Muslims were consequential figures in Anglo-American history from the eighteenth-century onward. Some of them were among the most educated Americans of the era—of any race or class. These elites were literate in Arabic and often fluent in more than one language. They had ties not only to their homelands but also to global Muslim networks of scholarship, trade, diplomacy, and travel. Contrary to the images that most Anglo Americans had of Africa, these Muslims came from cultures that celebrated literacy, scholarship, calligraphy, poetry, and Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam in which Muslims cultivate personal and intimate relationships with God.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 353