Early Americans’ image of Islam derived secondhand from British sources

Evidence

Given the lack of contact with Muslims except in moments of crisis and through missionaries, Americans often relied on British views to inform their apprehensions about Islam. Thus, Thomas S. Kidd has observed, “Although one should hesitate to describe early Americans as conversant with Islam, they certainly conversed about Islam regularly.” — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Evidences the colonial inheritance of Islamophobia — the fear imported wholesale rather than born of local contact — which resonates with Grosfoguel’s decolonial framing in later chapters. — connects to: Early British anti-Muslim imagery was borrowed from Native American encounters — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 111; Nineteenth-century American Muslim knowledge came from Bible, Arabian Nights, and Twain — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 211