The American Legacy GalaSeptember 5, 2026 · Washington, D.C.
Islam & the American Story
A visual journey through overlooked lives, enduring diplomacy, scholarship, law, public service, and the shared values that continue to shape the United States.
A Story Restored
Muslims have been present in the American experience across centuries—sometimes visible in diplomacy and public institutions, sometimes preserved only in personal writings, family memory, and archival fragments.
To understand that history is to see a fuller America: a nation shaped by many peoples, connected to the wider world from its earliest years, and strengthened whenever faith is translated into knowledge, courage, enterprise, and service.
Archival interpretationChapter I · 1500s–1800s
Muslim men and women were among the Africans forced across the Atlantic through the slave trade. Some carried deep Qur'anic learning, Arabic literacy, commercial knowledge, and memories of sophisticated societies. Their surviving writings challenge the idea that Islam arrived in America only through modern immigration.
Their record is not simply a story of presence. It is a story of faith sustained under enslavement, intellect preserved against erasure, and human dignity defended in conditions designed to destroy it.
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & CultureChapters II & III
Two moments from the founding era reveal that America's engagement with Islam and the Muslim world belongs within the nation's earliest intellectual and diplomatic history.
Jefferson's Qur'an
Thomas Jefferson purchased George Sale's English translation of the Qur'an while studying law. The two-volume work later entered the Library of Congress with Jefferson's personal library—a tangible record of early American inquiry into faith, law, and the wider world.
Library of CongressMorocco & the Young Republic
Morocco publicly acknowledged American vessels in 1777 and is described by U.S. diplomatic history as the first country to recognize the United States. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, sealed in 1786, formalized an enduring relationship between the young republic and a Muslim nation.
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
Chapter IV · Communities Take Root
Muslim sailors, laborers, merchants, homesteaders, and immigrants added new chapters to American life. Their experiences joined the longer history of African Muslims already present in the country, creating communities that carried faith into work, family, enterprise, and neighborhood life.
Smithsonian: Muslim artifacts in American historyChapter V · 1935
The Supreme Court FriezeThe U.S. Supreme Court courtroom frieze places the Prophet Muhammad within a procession of historic lawgivers representing many civilizations. The work recognizes his historical role in the development of law.
The frieze is an artistic history of law. It does not state that American law is governed by Islamic law, and Muslims of America does not present it that way.
Chapters VI & VII
In 2007, the Library of Congress lent Jefferson's Qur'an for the ceremonial swearing-in of Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. An object from America's founding era entered a new American civic moment.
Library of CongressToday, American Muslims serve as physicians, educators, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, journalists, public servants, members of the Armed Forces, and neighborhood leaders. The modern story is not defined by distance from American life, but by contribution to it.
See how we turn heritage into impact →
We build bridges, strengthen communities, and prepare a new generation of American Muslim leaders to serve with confidence, integrity, and national purpose.
We envision American Muslims advancing as public servants, entrepreneurs, innovators, educators, artists, institution builders, and trusted partners in the country's future.
The Next Chapter
Meet the leaders carrying this American story forward and the priorities shaping Muslims of America's national work.
Our Leadership →
The American Legacy Gala