How Muslims Influenced Thomas Jefferson and America’s Founders | American Muslims

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an? That George Washington owned enslaved people who were Muslim? And that a Muslim diplomat broke his Ramadan fast in the White House in 1805? These are some of the facts that Aymann Ismail (staff writer, Slate Magazine) discovers as he explores the role that Muslims played in the imagination of America’s founding generation. Aymann’s journey takes him from George Washington’s Mount Vernon to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello but begins in the Library of Congress. Here he sees two books that symbolize the promise and contradictions of the early Republic; Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an and an autobiography written by an enslaved African Muslim, Omar Ibn Said, who was brought to the United States during Jefferson’s presidency. Through these books, Ayman discovers how some Muslims were included in the founders’ vision of religious freedom in the nascent Republic, while other Muslims were denied all their rights, because of their race and legal status.

The film features interviews with Keith Ellison (the first Muslim elected to Congress,) Denise A. Spellberg (author of Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders), and Jeffrey Einboden (author of Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, their Arabic Letters, and an American President)