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

Introduction : 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 Picracy 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

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