The Jumah at the DNC event went off Friday without a hitch, but the Democratic leadership and liberal media are still trying to squirm out of acknowledging that the DNC ever sanctioned the program, which featured a number of Islamist extremists.

Although there is a lot of spin surrounding the event, the fact remains that the leaders of the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs claim the DNC reached out to them and invited their group to host the two-hour opening event Friday, as well as the officially sanctioned Islamic Regal Dinner that night.

The event appeared on the official Charlotte in 2012 website until it was removed after the radical nature of BIMA got out. The event was attended by hundreds, rather than the 20,000 predicted.

Among the speakers at the event were a retired Muslim Army chaplain who was charged with sedition but not prosecuted, and an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

But the issue that really rankles many people is BIMA’s support of theories about the Muslim influence on American history, including the notion that a Muslim crew of explorers sailed up the Mississippi River in the 12th century and established a colony that entitles Muslims to call themselves indigenous Americans.

Real Native Americans are not pleased.

During his remarks at the Jumah event, BIMA spokesman Jibril Hough said not only did Muslims visit America first, but it was a Muslim who led Columbus on his famous voyage of discovery.

The claim is based on a Chinese artifact known as the “Sung Document” that purportedly reports on the voyage of a Muslim crew from T’o-Pan-ti to Mu-Lan-pi, which took 100 days. The main problem with the theory is that no one knows with any certainty where either of those lands is. BIMA claims Mu-Lan-pi is America, but many scholars believe it to be Spain. Also, the document mentions pomegranates being found, but they were not introduced to the Americas until the 18th century by the Spanish.

When Columbus set sail to find the Indies, he had high hopes of reaching Asia, but his travel plan was based on maps by the ancient Greek scientist Ptolemy, who had miscalculated that the Earth was a much smaller circumference than in reality.

(A side note: That famous story about arguments by clerics that Columbus would fall off the edge of the world because it was flat is bunkum, apparently cooked up by Washington Irving and promoted by later atheist writers. Even medieval church scholars were aware of Greek mathematics and knew the world was round. The argument against Columbus’ voyage was that some clerics felt he should have used the calculations by Eratosthenes, who showed the world to be much larger than Ptolemy calculated. Eratosthenes was only off by a couple of hundred miles, so the clergy in this case were correct.)

There are other theories, some more likely, some highly improbable, about explorers discovering America before Columbus, including the adventures of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He in 1421 and the Vikings led by Leif Erickson. (Vikings and their dragon boats could account for Aztec legends of blond-haired gods and flying serpents.)

There also may be evidence of Polynesian, Japanese and even Roman presence in ancient America. One of my favorite old stories is about the Irish monk St. Brendan and the Welsh Prince Madoc landing in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in 1170 A.D., a tale that was actually used to press British claims to the East Coast.

BIMA, however, seems to be one of those historical revisionist groups that is trying to write Islam into parts of history where it never existed and exaggerate its influence where it did.

If Muslims truly want credit for the role they played in the opening of America to Europe, then they just need to look at the historic record.

Continued Muslim aggression in the Mideast and southern Mediterranean in the 15th century made trade with Asia via the normal land routes difficult. This inspired people like Prince Henry the Navigator to begin looking for new trade routes that would allow them to circumvent Muslim bandits and pirates.

In 1453, the fall of Constantinople to Muslim aggressors ended the last vestiges of the Roman Empire and blocked major trade routes to India and Asia. In 1492, less than 40 years later, Columbus set sail to find a route to the Indies, during which he literally bumped into the Americas.

If Muslims weren’t historically such a violent people, Columbus might not have ever set sail.