It is time for everyone to read up on Melungeons again and see that we have had a Muslim presence (I think..the history is confusing) from the earliest times of America..which is good of course. There are links to Turkey, Portugal etc...DNA links to Syria...it is all confusing and complex but it is being unraveled.

And as someone raised Catholic (by a rabid convert mother from Baptist religion), we were not raised to be tolerant. We were raised by the Catholic church to be probably what would be viewed as condescending now to "pagans", which to us were a form of Protestants, and we ransomed them with our milk money so they could be baptised. We were raised to be aloof from Protestants and to not go where they were...like the YMCA swimming pool..which eventually we could go to with permission but we could not use the crafts there because they might try to convert us. This was official parish (read missionary parish of Ireland) policy. We were raised to be absolutely terrified of Masons more than any other group. We had no teachings at all about Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims etc. They were fairly benign subgroups of the Protestants as far we could tell. mg