ONE: Little Mosque on the Prairie
Among the millions of immigrants arriving in the United States at the turn of the 20th century were thousands of Muslims from Lebanon, then part of Greater Syria. In this film, host Aymann Ismail (author and staff writer, Slate Magazine) tells the story of two of these people, a woman named Mary Juma and her husband Hassen who homesteaded in North Dakota in the early 1900s. Traveling across the Midwest, Aymann explores how the community that Mary and Hassen founded constructed one of the first purpose-built mosques in the country, keeping their traditions alive while creating a new identity on the American frontier.
TWO: Hidden from History
Even before the United States was founded, tens of thousands of Muslims were already present, captured in West Africa and brought to colonial America in chains. Host Asma Khalid (NPR’s White House correspondent and ABC News contributor) tells the surprising story of one of these people, a Muslim man named Mamadou Yarrow, who, after 45 years of enslavement, negotiated his way to freedom, bought a house in Georgetown, and had his portrait painted by the famous Revolutionary War artist Charles Willson Peale. Through Yarrow’s story, Asma reveals the little-known story of America’s first Muslims, whose labor helped build the economic foundations of the early United States.