[Verginius Rufus]

Estevan or Estevanico is real, one of the four survivors of Narvaez's ill-fated expedition to Florida who eventually made it back to Mexico under the leadership of Cabeza de Vaca. He was born in Azamor (Azemmur) in Morocco (SW of Casablanca), so was probably a Muslim at first, but no doubt was required to become a Christian when he was enslaved...Estevan is a Christian name (Stephen). Whether he kept any Muslim beliefs to himself is unknowable.

He was killed by Indians when part of an advance party for the Coronado expedition, but whether that was in Sonora or Arizona I don't know--at any rate it is ridiculous to credit him with the origins of the states of Arizona and New Mexico.

[Fred Nerks]

The claim that the african slaves were muslim is something I find utterly reprehensible, like everything else about islam. The arabs rounded up the indigenous peoples of the African continent as if they were cattle, they did this for millenia, and if you look closely it's still going on in the Sudan right now.
Slavery is still an acceptable practise in Saudi Arabia.

That African Americans would convert to islam is the final irony. They are taking up the religion (cult) of their masters who captured them, matched them through the desert manacled to each other and sold them to the slave traders who took them to the New World.
Stockholm syndrome after hundreds of years, maybe?

There would never have been a black slave in the US or anywhere else if it wasn't for the arabs.

It was common I have read, that the arabs would promise the natives a trip to Mecca and load them onto the boats and the 'muslim convert to islam' simply never saw his family nor his/her homeland again.