“Islam in America before Columbus” by Hisham Zoubeir appears this week in the Muslim Weekly (thanks to all who sent this in), but actually it has been making the rounds for years, and can be found on many Islamic sites.
Zoubeir claims that there is archaeological and linguistic evidence for a pre-Columbian Muslim presence in North America. I don’t know of any scholarly refutation of the claims he makes, and for all I know they could be true, although they recall Khrushchev-era Soviet propaganda about how the Russians actually were the first people to do just about everything.
Zoubeir’s article may seem to many to be simply an exercise in chauvinistic overreaching until one realizes that to some Muslims who take his claims seriously, America is now Muslim land — and Islamic law stipulates that Muslims possess by right any land that once formed part of the House of Islam; this is a key element of the claims to Israel and Spain put forward by Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and others. Chauvinistic overreaching, yes, but quite possibly with a political agenda.