Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the founders

Imagining the Muslim as citizen at the founding of the United States

The European Christian origins of negative but sometimes accurate American ideas about Islam and Muslims, 1529-1797

Positive European Christian precedents for the toleration of Muslims, and their presence in colonial America, 1554-1706

What Jefferson learned

and didn't

from his Qur'an: his negative views of Islam, and their political uses, contrasted with his support for Muslim civil rights, 1765-86

Jefferson versus John Adams: the problem of North African Piracy and their negotiations with a Muslim Ambassador in London, 1784-88

Could a Muslim be president? : Muslim rights and the ratification of the Constitution, 1788

Jefferson wages war against an Islamic power; entertains the first Muslim ambassador; decides where to place the Qur'an in his library; and affirms his support for Muslim rights, 1790-1823

Beyond toleration: John Leland, Baptist advocate for the rights of Muslims, 1776-1841

Why can't a Muslim be president? : eighteenth-century ideals of the Muslim citizen and their significance in the twenty-first century.