Volume Two in this four-volume study on Moses, Muhammad and Their Laws in American National History and Identity engages the varied Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular-progressivist attitudes toward, and appropriations of, Mosaic and Islamic law and ethics in relation to the institution of slavery within American and transatlantic history. It traces these themes from early colonial times through the Civil War and beyond. By focusing on how various groups marshalled these religious-legal traditions to respond to questions of enslavement, emancipation and abolition in the face of ever-transforming social, religious-cultural, legal and political contexts across the course of more than two centuries, this study provides a historical window into the history of British- and broader European-American social-religious relations and related matters, including: religion, state, law, society, and culture; the Bible, Christianity, Judaism and Islam in America; Black African and African-American Islam in relation to the legacy of Black African Muslim slaves and slavery; and more. Constructing a complex picture in trans-Atlantic and trans-cultural perspective, this study elucidates the intersecting storylines which lie beneath and behind the rise of the debates in the 1990s and early 2000s over the promotion of the Ten Commandments and Mosaic Law as alleged sources of American law and ethics and symbols of American national identity as these debates have taken shape in close connection with anti-Sharia protests and anti-Sharia legislation throughout the United States (and other Western societies).

Essential questions guiding this study:

1- At the broadest level, the three main volumes which are part of this study ask: How should Americans (as well as other peoples around the world) interpret the inclusion of the legal traditions of both Moses and Muhammad within the U.S. Supreme Court building frieze, enshrined as those figures were during the Supreme Court building’s construction between 1932 and 1935? What is the history that stands behind, justifies and gives substance to their inclusion? And what are the implications of their inclusion for American religious, cultural, political and legal life today, for both those of and not of those faith traditions? (With respect to Moses in particular, it should be understood that there has been, within Christianity, a historic theological tension between ‘the old Law of Moses’ and ‘the new Law of Christ’, i.e., ‘Law vs. Grace’, so that studies of ‘Christianity’ and/or ‘the Bible’ in American history do not adequately or accurately clarify the place and role of the figure or related Law of Moses distinctly within that history.)

2- More specifically within this particular volume (V2), how has the Law of Moses (inclusive of though not limited to the Ten Commandments) as a legal tradition shaped American slave history?

3- What place and role has Islamic Law, in all its various forms, had among Black African Muslim slaves and in relation to slavery within the American and broader Transatlantic storyline? How have these Islamic legal traditions intersected with both Christian and Jewish legal traditions, particularly the Law of Moses? 

4- In what ways has the place and role of Mosaic and Islamic legal traditions within American slave history impacted continuing debates over treatments (i.e., the historiography) of American slave history in the modern day?

Central Features:

Provides the first comparative study of how Abrahamic religious-legal traditions impacted slavery in American and Transatlantic history

Elucidates the historical twists and turns of the Law of Moses and Islamic-Sharia Law in American social-cultural history

Significantly supplements and revises studies focused more generally on American ‘Christianity’ and ‘the Bible’