You have to remember that Cedar Rapids has the longest standing mosque in the USA. It’s called the Mother Mosque and has been there since 1934.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Mosque_of_America
The first one was built in 1929 in Ross, SD but it was torn down.
According to this wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
“While an estimated 10%[2] of the slaves brought to colonial America from Africa arrived as Muslims,[3] Islam was stringently suppressed on plantations.[4]
From the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the United States from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire.[5]”
Why they started coming over in the 1880s onward and who encouraged them to do so is unknown. Why they decided to settle in South Dakota and Iowa is another good question with no answer.
I didn’t know that. Strange they would settle in SD and Iowa.