I just came across this article stating that Muslims came to the Americas before Europeans. (here)
Is this true? If so why Americans thought differently?
No is the simple answer. Here's a good place to get started:
These answers are often quite old and a few appear to have been deleted over the years but there are several good ones still left. I'm sure more can be said. u/CommodoreCoCo talks at length in his answer about how van Sertima is, at best, a quack (your linked article uses him as a few sources). Van Sertima talks a lot about more ancient populations doing it, u/Reedstilt in a question specifically about Moors has an answer about how a claim about how the Taino word for gold must be etymologically related to an Arabic word is pretty obviously nonsense (for starters, the Taino word for gold simply isn't the referenced word). Your article repeats that claim. u/400-Rabbits has an answer here as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2i8aq6/how_reliable_are_theories_of_european/ (it's the third or so answer)
A claim about Roman gold being found off the coast of the Americas is a reference to a work by Cyrus Gordon - while not entirely a quack he ran in some ancient aliens circles so...ya know. A lot of his opinions were influenced by work on things like the Bat Creek Stone which, whoops, is a forgery! Maybe not the guy you want ascertaining the legitimacy of archaeological finds.
There are some claims that don't stand up to even common sense - that Muslim explorers brought elephants not only across the Atlantic but deep inland as far as Arizona.
He misunderstands, misuses, or otherwise abuses primary sources to make extravagant claims backed up by no other evidence, and backs up other claims by referencing the work of known fraudsters (I believe the scientific term is: circle jerk).