We asked our project advisor, Denise Spellberg, Professor of History & Middle Eastern Studies @utaustintx, and author of the fascinating book “Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an” how Muslims fit into the American experiment of universal inclusion and equality: “When Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2006, he swore his private oath of allegiance on Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an. That book symbolizes our nation's long and complicated history of connection to Islam and Muslims. The reaction to Congressman Ellison's election tested, in practice, the inclusion Jefferson had earlier predicted in theory. What would Thomas Jefferson say about Congressman Ellison's election? Possibly that it reflects a near-perfect confirmation of his founding, theoretical ideal of Muslims as future citizens with religious freedom and civil rights that he forecast in the 18th and 19th centuries. Muslims then marked the placeholders for the furthest reaches of inclusion as Americans at the nation's founding. But this ideal remains a work in progress. Even in the 21st century. Muslims remain a litmus test for the full realization of of the American experiment's promise of universal inclusion and equality, regardless of religion or race. Jefferson would not have been surprised that a Muslim had been elected to Congress, but he would have been stunned to realize that the first Muslim congressman descended from former West African slaves who arrived in North America in 1742. Once again, race continues to complicate Jefferson's capacious view of universal religious freedom. Despite bigotry born from rank prejudice and a limited view of American history, Islam remains what it has always been, an American religion. and its adherents as citizens test whether American ideals of equality and inclusion will prevail as national values. in this struggle for full equality, there is good news. Since Congressman Ellison's election, three more Muslims have been elected to Congress. Andre Carson of Indiana in 2008 and two women; Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and lhan Omar of Minnesota in 2018. Positive signs that many Americans share political values which transcend religious differences."
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We asked our project advisor, Denise Spellberg, Professor of History & Middle Eastern Studies @utaustintx and author of “Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an,” what George Washington’s list of taxable property reveals about the Founder’s views on race and religion: “George Washington, like Thomas Jefferson, intended Muslims to be future citizens of the American Republic. In 1784, Washington wrote a friend that he needed workmen for his Mount Vernon plantation, and he didn't care about what they believed or didn't. Washington insisted, quote, “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa or Europe. They may be Mohammedans (meaning Muslims,) Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists.” However, this document from a decade earlier in 1774 reminds us that despite Jefferson and Washington's lofty, theoretical ideals of religious freedom, their practice of chattel slavery based on race tragically reduced the earliest American Muslim people in the United States to the status of property. Thus, we see on this list of taxable items at Washington's Mount Vernon Plantation, the names of two women, probably Muslim, who were named after the Prophet's daughter Fatima, spelled incorrectly here as Fatimer, F-A-T-I-M-E-R, and Little Fatimer. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of enslaved people in North America who hailed from West Africa were of Muslim origin. Historians identify this minority in part by their distinctive monikers. Enslaved on Washington's plantation, we cannot know if either Fatima a little Fatima practiced Islam privately or publicly. They were probably a mother-daughter duo. Whether we don't know if Washington ever recognized them as Muslims. However, because of race and slavery, neither woman named Fatima at Mt. Vernon retained rights or religious freedom. In his will, George Washington insisted that his slaves be freed. But whether either Fatima achieved emancipation remains unknown.”
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📸 The George Washington Paper @librarycongress *
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#americanmuslims #americandream #rethinkamerica #freedom #religiousfreedom #listening #emancipation #blackandmuslim ...

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We asked Denise Spellberg, Professor of History & Middle Eastern Studies @utaustintx and author of "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an," to tell us about Jefferson’s views on religious freedom and the role he saw Muslims playing in the new nation. Here’s what she said:
We see Jefferson's first defense of Muslim religious freedom in October 1776, a few months after he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Tasked with ending religious persecution in Virginia among Protestants, Jefferson boldly included non-Protestants too. He copied from John Locke's 1689 treatise on toleration these pivotal words: "Neither Pagan nor Mahometan [meaning Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” This may be the earliest attempt by any early American to envision Muslims as future citizens and to defend their religious freedom under the then novel phrase "civil rights." But Jefferson went further. In 1786, his famed Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom became law. It asserted: "Our civil rights have no dependance upon our religious opinions." How do we know that he included Muslims in this expansive vision of religious freedom? Because five years before he died, Jefferson wrote in his 1821 autobiography that he'd intended this legislation to be universal, specifically including within the mantle of its protection: “The Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahomedan, the Hindoo, the infidel of every denomination.” In other words, every believer with no exceptions.
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📸 Montes-Bradley *
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#religiousfreedom #pluralism #americanmuslims #eid #foundingfathers #realhistory #america ...

Did you know Thomas Jefferson owned a Qur'an?
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Discover this and more in a series of fascinating posts by our project advisor, Denise Spellberg, author of the book "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an" and Prof. of History & Middle Eastern Studies @utaustintx *
“This is a Qur’an purchased by the 22-year-old Thomas Jefferson in 1765. It provides important evidence of his early interest in Islam, which would continue throughout his life. When he ordered the Qur’an in Williamsburg, Virginia, Jefferson was a wealthy, budding bibliophile and a law student. He would have regarded the Qur’an as one of his books of law. George Sale, the British translator of the text, became the first to offer an English version directly from Arabic. Sale's Qur’an also became famous for its lengthy and mostly accurate introduction to Muslim belief and ritual. However, the translation had been bankrolled by an Anglican Protestant missionary society in Britain. It therefore also contained standard Christian polemic against Islam, namely that it was a false religion founded by an imposter. Jefferson initialed these volumes which now survive in the Library of Congress, but no other notes survive, which detail his reactions. Undoubtedly, he absorbed negative precedents about Islam from his Qur’an’s polemic. However, unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Jefferson found inspiration elsewhere to include Muslims within his capacious definition of American religious freedom."
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* 📸 Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division
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#usmuslims #americanmuslims #foundingfathers #thomasjefferson #religiousfreedom ...