That was my first thought too, maybe the ottoman empire was so big at the time it was essentially synonymous with islam, to a man like Paine in the West. I just looked it up though and it was already in decline by the late 18th century, far from its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries. But it last another ~100-150 years or so after Paine’s death so who knows.
It was already the “sick man of Europe” by the start of the 19th century, but when Paine died it had lost only a couple of slivers of territory to Russia… it wouldn’t lose northwest Africa or Greece for another generation
That was my first thought too, maybe the ottoman empire was so big at the time it was essentially synonymous with islam, to a man like Paine in the West. I just looked it up though and it was already in decline by the late 18th century, far from its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries. But it last another ~100-150 years or so after Paine’s death so who knows.
It was already the “sick man of Europe” by the start of the 19th century, but when Paine died it had lost only a couple of slivers of territory to Russia… it wouldn’t lose northwest Africa or Greece for another generation