Jonathan Curiel’s Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots is an accessible travel-based historical study examining the overlooked Arab and Islamic influences embedded within the cultural development of the United States. Published in 2008, the work moves between journalism, historical reflection, and cultural commentary while challenging simplified narratives about Islam and Arab identity in American history.
Travel Narrative as Historical Recovery
Rather than presenting a conventional academic monograph, Curiel structures the book as a journey through locations, personalities, and historical memories tied to Arab and Islamic influence in the Americas. The work attempts to recover neglected historical intersections between Muslim societies and American cultural formation, ranging from architecture and music to foodways, language, commerce, and diplomacy.
One of the book’s strengths lies in its effort to bring general audiences into conversations often confined to specialist scholarship. Curiel avoids highly technical academic prose and instead presents interconnected historical episodes through interviews, travel observations, and historical anecdotes.
Islamic and Arab Traces in American Culture
The text argues that Arab and Islamic influence in America extends far beyond contemporary immigration narratives or post-9/11 political discourse. Curiel instead situates these influences within a broader historical continuum connected to Spain, the Mediterranean world, African Muslim presence in the Americas, diplomacy with Morocco, and cultural exchange across the Atlantic.
Particularly valuable is the book’s attempt to connect seemingly ordinary aspects of American life to deeper transnational histories. Curiel’s approach encourages readers to reconsider how Islamic civilization and Arab culture shaped elements of architecture, music, language, and regional identity in ways often ignored in mainstream historical narratives.
Interpretive Note: While written for a broad readership rather than as a narrowly specialized academic study, Al' America remains significant as a public-facing attempt to introduce wider audiences to the historical presence of Arab and Islamic influence in the Americas.
Place Within IslamicASA Research
For IslamicASA, the book is particularly relevant because it reflects a broader effort to challenge the assumption that Islam and Muslims are recent or isolated additions to American history. Although many of the themes introduced by Curiel have since been expanded by later scholarship, the book helped popularize discussion surrounding Arab and Islamic historical presence in the United States during the late 2000s.
The work also serves as an entry point into larger discussions concerning material culture, diplomacy, architecture, migration, and the transmission of Islamic influence through both direct and indirect historical pathways.