Early slave laws defined enslavability by non-Christian religious parentage including Muslim origins.

Evidence

A series of colonial charters confirmed these Protestant pronouncements, among them the Third Charter of Virginia of 1612, which dedicated the colony to “the propagation of the Christian Religion, and Reclaiming of People barbarous, to Civility and Humanity.” The Act Declaring Who Shall Be Slaves (1670) stated that “all servants not being christians, being imported into this country by shipping,” and An Act to Repeal a Former Law Making Indians and Others Free (1682) declared that “negroes, moors, mullatos, and others borne of and in heathenish, idolatrous, pagan and Mahometan parentage and country have heretofore, and hereafter may be purchased, procured, or otherwise obtained as slaves.” — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 206

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the actual statutory language linking ‘Mohammedan’ parentage to legal enslavability, the foundational legal text for the book’s central thesis.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone working on the legal history of race and religion in US law — the 1682 statute naming ‘Mahometan parentage’ as enslavable is a precise citable artifact.