The following is a guest blog post by Amna Amin, an intern with Islamic Relief USA’s Public Affairs department. Muslims have been in the United States since the 1600s, as many people who identified with the Islamic tradition were among those taken across the ocean via the atrocities of the slave trade in Africa. Of the slaves brought over, approximately 15% were Muslim. Even more had contact with Islam before coming to North America. Consequently, Islamic values became embedded within the earliest culture of the United States. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, owned a Qur’an and even wanted to specifically mention Muslims and their religious freedom…