{
  "dataset": "ideas",
  "description": "The intellectual-history essays: question, direct answer, labeled sections, primary quotations with citations, scholarly conversation, open questions, and sources.",
  "publisher": "Threads of Connection",
  "url": "https://usmuslim.org/data/ideas.json",
  "license": {
    "name": "CC BY 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  },
  "citation": "Threads of Connection, usmuslim.org/data/ideas.json",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
  "count": 6,
  "records": [
    {
      "slug": "locke-letter-mahometan",
      "n": 1,
      "title": "Locke's Letter and the “Mahometan” as boundary case",
      "metaTitle": "Locke on Muslims: A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)",
      "question": "Did John Locke argue that Muslims should keep their civil rights?",
      "answer": "Yes. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke says neither pagan, Mahometan, nor Jew should be excluded from the commonwealth's civil rights because of religion. His toleration had limits, and Islamic-world influence on him is contested and unproven.",
      "span": "1689",
      "why": "This is the earliest text in the track that separates civil rights from belief, using a Muslim as the example. Jefferson paraphrased the sentence in his 1776 notes. Reading the sentence shows how far the idea went and where Locke stopped.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "sentence",
          "heading": "What does the sentence say?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Locke wrote the Letter in Latin in 1685 to 1686, during exile in the Netherlands, addressed to Philipp van Limborch. It was published anonymously at Gouda in 1689. William Popple's English translation appeared the same year without Locke's commission. “Mahometan” is the period word for a Muslim; this site uses it only in quotations."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion.",
            "cite": "John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple (London, 1689)",
            "url": "https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/goldie-a-letter-concerning-toleration-and-other-writings",
            "note": "Editions differ in spelling (Mahumetan or Mahometan) and capitalization. The sense is the same."
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "why-mahometan",
          "heading": "Why does a Muslim appear in a Protestant argument?",
          "kind": "interpretation",
          "body": [
            "Locke's target was state coercion of Christian conformity. He pushed the argument to the people his readers saw as furthest from the church: if they keep civil rights despite belief, so does a dissenting Protestant.",
            "Denise Spellberg reads the Muslim as a boundary case that later readers, the Founders among them, used to test a principle at its edge. That is an interpretation of how the sentence worked, not something the Letter states."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "limits",
          "heading": "Where did Locke stop?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Britannica note two limits. Atheists were excluded because, Locke held, they cannot be bound by oaths. Religions that, in his view, refused their place in civil society were excluded too; the Encyclopedia identifies this with Catholicism.",
            "So the sentence is evidence for civil rights independent of theology. It is not evidence of unlimited toleration, and it says nothing about Islam as a religion."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "ottoman",
          "heading": "Did Ottoman or Islamic-world models shape the Letter?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "Nabil Matar documents sustained early modern British contact with Muslim societies. Humberto Garcia argues Islam figured in English Enlightenment debate. The contested step is causal: that such models shaped Locke's argument or the Founders' reading of it.",
            "This site follows the mainstream view that a direct link is not established, and labels it speculative."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "jefferson",
          "heading": "How does Locke reach Jefferson?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Jefferson's Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury (October to December 1776; Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:547-48) record Locke's limits on the magistrate: civil authority covers civil interests, not the care of souls, and a church is a voluntary society. They also paraphrase the “Mahometan” sentence, as quoted in a Library of Congress bulletin. That is the documented link. This site claims no line-by-line match with the Statute."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "[he] says neither Pagan nor Mahometan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.",
            "cite": "Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury, 1776, as quoted in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin (May 2002)",
            "url": "https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html",
            "note": "Quoted from the bulletin; check against the Founders Online transcription before reuse."
          }
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013)",
          "contribution": "Argues that debates over Muslims' place in the republic shaped how Jefferson, Madison, and others defined religious liberty.",
          "url": "https://utw11345.utweb.utexas.edu/thomas-jeffersons-quran/"
        },
        {
          "work": "Humberto Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)",
          "contribution": "Argues Islam was a live reference in English political and religious argument."
        },
        {
          "work": "Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)",
          "contribution": "Documents early modern British contact with Muslims, the starting point for any influence claim."
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "Whether Locke meant actual Muslim subjects or the farthest rhetorical case.",
        "Whether any Ottoman source can be tied to the Letter's argument, beyond its general setting.",
        "Whether the Founders Online transcription matches the bulletin's wording of Jefferson's paraphrase."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "John Locke, Epistola de Tolerantia / A Letter on Toleration, ed. Raymond Klibansky, trans. J. W. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Latin with facing English.",
        "John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ed. Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010).",
        "Jeremy Waldron, “Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,” in Justifying Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge University Press, 1988)."
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Online Library of Liberty (Goldie edition)",
          "url": "https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/goldie-a-letter-concerning-toleration-and-other-writings"
        },
        {
          "label": "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Toleration",
          "url": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Locke",
          "url": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Britannica: A Letter Concerning Toleration",
          "url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Letter-Concerning-Toleration"
        },
        {
          "label": "Founders Online: Jefferson, Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury, 11 October to 9 December 1776",
          "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0222-0007"
        },
        {
          "label": "Library of Congress Information Bulletin: The Founding Fathers and Islam (May 2002)",
          "url": "https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/locke-letter-mahometan",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "Timeline entry: Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/timeline/locke-s-letter-concerning-toleration"
        },
        {
          "label": "What historians debate: Ottoman influence on Locke",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/methods#debate-locke-influence"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "jefferson-quran-virginia-statute",
      "n": 2,
      "title": "Jefferson's Qur'an and the Virginia Statute: rights without endorsement",
      "metaTitle": "Jefferson's Qur'an and the Virginia Statute (1765–1821)",
      "question": "What did Thomas Jefferson think about Muslims and Islam?",
      "answer": "Jefferson defended Muslims' civil rights as a matter of principle: in his 1821 Autobiography he said the 1786 Virginia Statute protected “the Christian and Mahometan.” He bought George Sale's Qur'an translation in 1765. Scholars disagree on how much this reflects interest in Muslims, and this site has found no document in which he endorses Islam as a faith.",
      "span": "1765–1821",
      "why": "Both sides of arguments about Islam and America cite Jefferson. Separating what he bought, what he wrote into law, and what he said in his own voice lets readers use him accurately: as evidence of a principle's reach, not of private regard for Islam.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "the-book",
          "heading": "What do we know about Jefferson's Qur'an?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Monticello reports the Virginia Gazette daybook records his 1765 purchase in Williamsburg. The copy is the 1764 London second edition, in two volumes, of George Sale's translation (first published 1734). It was sold to the Library of Congress in 1815.",
            "Spellberg ties the purchase to his law studies. The Library of Congress catalog records his initials at signatures I and T in both volumes: marks of ownership. It mentions no marginal notes, and this site found no source on how closely he read it."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "statute",
          "heading": "What does the Virginia Statute protect?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Encyclopedia Virginia dates adoption to January 16, 1786. The sentence naming Muslims is Jefferson's 1821 recollection of the preamble debate, not a contemporaneous record."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.",
            "cite": "Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography (written 1821), on the 1785 debate over the Statute's preamble",
            "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-17-02-0324-0002",
            "note": "Jefferson's later account of why the legislature declined to add “Jesus Christ” to the preamble."
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "tripoli-envoy",
          "heading": "What did Jefferson encounter in person?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "On March 28, 1786, Adams and Jefferson reported to John Jay on their London meeting with Tripoli's ambassador, who justified Barbary captures by the Prophet's law as written in the Koran (Papers of John Adams, vol. 18). It records one diplomat's stated justification, reported by two negotiators. It is not evidence about Muslims generally.",
            "The same founders who defended Muslims' rights in principle were negotiating with a Muslim state over captive Americans. Spellberg discusses the meeting in a Brookings paper."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "debate",
          "heading": "Did Jefferson defend Muslims, or only the principle?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "Spellberg argues Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens by the 1770s. David Forte's review concludes the book proves neither of its main theses. Hugh Fitzgerald (Middle East Forum's Campus Watch, an advocacy outlet cited only for its stated position) argues Jefferson defended religious freedom generally, drawing on Locke.",
            "One point holds either way: protecting a belief's adherents does not require approving the belief. Jefferson's documented views of Islam as a system are sparse in what this site verified. A hostile 1822 reference circulates in critics' writing; its wording and context are unchecked, so it is not quoted."
          ]
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013)",
          "contribution": "Reads the purchase, the Statute, and later ratification debates as one argument about Muslims as potential citizens.",
          "url": "https://utw11345.utweb.utexas.edu/thomas-jeffersons-quran/"
        },
        {
          "work": "David Forte, “Book Review: When Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur'an,” Cleveland State University faculty articles",
          "contribution": "Finds interesting facts about founders' contacts with Islam but argues the book's two main claims are unproven.",
          "url": "https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/fac_articles/816"
        },
        {
          "work": "Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia: Qur'an",
          "contribution": "Summarizes the copy's edition, 1765 purchase, and sale to the Library of Congress.",
          "url": "https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/quran"
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "What he read. The catalog records his initials at signatures I and T but no marginal notes; the digitized volumes are the place to confirm.",
        "A verified primary quotation of Jefferson's own view of Islam. This is a gap, flagged for review.",
        "How much the 1786 Tripoli encounter bears on his later actions as president."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (New York: Knopf, 2013).",
        "Papers of John Adams, vol. 18, Adams and Jefferson to John Jay, 28 March 1786 (Massachusetts Historical Society).",
        "Encyclopedia Virginia, “Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786).”"
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Monticello: Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, Qur'an",
          "url": "https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/quran"
        },
        {
          "label": "Library of Congress catalog record: Jefferson's copy of the Koran",
          "url": "https://www.loc.gov/item/02004352/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Founders Online: Jefferson's Autobiography (1821)",
          "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-17-02-0324-0002"
        },
        {
          "label": "Encyclopedia Virginia: Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786)",
          "url": "https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-statute-for-establishing-religious-freedom-1786/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Papers of John Adams, vol. 18, p. 223 (Massachusetts Historical Society)",
          "url": "https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/view/PJA18p223"
        },
        {
          "label": "David Forte, Book Review: When Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur'an",
          "url": "https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/fac_articles/816"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/jefferson-quran-virginia-statute",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "Timeline entry: Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/timeline/virginia-statute-for-religious-freedom"
        },
        {
          "label": "Timeline entry: Jefferson's Qur'an returns to Congress",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/timeline/jefferson-s-qur-an-returns-to-congress"
        },
        {
          "label": "Claim ledger: Jefferson's Qur'an",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/claims"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "north-carolina-1788-religious-test",
      "n": 3,
      "title": "North Carolina, 1788: could a Muslim hold federal office?",
      "metaTitle": "Could a Muslim Be President? North Carolina, 1788",
      "question": "Did the founding generation debate whether a Muslim could be president?",
      "answer": "Yes. On July 30, 1788, North Carolina's ratifying convention argued over whether Article VI's ban on religious tests would admit “Mahometans” to federal office. Anti-Federalist Henry Abbot warned they might; James Iredell replied that excluding any group would undercut religious freedom. It was a contest, not a consensus, and the convention declined to ratify that summer.",
      "span": "1788",
      "why": "The question was asked in 1788, long before any candidate could answer it. This is the clearest founding-era record of the idea tested against a concrete clause. Popular versions quote it loosely; the transcript supports a narrower claim.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "clause",
          "heading": "What does Article VI say?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Constitution bans religious tests for federal office. This clause is what the delegates argued over."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.",
            "cite": "U.S. Constitution, Article VI, clause 3",
            "url": "https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript"
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "objection",
          "heading": "What did opponents fear?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Founders' Constitution prints the debate from Elliot's Debates (vol. 4, pp. 191 to 200). Anti-Federalist Henry Abbot objected that without a test, non-Christians could reach office."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain offices among us",
            "cite": "Henry Abbot, North Carolina ratifying convention, July 30, 1788 (Elliot's Debates, vol. 4)",
            "url": "https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/amendI_religions52.html",
            "note": "As printed in the Founders' Constitution."
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "reply",
          "heading": "How did James Iredell answer?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Iredell, later a Supreme Court justice, said exclusion would defeat the principle the objectors claimed. Anti-Federalist William Lancaster drew the conclusion his side feared: “Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it.” Governor Samuel Johnston dismissed the fear of a papal president as no more likely than the election of the King of England or France, or the Grand Turk."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for?",
            "cite": "James Iredell, North Carolina ratifying convention, July 30, 1788 (Elliot's Debates, vol. 4)",
            "url": "https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/amendI_religions52.html"
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "outcome",
          "heading": "What happened next?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Hillsborough convention neither ratified nor rejected, proposing a declaration of rights and amendments first. Sources differ on the tally, so none is given. North Carolina ratified at Fayetteville on November 21, 1789, after Congress proposed the Bill of Rights."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "reading",
          "heading": "How do scholars read the exchange?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "Spellberg reads it as part of the founding generation's argument over whether Muslims, Catholics, and Jews could hold office. She also notes the convention majority opposed non-Protestant participation, so the debate was a contest.",
            "This site's reading: “Mahometans” appears as a hypothetical, with no Muslim candidate or resident in view. Hypotheticals still state a principle, but they do not show a Muslim could have won office in 1788."
          ]
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Denise A. Spellberg, “Could a Muslim Be President? An Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Not Even Past (University of Texas at Austin)",
          "contribution": "Presents the 1788 exchange as a test of whether Muslims, Catholics, and Jews could hold office.",
          "url": "https://notevenpast.org/could-muslim-or-catholic-or-jew-be-president-1788-constitutional-debate/"
        },
        {
          "work": "The Founders' Constitution, Amendment I (Religion), Document 52",
          "contribution": "Prints the July 30, 1788 debate from Elliot's Debates.",
          "url": "https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/amendI_religions52.html"
        },
        {
          "work": "North Carolina History Project, Ratification Debates",
          "contribution": "Summarizes both North Carolina conventions and why the first declined to ratify.",
          "url": "https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/ratification-debates/"
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "Whether any delegate had an actual Muslim resident or candidate in mind.",
        "How widely the “Mahometan” examples recur in other state conventions (this essay covers North Carolina only).",
        "The Hillsborough tally. Sources differ; a primary count is needed."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 4 (1836), pp. 191–200.",
        "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (New York: Knopf, 2013)."
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "The Founders' Constitution (Univ. of Chicago), Amendment I (Religion), Document 52",
          "url": "https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/amendI_religions52.html"
        },
        {
          "label": "Not Even Past (UT Austin): Could a Muslim, Catholic, or Jew be president?",
          "url": "https://notevenpast.org/could-muslim-or-catholic-or-jew-be-president-1788-constitutional-debate/"
        },
        {
          "label": "North Carolina History Project: Ratification Debates",
          "url": "https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/ratification-debates/"
        },
        {
          "label": "National Archives: Constitution of the United States, transcript",
          "url": "https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript"
        },
        {
          "label": "Center for the Study of the American Constitution (UW-Madison): Lancaster speech, 30 July 1788",
          "url": "https://csac.history.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/281/2024/04/DC8-06-02-07_Lancaster-Speech_30Jul88.pdf"
        },
        {
          "label": "Center for the Study of the American Constitution (UW-Madison): Johnston speech, 30 July 1788",
          "url": "https://csac.history.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/281/2024/04/DC8-06-01-11_Johnston-Speech_30Jul88.pdf"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/north-carolina-1788-religious-test",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "Timeline entry: North Carolina debates whether a Muslim could be president",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/timeline/north-carolina-debates-whether-a-muslim-could-be-president"
        },
        {
          "label": "Claim ledger: founders and inclusion",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/claims"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "african-muslim-manuscripts-under-enslavement",
      "n": 4,
      "title": "From Timbuktu to Sapelo: Arabic scholarship under enslavement",
      "metaTitle": "Enslaved African Muslims and Their Arabic Manuscripts",
      "question": "Could enslaved African Muslims read and write Arabic, and what did they leave behind?",
      "answer": "Yes. Two manuscripts show it: Omar ibn Said's 15-page Arabic autobiography of 1831, held by the Library of Congress, and Bilali Muhammad's 13-page Arabic legal text from Sapelo Island, Georgia, held by the University of Georgia. How many enslaved Muslims could write is estimated, not counted.",
      "span": "1731–1864",
      "why": "These are among the few records enslaved people produced in their own language and learned tradition. They shift the story from what others said about enslaved Muslims to what some wrote, and show West African learning crossing the Atlantic.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "omar",
          "heading": "What did Omar ibn Said write?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Library of Congress holds “The Life of Omar Ibn Said,” 15 pages in Arabic, written in 1831 and bought from Sotheby's in June 2017. The Library calls it the only known extant Arabic autobiography by an enslaved person in the United States, and put it online in January 2019.",
            "A Fula scholar from Futa Toro (present-day Senegal), he was born about 1770, enslaved in Charleston in 1807, and died in 1864.",
            "The Library's digitized English translation (c. 1860 to 1864, credited to Isaac Bird) opens with the first words of Qur'an 67:1, the chapter al-Mulk. Ala Alryyes's 2011 edition prints a modern translation beside facsimile pages."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "bilali",
          "heading": "What is the Bilali Document?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "The Hargrett Library (University of Georgia) holds a 13-page Arabic manuscript by Bilali Muhammad, enslaved on Sapelo Island, in the Francis R. Goulding papers (ms2807). First taken for a diary, scholars later identified it as a transcription of a Maliki legal treatise, associated with the jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani. The original is restricted for fragility; a facsimile is available.",
            "It is law, so its writer carried a learned tradition, not only a faith."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "continuity",
          "heading": "Is this intellectual continuity or a curiosity?",
          "kind": "interpretation",
          "body": [
            "Sylviane Diouf's Servants of Allah documents enslaved African Muslims' literacy and practice across the Americas. Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Country Marks traces African ethnic and religious identities into African American identity. Allan Austin's sourcebooks collected the documents the field still uses.",
            "This site follows them: the manuscripts show learning that predates enslavement. It does not claim that learning shaped later American institutions (see open questions)."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "conversion",
          "heading": "What do the sources disagree about?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "North Carolina's Department of Natural and Cultural Resources records that Omar ibn Said joined First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville in 1820. NCpedia notes modern scholars hold he remained a devout Muslim and that sources differ on conversion.",
            "The Muslim share of enslaved Africans is also contested. Historians agree it was meaningful; estimates rest on indirect evidence. The Methods page shows the range."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "limits",
          "heading": "What does the archive leave out?",
          "kind": "interpretation",
          "body": [
            "Manuscripts survive because literate white people noticed literate men and kept their papers. Women's literacy is not documented the same way, and this site names that gap. The record goes largely silent after emancipation.",
            "This track stops where documents thin. Twentieth-century currents will be added only where primary documents carry the argument."
          ]
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998)",
          "contribution": "The standard synthesis of African Muslims' enslavement, literacy, and practice in the Americas."
        },
        {
          "work": "Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)",
          "contribution": "Shows how African ethnic and religious identities, Muslim ones included, shaped African American identity."
        },
        {
          "work": "Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (Garland, 1984)",
          "contribution": "Compiles the biographical and documentary record in one place."
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "The Muslim share of enslaved Africans. Estimates vary and rest on indirect evidence.",
        "Whether enslaved-era communities connect to twentieth-century American Muslim institutions, or the line breaks.",
        "How much the surviving record reflects who was literate and noticed, versus who existed."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998).",
        "Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).",
        "Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (Garland, 1984) and Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).",
        "Ala Alryyes, ed. and trans., A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).",
        "Ronald A. T. Judy, (Dis)forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular (University of Minnesota Press, 1993).",
        "Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims in America: A Short History (Oxford University Press, 2009)."
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Library of Congress: Omar Ibn Said Collection",
          "url": "https://www.loc.gov/collections/omar-ibn-said-collection/about-this-collection/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Library of Congress press release (2019)",
          "url": "https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-004/"
        },
        {
          "label": "New Georgia Encyclopedia: Bilali Mohammed",
          "url": "https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/bilali-mohammed/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Hargrett Library: Francis R. Goulding papers, ms2807",
          "url": "https://sclfind.galib.uga.edu/catalog/ms2807"
        },
        {
          "label": "NC DNCR: Omar Ibn Said Joins the Presbyterian Church",
          "url": "https://dncr.nc.gov/blog/2016/12/03/omar-ibn-said-joins-presbyterian-church"
        },
        {
          "label": "NCpedia: Said, Omar ibn",
          "url": "https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/said-omar-ibn"
        },
        {
          "label": "Library of Congress: Translation of the life of Omar ibn Said",
          "url": "https://www.loc.gov/resource/amedsaid1831.dw027/"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/african-muslim-manuscripts-under-enslavement",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "The Documents: Bilali Muhammad's manuscript",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/documents/bilali"
        },
        {
          "label": "The Documents: Omar ibn Said",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/documents/omar"
        },
        {
          "label": "What historians debate: continuity",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/methods#debate-continuity"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "treaty-of-tripoli-article-11",
      "n": 5,
      "title": "The Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: what it says and what it does not",
      "metaTitle": "Treaty of Tripoli Article 11: Text, Arabic, Context",
      "question": "What does Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli say?",
      "answer": "Article 11 of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli (Senate consent June 7, 1797) says the U.S. government “is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” It stands in the ratified English text; the Arabic text has a different passage there. It is a diplomatic assurance, not a constitutional ruling.",
      "span": "1796–1797",
      "why": "Article 11 is the most-quoted sentence on Muslims and the early republic, and often misdescribed. Knowing it stands in the English text only, and what kind of document it is, keeps a strong source from being weakened by overuse.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "text",
          "heading": "What does the article say?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "English text, per the Yale Law School Avalon Project:"
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.",
            "cite": "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, Article 11 (English text)",
            "url": "https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp",
            "note": "Original spelling “Musselmen” and “Mahometan.” The treaty as sent to Congress is on The Documents page."
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "arabic",
          "heading": "Is it in the Arabic text?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "No. Modern translations show a different passage in its place: a letter from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli urging him to accept the treaty. A Miami University bilingual edition describes the same placement. The Senate advised on the English text.",
            "The sources checked do not explain how the clause entered the English version, and this site does not guess."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "ratification",
          "heading": "When was it ratified?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Avalon records Senate advice and consent on June 7, 1797 and ratification on June 10, 1797. Some secondary sources say “unanimous.” Only secondary sources support that, so this site dropped it."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "meaning",
          "heading": "What does the clause establish?",
          "kind": "interpretation",
          "body": [
            "It assures a Muslim-ruled state that religious difference would not be a pretext for war. It is cited in church-state debates as an early official statement that the government is not founded on the Christian religion.",
            "Limits: one language version of a treaty clause is not a ruling on the Constitution and religion. Its value here is as the government describing itself to Muslim counterparts in non-confessional terms."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "scholars",
          "heading": "Where do commentators disagree?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "Historians discuss the English-Arabic divergence; the sources checked do not settle it. The First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU) places the treaty in debates over religion and the state. Any argument built on Article 11 rests on the English text alone, and this site says so."
          ]
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1796",
          "contribution": "Prints the English text, the Arabic original, and ratification dates.",
          "url": "https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp"
        },
        {
          "work": "First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU): Treaty of Tripoli",
          "contribution": "Places the clause in debates over religion and the state.",
          "url": "https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/1797-treaty-of-tripoli/"
        },
        {
          "work": "Miami University, bilingual edition of the 1796 treaty",
          "contribution": "Prints Arabic and English together and notes the letter in Article 11's position.",
          "url": "https://sites.miamioh.edu/empire/files/2023/09/1796-Treaty-of-Tripoli.pdf"
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "How the religion clause entered the English text and not the Arabic.",
        "How much weight a treaty assurance carries as evidence of domestic character.",
        "Whether a primary account of the drafting survives."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli (1796), Avalon Project, Yale Law School.",
        "First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU), “Treaty of Tripoli.”"
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Treaty of Tripoli (1796)",
          "url": "https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp"
        },
        {
          "label": "First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU): Treaty of Tripoli",
          "url": "https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/1797-treaty-of-tripoli/"
        },
        {
          "label": "Miami University: bilingual edition of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli (PDF)",
          "url": "https://sites.miamioh.edu/empire/files/2023/09/1796-Treaty-of-Tripoli.pdf"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/treaty-of-tripoli-article-11",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "The Documents: the Treaty of Tripoli as sent to Congress",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/documents/tripoli"
        },
        {
          "label": "Claim ledger: founders and inclusion",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/claims"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "shared-protections-religious-minorities",
      "n": 6,
      "title": "Shared protections: Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and the founding lists",
      "metaTitle": "Founding-Era Religious Liberty: Muslims, Jews, Catholics",
      "question": "Did the founding generation protect Muslims on their own, or religious minorities together?",
      "answer": "Mostly together. Founding-era texts name Muslims in lists: Locke beside pagans and Jews, Jefferson beside Jews, Christians, and Hindus, and North Carolina's 1788 debate beside pagans, deists, and Catholics. The protections covered several minorities by name, and the exclusions, such as Locke's of atheists and Catholics, also fell on groups.",
      "span": "1689–1821",
      "why": "The documents treat Muslims as one named case among several minorities, not as a group singled out for favor or for threat. Reading them that way keeps the claim to what the texts say.",
      "updated": "2026-10-22",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "lists",
          "heading": "Who appears beside Muslims in the texts?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "Locke (1689): pagan, Mahometan, Jew. Jefferson's 1821 account of the Virginia Statute: Jew and Gentile, Christian and Mahometan, Hindoo, and infidel. North Carolina (1788): Henry Abbot named pagans, deists, and Mahometans; the debate also raised Catholics, and Governor Samuel Johnston dismissed the fear of a papal president as no more likely than the election of the King of England or France, or the Grand Turk.",
            "The Treaty of Tripoli is the exception: it speaks to a Muslim state about Muslims, because it is diplomacy, not domestic law."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "newport",
          "heading": "What did Washington tell the Jews of Newport?",
          "kind": "document",
          "body": [
            "In August 1790, Washington answered the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. The letter does not mention Muslims. It states the same principle for another minority: the government protects citizens regardless of faith and asks only good citizenship in return."
          ],
          "quote": {
            "text": "For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.",
            "cite": "George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790",
            "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135",
            "note": "Transcriptions differ slightly in other passages of the letter; this sentence is as given on the site's Sources page."
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "joint",
          "heading": "Why does the joint framing matter?",
          "kind": "interpretation",
          "body": [
            "If the principle is one rule, then a carve-out for any group weakens it for all. Iredell's 1788 reply made that argument: excluding any set of men takes away the principle the objectors claimed for themselves.",
            "The same logic cut the other way. Locke's exclusions fell on atheists and, in his view, Catholics. Protection and exclusion were both drawn as lists, so the history of one minority's standing is tied to the others'."
          ]
        },
        {
          "id": "readings",
          "heading": "Was it inclusion or rhetoric?",
          "kind": "debate",
          "body": [
            "Spellberg reads the lists as the founders imagining Muslims as future citizens. David Forte's review of her book argues it proves neither of its main theses; Hugh Fitzgerald (Middle East Forum's Campus Watch, an advocacy outlet) argues the founders defended religious freedom in general, with no particular interest in Islam.",
            "The readings disagree on motive. They agree on the text: the protections were written in general terms, and Muslims were named within them."
          ]
        }
      ],
      "conversation": [
        {
          "work": "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013)",
          "contribution": "Argues that naming Muslims tested, and so defined, how far the founders' religious liberty reached.",
          "url": "https://utw11345.utweb.utexas.edu/thomas-jeffersons-quran/"
        },
        {
          "work": "David Forte, “Book Review: When Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur'an,” Cleveland State University faculty articles",
          "contribution": "A published critic of Spellberg: argues her book does not prove its two main claims.",
          "url": "https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/fac_articles/816"
        }
      ],
      "open": [
        "How state-level religious tests, which outlasted Article VI, fell on Jews, Catholics, and others, and whether Muslims were ever named in them.",
        "Whether any founding-era Muslim, Jewish, or Catholic community cited another's protection in its own petitions."
      ],
      "furtherReading": [
        "George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport (1790), Founders Online.",
        "Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (New York: Knopf, 2013)."
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "label": "Founders Online: Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, 18 August 1790",
          "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135"
        },
        {
          "label": "Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Online Library of Liberty (Goldie edition)",
          "url": "https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/goldie-a-letter-concerning-toleration-and-other-writings"
        },
        {
          "label": "Founders Online: Jefferson's Autobiography (1821)",
          "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-17-02-0324-0002"
        },
        {
          "label": "The Founders' Constitution (Univ. of Chicago), Amendment I (Religion), Document 52",
          "url": "https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/amendI_religions52.html"
        },
        {
          "label": "Center for the Study of the American Constitution (UW-Madison): Johnston speech, 30 July 1788",
          "url": "https://csac.history.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/281/2024/04/DC8-06-01-11_Johnston-Speech_30Jul88.pdf"
        }
      ],
      "url": "https://usmuslim.org/ideas/shared-protections-religious-minorities",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22",
      "related": [
        {
          "label": "Timeline entry: North Carolina debates whether a Muslim could be president",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/timeline/north-carolina-debates-whether-a-muslim-could-be-president"
        },
        {
          "label": "Sources: Washington's Newport letter",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/sources#newport-1790"
        },
        {
          "label": "Methods: the opposing case",
          "url": "https://usmuslim.org/methods#opposing"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}