An Historical Perspective on a Muslim Being Sworn into Congress on the Koran

Wallbuilders.com ^ | January, 2007 | David Barton

[cf_river_rat]

Is Keith Ellison actually the first Muslim to serve in the U. S. Congress? According to the national media, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” For example, among the numerous print media stories, the Washington Post proclaimed: “Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress,” and the Associated Press (Pakistan) similarly announced, “Keith Ellison, a 43-year old lawyer from Minnesota, became the first Muslim member of the US Congress.” Among broadcast media, MSNBC pronounced him “the first Muslim elected to Congress,” and CNN reported that, “In a political first, a Muslim has been elected to serve in the U. S. Congress.”

However, as is often the case with the mainstream media, they were wrong: Keith Ellison is not the first Muslim Member of Congress; a Muslim served in Congress during the Founding Era.

(snip)

The first Muslim Member of Congress was John Randolph of Virginia, who served in Congress from 1799-1834. Significantly, Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner,” befriended Randolph and faithfully shared Christ with him. Randolph eventually converted from Islam to Christianity and became a strong personal advocate for his newfound faith. (Key also shared Christianity with other Muslims, and even bought them copies of the Christian Bible printed in Arabic.)

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I am looking for it. Especially I am looking for the Keys/Randolph letters. Hopefully they have survived.

That would be proof positive

[cf_river_rat]

Please keep me updated on your findings.

[Cicero]

Maybe somewhere in the writings of Francis Scott Keyes. It could be true, I'd just like to see further confirmation.

I have a copy of the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on my shelves, and just checked that that quotation I found on the internet is accurate.

I have The Education of Henry Adams, but I don't have his biography of Randoph at hand. His reputation was that he was an eccentric and an extreme Deist, I think, which is to say probably an agnostic or an atheist.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Sunni or Shi'a Muslims are considered Orthodox Muslims, both can trace their history to the time of Muhammad.

Ahmadis and Nation of Islam are held by them not to be Muslims.

[freekitty]

It is a great article.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Will do!

[conservative in nyc]

There definitely were Muslims among the slaves, although the percentage of slaves that were Muslim is subject to dispute. Most came from modern-day Senegal and the Gambia (called Senegambia). According to this site, one other historian, Philip Curtin, estimates that 15% of slaves were Muslims. I came upon other estimates while doing research about Ellison's swearing-in.

I can't independently corroborate that John Randolph was a Muslim. This is the first I've heard of that.

[BunnySlippers]

[Free ThinkerNY]

The Nation of Islam is not considered to be a truly Islamic organization by whom? I know a guy who is a "mainstream moderate" Muslim but he respects and admires Farrakhan and the NOI. I would suspect that he is not alone in his views. The NOI sees itself as being part of the "Muslim Nation." I don't see the NOI being criticized or condemned by CAIR and other supposedly "moderate" Muslim organizations.

[Sherman Logan]

Mr. Barton is not the most reliable of sources. He is promoting an agends and appears willing to bend and twist historical evidence to make it do so.

[cf_river_rat]

As far as the slavery issue, the only reference provided by the author is this:

Slavery and Islam

A small but significant proportion of African slaves, some estimate 10 percent, were Muslim. You might tell the story of Omar Ibn Said (also "Sayyid," ca. 1770-1864), who was born in Western Africa in the Muslim state of Futa Toro (on the south bank of the Senegal River in present-day Senegal). He was a Muslim scholar and trader who, for reasons historians have not uncovered, found himself captive and enslaved. After a six-week voyage, Omar arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in about 1807. About four years later, he was sold to James Owen of North Carolina's Cape Fear region. In 1819 a white Protestant North Carolinian wrote to Francis Scott Key, the composer of The Star Spangled Banner, to request an Arabic translation of the Bible for Omar, and apparently Key sent one. Historians dispute how much the African Muslim leaned toward Christianity in his final years, but Omar's notations on the Arabic bible, which offer praise to Allah, suggest that he retained much of his Muslim identity, as did some other first-generation slaves whose names have been lost to us. (Omar's Arabic bible, which has recently been restored, is housed in the library of Davidson College in North Carolina.)

from here: http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/islam.htm

and the "estimate" is not sourced.

[ansel12]

I get you guys point , but at some point in the future I would like to get the authoritative answer to that question.

[Cicero]

I don't have the resources here to do more research on this. My home library probably has more stuff than the public library, but I'm a long way from any decent research library.

I would seriously suspect that 10% figure. I don't doubt that some African Muslims found themselves shipped over here as slaves, but as the author seems to admit, even that is a kind of oddity. Muslims are invited by Muhammed to enslave infidels, but they didn't normally enslave other Muslims. The alternatives were to convert, be killed, be enslaved, or live like a dhimmi and pay a special tax if you were some sort of person of value to the community--maybe a merchant, scholar, or physician, or their families.

I'm sure a few Muslims got shipped out by accident, or by malicious enemies, but 10% would seem like a very high figure. And Islam being a religion of power, conquest, and booty, I doubt whether enslaved Muslims would have been very effective at spreading the religion among fellow slaves.

[cf_river_rat]

You write as if you know David Barton. Do you have an email address for him?

I'd like to invite Mr. Barton to defend his article here in this forum. This is the closest I can find to an email address for him at the Wallbuilders site "Contact Us" page:

Research Department

The Research Department at WallBuilders receives hundreds of emails and letters, therefore it may be several months or more before a response is sent. We cannot guarantee that every inquiry will receive a reply. Our primary responsibility is to assist David Barton with multiple projects (such as articles, newsletters, and developing the resources provided through our catalog). We also respond to requests from Congressmen, Senators, judges, etc. (just to name a few). As with any organization, we have a finite set of resources with which to accomplish our mission. We would ask that you keep this in mind when you consider writing the research staff at WallBuilders. We also ask that you examine our website (especially the "Issues and Articles" section) before emailing a question to the Research Department. In an effort to continually improve the effectiveness of the WallBuilders site, we periodically post articles or make available resources that answer the most frequently asked questions we receive.
info@wallbuilders.com

Can anyone else here provide better contact info? Mr. Barton doesn't seem to be too forthcoming with it on his web site.

[Cicero]

Interesting sources, although regretably you can hardly trust academic historians these days. I don't know how to evaluate it without any direct expertise in this field myself.

And I suppose I should retract the categorical statement that Muslims are not supposed to enslave other Muslims, because they also aren't supposed to kill other Muslims, either, yet they do so constantly.

[muawiyah]

You don't see CAIR saying much about NOI at all do you.

Some time when you get a chance check out the "Black Moslem" and "Hanafi" murders in DC back in 1973.

That's set the stage for inter/intra Islamic criticism in the United States for the past 34 years.

Fear works you know.

[muawiyah]

You are aware that the government in this country does not ask for religious affiliation in its census.

This leads the field open to folks to make up all the numbers they want about anything they wish.

[ansel12]

Yes I am aware of that, but I also know there are a lot of black Muslims in America, and that they are seen as leaders among blacks and that at one time before the republicans took the congress the black Muslims were getting federal contracts to serve as security in federal housing.

I have never seen any arguments about the claim of large numbers of black Muslims.

[conservative in nyc]

Salon's Bartholomew's notes on religion has a blog entry about this. He's skeptical about the claim, too (emphasis is mine):

So where did Barton dig this one up from? Let’s ride the crest of the meme, and consult Henry Adams’ 1882 biography. Adams has only one reference to the subject (p. 26):

…He read Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Gibbon, and was as deistical in his opinions as any of them. The Christian religion was hateful to him, as it was to Tom Paine; he loved everything hostile to it. "Very early in life," he wrote thirty years afterwards, "I imbibed an absurd prejudice in favor of Mahometanism and its votaries. The crescent had a talismanic effect on my imagination, and I rejoiced in all its triumphs over the cross (which I despised), as I mourned over its defeats; and Mahomet II himself did not more exult than I did when the crescent was planted on the dome of St. Sophia, and the cathedral of the Constantines was converted into a Turkish mosque."

Adams adds some context, and some acid commentary:

This was radical enough to suit Paint or Saint Just, but it was the mere intellectual fashion of the day, as over-vehement and unhealthy as its counterpart, the religious spasms of his later life.

Perhaps Barton has some other sources at his disposal (I haven’t been able to consult Russell Kirk’s 1978 biography), but the context looks as though he is stretching things somewhat.

[Verginius Rufus]

There were also Catholics among the Africans brought to America as slaves, from the kingdom of Kongo (roughly NW Angola), where the Portuguese had brought Christianity. There was an article in the American Historical Review some years back which argued that religion was a factor in the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina, that the slaves involved were aware of and hoping to reach Florida, then under Catholic Spain.