Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas

[Ray]

Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas

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.

Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India.

A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.
Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas - The Times of India

People state that Turkey is a secular country.

If it were so, then why does this bloke want to build a mosque in Cuba to commemorate his concept that Muslims discovered the Americans first. Would it not be sufficient to build a monument, with all scintillating effect?

Kemal Attaturk must be rolling in his grave.

That apart, there should be some historical proof to the effect that Muslims were the first to be there in the Americas.

And which Muslim from which country?

 

[maomao]

According to such people Earth was created in a day's time and human's are children of Adam and Eve.....now argue with them and they will tell you the scientific proof is mentioned in Quran and Hadiths! What an oxymoron when the Catholic Church has accepted theory of evolution and big bang! Who can argue with the semi-literate mullahs?

I have no doubt Indians, Chinese, North European, Persians and Arabs (even before Islam, be it Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Levanites etc.) were exploring the world but can't say they discovered Americas. What I know for sure and due to archaeological evidence, Americas especially North America (coastal for sure) was indeed first colonized by Viking tribes for a while before the indigenous tribes wiped out the colonists!

 

[Hari Sud]

The Turkish PM has his head stuck in sand.

 

[Otm Shank2]

niether europeans nor muslims discovered america. There were tens of millions of people of many different cultures, inuit, carib, mayan, cree, ojibwe etc that lived for thousands of years continuously before any genocidal cruel western european or sand european set foot here.