According to this:

PBS released a 30 minute documentary on “How Muslims influenced Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers” without even once mentioning the Barbary slave trade.

“Romanhelmetguy” – the author of the tweet I just linked – goes on to quote from this document written to John Jay by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1786 when negotiating on the Barbary pirates issue. Here’s a longer quote:

… [W]e took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make War upon Nations who had done them no Injury, & observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation —

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their profit, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, & to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise —

That it was a law that the first who boarded an Enemy’s Vessell should have one slave, more than his share with the rest, which operated as an incentive to the most desperate Valour and Enterprize, that it was the Practice of their Corsairs to bear down upon a ship, for each sailor to take a dagger, in each hand, & another in his mouth, and leap on board, which so terrified their Enemies that very few ever stood against them — that he verily believed the Devil assisted his Countrymen, for they were almost always successful —

I didn’t watch the program, nor do I intend to, but I’m using the occasion to repeat a post I first wrote in 2016, about the Founders and Islam. Here it is:

There’s been a discussion in the comments section about the attitude of the Founders towards Islam, and how it relates to freedom of religion, and I thought I’d add some background.

At the outset, when the principles of freedom of religion were being established in Virgina in 1779, and Jefferson and Madison were discussing them (later to be the basis of the First Amendment of the US Constitution), Jefferson felt that freedom of religion should:

…comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

This was despite the fact that the Founders must have known, for example, the history of the Crusades and later of the Gates of Vienna.

In 1786, when the fledgling US was dealing with the Barbary pirates, by whom many US and European ships were seized and their crews sold into slavery, the initial reaction of the US was this:

Congress gave assent to the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by Jefferson’s friend Joel Barlow, which stated roundly that “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen.” This has often been taken as a secular affirmation, which it probably was, but the difficulty for secularists is that it also attempted to buy off the Muslim pirates by the payment of tribute…

…Jefferson and John Adams [later] went to call on Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Later, as president, Jefferson launched [dead link?] a war against the pirates and was successful. But he never had to deal with anything approaching large numbers of Muslim arrivals to this country; at the time, Muslim immigrants were few and far between, nearly nonexistent. The fight was almost wholly an external one, and so the question of whether Islam’s tenets disagreed with our Constitution, and what to do about that in terms of immigration, did not really come up.

And then there was John Quincy Adams, not exactly a Founding Father (although we might call him a Founding Father’s Son). In 1830 he wrote, in the context of discussing the Russo-Turkish wars:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. ”¦He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between [Islam and Christianity]”¦a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture”¦While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him”¦(Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.)”¦.

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force (Blunt, 29:274)”¦

I’ve been able to locate the entire passage, and the rest of the essay is an elaboration on the differences between Christianity and Islam, as well as a discussion of Russia’s (a Christian nation’s) war with the Ottomans. In the essay, Adams does not discuss the prospect of Muslim immigration to this country, still extremely rare at that time, and what it might mean. So he never had to come to any conclusions about freedom of religion in this country, and whether it included the freedom to practice a religion he had described in such a manner.

[NOTE: In a footnote to his essay, Adams describes (page 379 in the complete text) the negotiation of a Barbary War treaty in Algiers, when the American signers assumed that the English and Arabic translations were the same. Wrong! The Arabic translations apparently contained an extra clause omitted in the English version, which required payment of the very sort of tribute the treaty was meant to end.]