Ideas & Arguments · 6 of 6 · 1689–1821

Shared protections: Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and the founding lists

Last updated October 22, 2026. Not peer reviewed; see the review status.

Did the founding generation protect Muslims on their own, or religious minorities together?

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.

Why it matters. 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.

The document

Who appears beside Muslims in the texts?

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.

The document

What did Washington tell the Jews of Newport?

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.

“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.”

George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790Transcriptions differ slightly in other passages of the letter; this sentence is as given on the site's Sources page.

Interpretation

Why does the joint framing matter?

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'.

Where scholars differ

Was it inclusion or rhetoric?

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.

Scholarly conversation

Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013)Argues that naming Muslims tested, and so defined, how far the founders' religious liberty reached.
David Forte, “Book Review: When Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur'an,” Cleveland State University faculty articlesA published critic of Spellberg: argues her book does not prove its two main claims.

What remains 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.

Sources checked

Cite as: Threads of Connection, “Shared protections: Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and the founding lists,” usmuslim.org/ideas/shared-protections-religious-minorities, last updated October 22, 2026. Content licensed CC BY 4.0.

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