TinDor -

Your arguments are ahistorical and essentialist. Musically and lyrically, Black Gospel is a hybrid form. Just as is all North American vernacular music. Many of the features noted by Floyd (cited by you above) are not specific to African-American music, and they certainly are not specifically Afro-Islamic. And if Brazil received more African Muslims than the American South (which one of your sources indicates), wouldn't one expect to find an even stronger Afro-Islamic influence in Brazilian music?. Blues did not even coalesce as a musical form until around the turn of the century, at least, and plenty of 'white' musicians were playing bluesy material by the 1920s. Like gospel, it's an American form, with Old World antecedents from Africa and Europe.

Arguments such as yours place nearly all the emphasis upon origin and practically nothing upon evolution. Just as some have claimed a 'Celtic' or 'Anglo-Saxon' origin for Appalachian folk music, you claim a purely African origin for blues and gospel without studying or even considering the varied influences that worked upon these forms for centuries in North America. Folk, blues, country, gospel, jazz, ragtime, etc. developed in specific places where Old World populations mixed in the New World, primarily the American South.