-eighteenth century, most Cherokee had lost all but the oral and phonetic parts of the language. Sequoyah,(shown above) the Cherokee Native-American leader of the nineteenth century, is best known for re- inventing the new Cherokee Syllabary in 1821. Remarkably Sequoyah’s system is similar to that used in teaching Arabic language! The discovery of 7th century native rock carvings at Nevada (shown below), suggests the original language may well have been Arabic as the carvings are stylized forms of the name Muhammad.

The last Cherokee’s chief was a Muslim Ramadhan Ibn Wati who served as a Confederate brigadier general, surrendered his command to the United States on June 23, 1865. See http://membres.lycos.fr/andalus/english/info/cherokee.htm. His son Saladin Watie served on Southern Cherokee delegation to Washington, D.C. to sign a new treaty with the United States at the end of Civil War.

Over 500 names of US towns and many Red Indian tribe names reveal their Muslim (Arabic) etymological ancestry. California (Caliph-Haronia); Alhambra, Palestine, Allahbumya (Alabama), T Allah hasse (Talahasee) -Allah, will deliver you sometime in the future! Then there is Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, to mention a few of the noticeable names. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes also immediately reveals their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Arawak, Arikana, Cherokee, Hohokam, Hupa, Makkah, are only a few examples.

Note: The data has been taken from too many inter-net sources to enable giving Credit. Just Goggle any name given in this article if you want confirmation.

After 2 days and 2 nights of intensive dialog between the ruling coalition partners of the Pakistan government and several stalemates along the way, all parties of the coalition have finally addressed a press conference and delivered a joint statement. They have finally agreed to do what they should have done when they were popularly elected in the elections. The main points of the press conference were that the Government would ask General Musharraf to seek a vote of confidence from the parliament as well as all provincial assemblies, failing which the government will initiate impeachment proceedings against him. The second main issue was that after the government has dealt with the president the judiciary will be restored to its original position.

It was a big step by the popularly elected coalition to announce such steps against a military dictator who has ruled over the country ruthlessly with no regard for law of the land and the constitution, an army man who has dismissed an elected government as well as the judiciary just to have absolute control. A man who has the backing of the American Government as well as the almighty Pakistan army.

There is now more uncertainty in the air, some analysts have gone to the extent of saying that General Musharraf might even go to the extent of dismissing the newly elected parliament to save his skin. With his background he is fully capable of making such a move, but a move like that would create havoc in the country, times have changed and you can’t keep on trampling over the will of the people every day. Pakistani’s have had enough and I am sure any move by the General to get rid of this government will be a foolish one, which will start a movement of the people that will rid the country of the general as well as show future aspiring generals that ruling over a Nation’s will is neither a right nor the job of a soldier.

Why would any one care about this stuff outside of Pakistan when there are so many countries in the world which are not democratic? This is a question the world at large needs to think very seriously about. Why? you would ask. Because when a country is plagued with political instability it in itself is very dangerous, but when that country is a big military might with nuclear weapons, things can get catastrophic over night.

Pakistan has been previously know to operate and support terrorist training camps, the head of Pakistan’s atomic program has been implicated on charges of distribution of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Who is to say that the leaders in Pakistan will act rationally in a tough situation where they have to take a decision on the use of nuclear weapons. Forget responsibility of the leaders, God forbid what would happen if the helm of this instable very powerful military country with nuclear weapons are taken over by a radical islamist General in a coup? can you imagine the repercussions. This is not just a created senario or a theory this very little known fact is true, islamist generals have planned to do exactly the same thing on several occasions. The coup planned by Maj-Gen Zaheerul Islam Abbasi and Brigadier Mustansir Billah in the middle of the 90s had a strong religious motivation behind it, fueled through the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad.

The two officers had allegedly planned to storm the conference room where the formation commanders had assembled for their annual conference and seize or shoot them on the spot. Amateurishly planned, the attempted coup failed as Brigadier Billah was caught with his cache of arms hidden in the boot of his car at the Attock checkpost while on his way from Peshawar to Rawalpindi.

Earlier, in the late 80s, retired Maj-Gen Tajjamul Hussain attempted yet another coup, which was aborted before take-off. The main inspiration behind his plan was to rid the country of ‘corrupt’ civil and military personnel and impose an Islamic order.

God knows what would have happed if any of these or the numerous other attempts would have been successful. Pakistan needs a strong democracy which is sane and has the power of the people behind it, Pakistan needs to reign its military. The soldiers belong in their barracks and not in the country’s politics. The world has to help Pakistan become a democracy and shun the rule of dictators instead of supporting them. The situation in Pakistan is getting out of hand and if it is not handled tactfully it might just blow up in the faces of us all.

Today it has been confirmed that Dr. Afia indeed is in US custody and has been since her disappearance, she is being held at the US detention facility at Baghram in Afghanistan, the whereabouts of her children are unknown. No charges have been filed against her and she is said to have gone senile and cries all the time. The news has stirred emotions in people who want to know why Dr. Afia was arrested and handed over by Pakistani forces, what happened to her children and what is her state. It is shameful that the government of Pakistan and the FBI had denied all knowledge of her arrest for so long and are still mute on a lot of issues including the whereabouts of her children.

The following poem by Mr. Hassan Abbas has been making rounds of blogs in Pakistan.

A Glorious Dawn…And A Better Day

To Dr.Afia Siddiqui - prisoner # 650 in American custody

Another dawn …another day,
Disgrace; insult is thrown our way;
Yet shamelessly on their golden perch
The spineless look - Oh how they sway!

As if there is no Lord above,
They with the devil-hand in glove;
Selling our dearest values and souls,
For gold and power – push and shove!

This crime you saw they so denied,
To filthy scum they sold the bride;
Yet the mighty Creator seeing it all
Unveils the gruesome act they hide!

Amongst ravenous wolves the fair one lies,
As from brutish hands she helplessly flies;
A suffering sister sane no more,
Her anguished screams - they rent the skies.

And this is all the pride you boast,
Our tormentors you daily host !
Comrades but yesterday we shared the cup,
- And today so far apart we coast ?

When comes a ‘Qasim’ to stem this rot?
Of Almighty Allah and His Messenger forgot!
Of cheaply selling our heritage which -
With submission and sacrifice was dearly bought.

And yet the strong will go their way,
As an ‘Iftikhar’ keep the monsters at bay;
Afia! Our elders pray, while our braver fight ,
For a glorious dawn…….. and a better day!