No, Professor Ahmed, the Founders Were Not So Fond of Islam
A gross misrepresentation of the religious opinions of the Founders. The older men, like Witherspoon were products of the Great Awakening, and this would include Sam Adams. Textbooks tell us that the Quebec Act was one of the “Intolerable Acts,” but not why it caused such rage in New England and made Congregational ministers the most solidly
pro-revolutionary class of all. It was because it not only tolerated Catholicism in Quebec (upper and lower Canada) but virtually established it among the French -speaking inhabitants. This solidified French support of the British Crown during the Revolution that an embassy including Benjamin Franklin and John Carroll–afterward the first American Catholic bishop–could not sway the Canadiens to join the American Rebellion. They knew how much they were hated by the New Englanders with whom they had been bitter enemies for a hundred and fifty years.
