They say the faith arrived late. The record has said otherwise for nearly three centuries — the letter, the manuscript, the ruling, each placed beside the claim it settles.
The first word of the Qur'an ever revealed was a command: Read. The record is here to be read.
In 1831, a man enslaved in North Carolina wrote the story of his life in Arabic — the only autobiography of an enslaved person written in Arabic in America known to survive. It rests today at the Library of Congress, where anyone may read it.