Early American Muslim elites were better educated than most white Americans

Evidence

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_ The Anatomy of…, 353

Categorization

• XREF: Fits the reader’s anatomy-of-intolerance project: the contrast between actual literate Muslim elites and Anglo fear of an ‘ignorant Africa’ shows the fearer projecting rather than perceiving. — connects to: Most Arab and South Asian American Muslims are upper-middle class, shaping their politics — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 718