We don’t know much about Bampett Muhamed, but his name suggests to historians that either he or his forebears were Muslims, and the context of his time further suggests an African origin.
What we do know, though, is historically significant: Muhamed was a corporal in the Virginia Line during the American Revolution, which makes him one of America’s founders. He may not have been in Philadelphia to ink his name on the famous parchment, but he was willing to risk his life for independence, which ought to count for something.
Muhamed was not alone. The rosters of military units in the American Revolution contain the names of six soldiers who appear to be of Muslim origin. Legend has it that one of them, Peter Salem, fired the shot that killed British Major John Pitcairn, who commanded one of the British forces up Bunker Hill (and had earlier commanded the advance on Lexington and Concord). Whatever the truth of the matter, the legend was strong enough that a monument was erected in Salem’s memory in Massachusetts, and nearly a century later, a Boston bank issued banknotes bearing his image.
Some of these Muslim men were former slaves who had been set free, although Yusuf ben Ali of South Carolina was a Turk who had never been enslaved. It’s unclear whether they practiced their faith, or any faith, but Islam was very much present in early America — carried to these shores by enslaved Africans.
“As many as 20 percent of slaves transported from West Africa to Colonial America might have been Muslim,” writes the website Our American Revolution. Some converted to Christianity, “although some maintained their religious identity and spoke or wrote in Arabic. Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a slave who lived in Maryland from 1731 until 1734, received from his master a private worship space after a white child threw dirt in his face as he prayed.”
Colonial Virginia was home to a prominent figure who grew up in the Muslim faith, but let’s not get ahead of the story. In 1759, two hunters in the western mountains of Virginia came upon a man in torn clothes, sitting up in a tree, nearly dead. (This might have been in Pocahontas County in modern-day West Virginia or in Bath County; those details have been lost to time.) What mattered was that the hunters, Samuel Givens and his son, nursed the man back to health but found he could not speak English. They turned the stranger over to a local militia colonel, who took him to Staunton, “where, as a ‘curiosity,’ [he] attracted a large crowd,” according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia.
As luck would have it, the local Presbyterian minister, John Craig, owned a Bible printed in Greek. To everyone’s surprise, the stranger could read Greek, so the two men found they could converse. The stranger’s name was Selim; he was born in Algeria, the son of a high-ranking military leader. He’d been educated at a university in what was then Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul in Turkey), where he learned multiple languages (just not English). He was returning home to Algeria when the ship on which he was sailing was captured by the Spanish. Then the Spanish ship was captured by the French, who went on to New Orleans and sold Selim into slavery. “Legend has it that Selim, coming from an educated and noble background, was rebellious, refusing to be subservient to his enslavers,” Encyclopedia West Virginia writes. “As such, he was passed from owner to owner before being sold to Mingo Indians somewhere along the Ohio River. He eventually ran away to search for English settlers along the East Coast. Some accounts suggest he traveled through the Kanawha Valley, which had not yet been settled by Europeans, and then followed the Greenbrier River northward.”
Grateful for being rescued, Selim converted to his rescuer’s faith — Christianity — and went on to Williamsburg, bearing a letter of introduction and a generous sum of money from his new friends in Staunton. In Williamsburg, “his knowledge and unique culture made him popular with the colonial Virginia elite,” Encyclopedia West Virginia says. “At the College of William and Mary, he read Greek with President James Horrocks and Professor William Small. Selim became particularly close with wealthy landowner John Page and often stayed at his palatial Tidewater home.”
There’s no record that he ever met a certain red-headed student at William and Mary, a young man named Thomas Jefferson, but they had mutual acquaintances, and it was about this time that the curious Jefferson bought a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Quran. This has led some to speculate that Jefferson’s interest in Islam was sparked by meeting “Selim the Algerian,” as he came to be known. What is undisputed is that Selim took such an interest in American politics that he accompanied John Page to Philadelphia when Page was a delegate to the Continental Congress — and Page insisted that the great artist Charles Wilson Peale paint his picture.
While Selim converted, it’s clear to historians that many enslaved laborers adhered to the Muslim faith of their ancestors for generations. Charles Ball, who escaped from slavery in Maryland and later wrote a book about his enforced servitude, included this passage: “I knew several [people] who must have been, from what I have since learned, Mohamedans [Muslims]; though at that time, I had never heard of the religion of Mohamed. There was one man on this plantation … who prayed five times every day, always turning his face to the east, when in the performance of his devotion.” Keep in mind that Ball was not born until 1780 and did not escape the bonds of slavery until 1809.
Religious liberty was a subject that animated many of America’s founders — they were in the process of separating from a mother country that had an official religion — and the nature of that liberty was ripe for debate. For a people who were overwhelmingly Christian, it is remarkable how often those on the side of religious liberty referenced Islam as a religion they wished to protect.
Jefferson, that former William and Mary student who may or may not have been influenced by Selim the Algerian, wrote in his “Notes on Religion” that “neither Pagan nor Mahomedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” Jefferson was not alone.
When Patrick Henry proposed that Virginians be taxed to support “Christian teachers,” other prominent Virginians pushed back on what they saw as the precursor to establishing a state religion. Richard Henry Lee wrote to James Madison: “True freedom embraces the Mahomitan [Muslim] and the Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.”
A petition from Chesterfield County in 1785 implored the legislature to “let Jews, Mehometans [Muslims], and Christians of every Denomination enjoy religious liberty, as the declaration of rights has invited them … thrust them not out now by establishing the Christian religion lest thereby we become our own enemies and weaken this infant state. It is by men’s labor in our manufactures, their services by sea and land that aggrandize our country, and not their creeds. … let Jews, Mehometans, and Christians of every denomination find their advantage in living under your laws.”
Madison revived a proposal of Jefferson’s that had languished in the legislature for years: the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. While the measure did not mention any faith, the state legislature rejected a measure to include a reference to Jesus as “the holy author of religion.” Jefferson, who considered this statute one of his greatest works, later wrote: “The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”
George Washington, who was more practical than philosophical, wrote to an aide after the revolution that he was in need of a woodworker and a bricklayer at Mount Vernon. He had heard there were many German immigrants in Baltimore who might qualify, but beseeched his aide not to limit the talent search: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any Sect — or they may be Atheists.” His sole requirement was that they be experienced.
For most of our nation’s history, the number of Muslims has been small, but they have always been here and part of the American story. In 1790, South Carolina granted special legal status to a community of Moroccan immigrants. From the revolution to the present-day, Muslims have served in the American military in all of our wars. At least 291 served in the Union Army during the Civil War. The presence of Muslims in America has found its way into our popular culture. One of our most beloved, and most-performed, musicals is the frontier drama “Oklahoma!” One of the characters in that musical is Ali Hakim, a Persian peddler, a trope that recognized the presence of multiple ethnic and religious groups responsible for settling the West. One of the first mosques in the country was built in Ross, North Dakota, by Muslim homesteaders.
Over the weekend, Virginia — a state that has figured so much in our nation’s history — recorded another landmark. Ghazala Hashmi, who lives in the same county that in 1785 insisted on religious freedom, was inaugurated as lieutenant governor, making her the first Muslim woman elected to any statewide office in the United States. She was sworn in on her family Quran and a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
That prompted Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., to post on social media: “The enemy is inside the gates.”
Tuberville, who spent his professional career as a football coach, has evidently not read much American history.
Or even the history of his own state.
In April 1865, in the final days of the Civil War, Union troops arrived in Tuscaloosa with instructions to set fire to multiple buildings — including the University of Alabama. One of the professors begged the Union troops not to set fire to the library. Col. Thomas Johnston refused. The library would be burned, too. One book was spared, though. History disputes whether it was a college professor or a sympathetic Union officer who snuck into the library before the building was put to the torch and smuggled out a single volume to be saved, but they all agree that one book and one book only avoided the conflagration. It was a Quran, which still rests today at the University of Alabama library as a treasured artifact.
For more on Virginia’s role in the American Revolution, see our Cardinal 250 project and sign up for our monthly newsletter. For more on current politics, sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter.