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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus claimed the discovery in the name of Spain. "Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said. Erdogan said that Ankara was even...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there. "Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

Francaviglia does not dispute that Muslims could have beaten Columbus to the New World. They certainly possessed the technological expertise to have done so; but, so far, there is no reliable evidence that they did. There are, however, very good reasons for thinking that they didn't. Arab maps were the best in the world, but none of the existing early maps demonstrates any knowledge of the Americas. Arabs also were prolific writers. Francaviglia thinks it’s virtually impossible that Arab explorers discovered the Americas and made no mention of the fact. Why then is the supposed pre-Columbian Muslim discovery of America...

Sunday, October 13, 2013 Goodbye Columbus, Goodbye America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Columbus may have outfoxed the Spanish court and his rivals, but he is falling victim to the court of political correctness. The explorer who discovered America has become controversial because the very idea of America has become controversial. There are counter-historical claims put forward by Muslim and Chinese scholars claiming that they discovered America first. And there are mobs of fake indigenous activists on every campus to whom the old Italian is as much of a villain as the bearded Uncle Sam. Columbus...

“This is a very disturbing video about how our high school students are being brainwashed by Moslems in favor of Islam because our textbook publishers, school principals and teachers do not have the knowledge about Islam to know what is true and what is false. The textbooks are loaded with false positive statements about Islam and false negative statements about Christianity and Judaism.”

TEL AVIV, Israel – The Obama administration's reported pick for a top intelligence post once peddled a book to U.S. public schools that falsely claims Muslims inhabited North America far before European explorers. The book, funded by Saudi Arabia, also contains widely inaccurate anti-Israel Arab propaganda. Charles "Chas" Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, is slated to head the National Intelligence Council, according to multiple reports. Yesterday, it came to light Freeman has financial ties to the infamous bin Laden family – including dealings he defended after Sept. 11, 2001. Freeman served as president...

Is it possible that there were Muslims in the Americas before Columbus? Some claim that Muslims came to America hundreds of years before Columbus arrived in the New World. Are the claims true? Every elementary school student knows the story of Christopher Columbus; that he set sail from Spain and mistakenly discovered America in 1492, landing on an island in the Caribbean. Columbus encountered native inhabitants of this new world, and thinking that he had landed in India, he called them Indians. While many of the details have been mythologized or fabricated over the ensuing 500 years, Columbus’s expedition represents...

Of course the Chinese didn't discover America. But then nor did Columbus A map supporting claims that the admiral Zheng He reached the New World in the early 15th century is plainly a hoax Simon Jenkins Friday January 20, 2006 The Guardian (UK) We all know that a lie goes halfway round the world while truth is putting on its boots. But what if the lie goes the whole way? What if it claims to circumnavigate the globe? Last week came purported evidence that the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed his great fleet of junks round the world a century...

China map lays claim to Americas The map clearly shows the Americas and Africa A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus. The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418. If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival. The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts. Chinese characters...

Coming soon to an elementary school near you: mandatory indoctrination in Islamic customs and practices. According to The Kansas City Star, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Herndon, Virginia, are to be given lessons in the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and Ramadan. During this instruction, public school children will play act being Muslims, and, perhaps unwittingly, convert to Islam. Pupils from a nearby Muslim school will visit classes in the town’s public schools to educate their counterparts in Islam. They will be accompanied by something called “a multicultural trainer” named Afeefa Syeed. In Herndon, during this month of Ramadan (which began Friday),...

In anticipation of Columbus Day, I've been educating myself on the Muslims who discovered America. You mean you didn't know that Muslims were in America before Columbus? You didn't know Muslim navigators took Columbus by the hand and led him to a little island in the Bahamas known as Guanahani, a settlement of Islamic Mandinkas from Africa? You hadn't heard about the Muslims from both Spain and West Africa who sailed to America at least five centuries before Columbus? Yes, this is the new uni-cultural rage with the U.S. Muslim community. There are seminars in major cities and mosques all...

Your children may learn that Muslims discovered AmericaApril 16th, 2004 A Native American tribe has forced distributors of an Arab studies guide for American teachers to remove an inaccurate and absurd passage that Muslim explorers preceded Columbus to North America, and eventually became Algonquin chiefs named Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik! The Middle East Policy Council, a Washington advocacy group that promotes this curriculum to school districts in 155 U.S. cities have apparently been somewhat unresponsive and dismissive of complaints. Ridiculous as this example is, it is illustrative of a far more disturbing development: the placement of propaganda in our schools by...

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters. As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party...

10-year-old Elizabeth Blaine dropped the mic at a Montclair, New Jersey, school board meeting Monday night, sharing her support for a policy that lets parents opt out their children from taking the Common Core test, also known as PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). "I love to read. I love to write. I love to do math. But I don’t love the PARCC. Why? Because it stinks," Elizabeth said. "This is crazy!" she continued. "I am one of the most gifted students in my grade (or so my mom says) and I have not...

The pro-amnesty and open borders Wall Street Journal wants former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to not back down on Common Core and amnesty, the two issues that may represent the greatest divide between the bipartisan political class and Main Street. The Journal, which Bush has hailed as his "paper of record," argued that Bush was right when he recently said during a Journal event that a Republican must be willing to "lose the primary to win the general" election."Mr. Bush’s two main political liabilities in the primaries are said to be his support for immigration and for Common Core education standards," the Journal opined. "Neither is...

Jeb Bush is exploring a 2016 presidential bid. The former Florida governor said in a post on Facebook Tuesday that over the Thanksgiving holiday there was a lot of discussion about the future of the nation. “As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs, I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States,” Mr. Bush said. Mr. Bush said he plans to establish a Leader PAC next month to “help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical...

In addition to major telecommunications firms aiming to influence the public debate on net neutrality, there’s the Ford Foundation, the second-largest private foundation in the world. “If you are a foundation for justice in the world, and you don’t understand that the Internet is going to be a major battleground in this century, and you’re not engaged in that fight and supporting people who are concerned about access and security, you’re going to be left out of one of the most important justice issues of the day,” Foundation President Darren Walker told the Council on Foreign Relations this summer. “And...

The Wall Street Journal's Beth Reinhard chatted with Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist about Jeb Bush's refusal to sign Norquiest's pledge never to raise taxes and his comments a few years ago that he could support a deficit reduction deal that entailed $1 in tax increases to every $10 in spending cuts: ....Mr. Norquist said the 2012 hearing came at a time when “Republicans were all holding out on not raising taxes, and he was a guy from Florida, a former, washed-up politician from Florida not involved in that fight…and he jumps in says, ‘I’d raise taxes.’ You’re either...

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, no matter how full-throated the endorsements of Common Core by such worthies as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the parents go marching on. “Colorado Springs School District 11 struck a blow against the Common Core by voting to remove the majority of its students from the new, mandatory standardized tests,” Chris Neal wrote in School Reform News this month. “District 11, which has nearly 30, 000 students, announced it plans to randomly test the minimum number of students needed to meet the federal requirement, allowing the rest to opt...

Is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush too moderate for the Republican Party? That is all the talk. But here’s a surprise: Adam C. Smith, political editor of the liberal Tampa Bay Times, authored this piece last Friday refuting with evidence that Bush as governor was “arch-conservative” and far from a “moderate squish.” — Ed. Respected Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told the Washington Examiner recently that Jeb Bush is the latest in a line of Bushes who oppose Reaganism. Radio host Mark Levin has dismissed Florida’s former governor as “a very good moderate Democrat,” while pioneering conservative activist Richard Viguerie...