{
 "id": "source/message-international-first-muslims",
 "class": "source",
 "slug": "message-international-first-muslims",
 "label": {
  "en": "Do You Know America's First Muslims? — Message International"
 },
 "summary": {
  "ar": "مقال مجلة «مسج إنترناشونال» عن أوائل المسلمين في أمريكا: قضى صالح بلالي معظم حياته مستعبدًا في جزيرة سانت سايمنز بجورجيا، بعيدًا عن مولده في ماسينا ⁦(مالي اليوم)⁩ في سبعينيات القرن الثامن عشر؛ خُطف وبِيع وهو في نحو الثانية عشرة، وعمل في البهاما حتى اشترته عائلة كوبر؛ ووصفه ابن مالكه بأنه أشدّ رجل تديّنًا عرفه، وأن آخر كلماته كانت الشهادة.",
  "en": "Message International magazine article on America's first Muslims: Salih Bilali spent most of his life enslaved on St. Simons Island, Georgia, far from his birthplace in Massina (present-day Mali) in the 1770s; kidnapped and sold at about twelve, he worked in the Bahamas until the Couper family bought him; his owner's son characterised him as the most religious man he had ever known and reported his last words as the shahada, 'Allah is God and Mohammed his prophet'."
 },
 "stub": false,
 "wings": [],
 "regions": [],
 "periods": [],
 "tags": [],
 "aliases": [],
 "themes": [],
 "data": {
  "kind": "secondary",
  "title": "Do You Know America's First Muslims?",
  "publisher": "Message International (ICNA)",
  "URL": "https://messageinternational.org/do-you-know-americas-first-muslims/",
  "language": "en",
  "reliability_note": "Community-magazine retelling read on 3 November 2026, used only for the 1770s birth reading and for the Couper-family tradition of his deathbed words, which it shares with other retellings of the family account; the record's spine is the scholarly exhibit and book chapter. It is a devotional-leaning source and is labelled as such wherever it is cited.",
  "type": "web",
  "open_access": true,
  "status": {
   "review": "published",
   "generated_by": "Muse (Muse Spark 1.3)"
  }
 },
 "prose": {},
 "degree": 0,
 "contemporaries": [],
 "updated": "2026-11-06",
 "connections": [],
 "related": [],
 "license": {
  "prose": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
  "data": "CC0 1.0"
 }
}