Locke’s toleration embraced Muslims as civil-rights holders despite theological differences.

Evidence

Of course, before Americans adopted Jefferson as a model of toleration, he had taken John Locke as his ideal. Demonstrating again the cross-Atlantic flow of ideas, Locke’s Letter of Toleration (1689) influenced many Americans besides Jefferson. In it, he promoted the inclusion in public life of all Protestants—whatever their sect—before going a step further: “Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth, because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing.” — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Chronologically prefigures the article on ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’—both trace Atlantic cultural flows and religious boundary-drawing.