THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2013 by Denise A. Spellberg
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg, translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi. Copyright © 1980 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd. Reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-35053-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spellberg, D. A. (Denise A.)
Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an : Islam and the founders / Denise A. Spellberg. — First Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-307-26822-8 (hardcover) 1. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826—Political and social views. 2. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826—Religion. 3. Muslims—Civil rights—United States—History—18th century. 4. Islam and politics—United States. 5. Freedom of religion—United States—History—18th century. 6. Constitutional history—United States. I. Title.
E332.2.S65 2013
973.46092—dc23 2013010153
Cover images: (top) Thomas Jefferson by James Sharples (detail) © Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom) Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an, George Sales, trans. (detail), Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.
Cover design by Joe Montgomery
v3.1
In memory of those who arrived first:
Sebastiana Campochiaro Pavone and Antonio Pavone
&
Dvira Goldman Spellberg and Zvi Hersch Spellberg
And for all my students, with hope
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface and Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION Imagining the Muslim as Citizen at the Founding of the United States
1. The European Christian Origins of Negative but Sometimes Accurate American Ideas About Islam and Muslims, 1529–1797
2. Positive European Christian Precedents for the Toleration of Muslims, and Their Presence in Colonial America, 1554–1706
3. What Jefferson Learned—and Didn’t—from His Qur’an: His Negative Views of Islam, and Their Political Uses, Contrasted with His Support for Muslim Civil Rights, 1765–86
4. Jefferson Versus John Adams: The Problem of North African Piracy and Their Negotiations with a Muslim Ambassador in London, 1784–88
5. Could a Muslim Be President? Muslim Rights and the Ratification of the Constitution, 1788
6. Jefferson Wages War Against an Islamic Power; Entertains the First Muslim Ambassador; Decides Where to Place the Qur’an in His Library; and Affirms His Support for Muslim Rights, 1790–1823
7. Beyond Toleration: John Leland, Baptist Advocate for the Rights of Muslims, 1776–1841
AFTERWORD Why Can’t a Muslim Be President? Eighteenth-Century Ideals of the Muslim Citizen and Their Significance in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Index
Illustration Credits
A Note About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Preface and Acknowledgments
When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
—Leviticus 19:33–34 (New JPS Translation)
ONE RAINY APRIL MORNING in 2011, I requested Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an from the Rare Book Room in the Library of Congress. Outside, tulips blazed in bright patches of red around the Capitol building. The flowers reminded me of their origins in the Ottoman Empire. The sultan had first sent them as diplomatic gifts to European rulers in the sixteenth century, and by the mid-seventeenth, the trade in the bulbs of these plants had reached a frenzied pitch in the Netherlands.1 Jefferson would add them to his garden at Monticello in 1806.2 And so it was that, through contact with Muslims long ago, this stunning flower had eventually reached North America, where it now reigns as a sign of spring.
Summoned with nothing more than the requisite library card and the relevant call number, the two volumes of Jefferson’s Qur’an arrived unceremoniously at my desk in less than ten minutes. I sat amazed. A national treasure was mine to peruse. As a historian and a citizen, I’d thought for years about what Jefferson’s Qur’an might have meant. Now, suddenly, I could touch the brown leather bindings, and hear the slight crackle of the yellowing pages as I turned them. The volumes were far too delicate, I thought, to be touched by anyone. I could not help but recall that eight months earlier in Florida an addled pastor of a nearly nonexistent congregation had held press conferences promising to burn multiple Qur’ans in protest against a proposed mosque in New York City. (He had made his threat good days before in March 2011, with disastrous consequences in Afghanistan.)3 The Florida minister believed he was exercising his First Amendment right to express how execrable he thought Islam was. Inadvertently, he revealed how little he knew about the historical importance of the Qur’an to Protestants in both Europe and America. For them, it had been more common since the seventeenth century to translate the sacred text for Christian readers than to consign it to the flames.
For me, the pages of Jefferson’s Qur’an represented sacred historical evidence, not of the truth of Islam, but of the capacity and eagerness of some early Americans to learn about that faith. As a professor of Islamic history, I wanted to know what early Americans knew about Islam and how they’d learned about the religion and its history. To my surprise, I found that many Americans in the founding era, despite the tenacious legacy of misinformation from Europe, refused to yield to contemporary fears promoting the persecution of Muslims. They preferred to be heirs to a less prominent but important strain of European tolerance toward Muslims, one whose influence had thus far been overlooked in early American history.
Jefferson’s two-volume English translation of the Qur’an had grabbed the national spotlight in January 2007, when Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, chose to swear his private oath of office on the Founder’s sacred text. At the time, I thought that the outrage expressed by some toward Congressman Ellison’s election and private swearing-in on the Qur’an might have been averted if only more Americans had known their own founding history better, a past that had prepared an eventual place for Congressman Ellison, not in spite of his religion, but because of it.
The idea of the Muslim as citizen and federal officeholder is not new to the United States. It was first considered in the eighteenth century. Yet today some claim that even the concept of a Muslim citizen in elected office is threatening to the nation’s identity. I argue the opposite in this book: The concept of the American Muslim as citizen is quintessentially evocative of our national ideals. Indeed, the inclusion of Muslims as future citizens in early national political debates demonstrates a decided resistance to the idea of what some would still imagine America to be: a Christian nation.
This book about the American past began accidentally for me as a specialist in Islamic history. Initially, I’d wo
ndered why a French play, ostensibly about the Prophet Muhammad, had been performed in Baltimore during the Revolutionary War. To make sense of this more than a decade ago, I had the privilege of attending the ideal summer school: Professor Bernard Bailyn’s International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University. I took to paddling in this new Atlantic pond and found that the experience had prompted a sea change in my academic research, which I incorrectly assumed would be temporary.
By 2005, at the Atlantic Seminar’s tenth-anniversary conference, I had found a new document about Muslims in early American political debates. Again, I was fortunate to be invited to present this research to fellow students of Atlantic history. Professor Bailyn’s thoughtful, enthusiastic response to my ideas about Thomas Jefferson and his views of Muslim rights was rooted in his deeper knowledge of these constitutional sources. His interest in these ideas convinced me that what people thought about Muslims as citizens in 1788 should be included in the study of the Constitution. Did more data about Muslims as potential citizens in the founding era exist? Over the next seven years, I learned the breadth of that affirmative answer.
By the time Congressman Ellison was elected and swore his private oath of office on Jefferson’s Qur’an in 2007, I thought as a historian that I might have something to contribute, beyond the fact of Jefferson’s mere ownership of the Islamic sacred text. I wanted to know why Jefferson and others had included Muslims in the nation’s nascent ideals. At this juncture, Professor Bailyn introduced me to Jane Garrett, his kindly, patient editor at Knopf. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an was born as a book project—with the blessing of an editor who was actually keen on the project. My deep gratitude to Jane endures, despite the sad fact that I failed to finish the final draft before her retirement. My profound thanks go to George Andreou for his insightful editing of the final stage of this manuscript and to Juhea Kim, his assistant.
Many eyes, hands, and brains more agile than my own supported this book’s evolution and improvement. I remain humbled that Professor Bailyn, ever busy, took the time over the last few years to read two long, early, and rambling draft chapters about Jefferson and, finally, what I believed to be the last draft of the manuscript. His comments I treasure. Many saved me from obvious idiocies. If any remain, they are my own fault, not his or those of the many colleagues and friends who also sought to help me.
Over the years, I have been blessed by the insight of many scholars and friends. First among these is Robert M. Haddad, the professor who first inspired my interest in Islamic history as an undergraduate. Since those days long ago, his wisdom and kindness have endured, for which I remain eternally grateful. Anver Emon, always enthusiastic and energetic, believed in this project from the first. He commented on almost every word of this text, pointing out errors in logic, gaps in argument, and problems with my representation of the Islamic past. Once my gifted graduate student, he took time from his duties as an eminent professor of Islamic law to support his former instructor.
At the University of Texas at Austin, my colleague Neil Kamil, expert in the Atlantic history of religion and violence, introduced me to a pivotal source, a catalog that revealed how Jefferson had ordered the books in his vast library. More than that, Neil’s own important work, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517–1751, underscored the significance of a sixteenth-century Italian miller named Menocchio. Beyond his own key reading of this figure, Neil’s deft analysis of an unusually tolerant group of Dutch protestors in seventeenth-century Long Island also opened new possibilities for thinking about early modern religious pluralism. In addition to suggesting these research directions, Neil kindly also read all the chapters of the book.
Linda Ferreira-Buckley, a specialist in rhetoric and patience, carefully untangled arguments throughout, particularly in the introduction and conclusion. Janet Davis, expert in American studies and transnational histories, read most of the book’s chapters, despite her exhausting schedule. My colleague Syed Akbar Hyder, ever generous, also contributed a valued critique of the conclusion. I am also grateful to the historian A. Azfar Moin for his acuity and humor in smoothing out many rough spots.
The expertise of other colleagues also deserves my thanks. Despite being on leave, Laurie Green critiqued a chapter and provided valuable comments. Mervat Hatem, who supported the project from its inception, offered key suggestions and timely encouragement that improved the structure of the book. Carel Bertram doggedly rescued the introduction and the first two chapters from their twisted incarnations as first drafts, devoting much time to untangling organizational snafus. Kim Alidio and Elizabeth Englehardt also provided helpful suggestions at early stages of the book’s evolution. Expert advice about the Reformation Susan Boettcher generously provided, although especially in this era all errors remain mine alone.
I am grateful to Margaret Larkin, an extraordinary Arabist, for a memorable evening during which she shared her insights into the Arabic grammatical nuances in an American Muslim slave narrative. Cutting through eighteenth-century North African Arabic calligraphy, Linda Boxberger and Abraham Marcus helped me to finally see and check the original Arabic language in key American treaties. Over the years, helpful students Tommy Buckley, Reem Elghonimi, Zaid Hassan, Elizabeth Nutting, and Sharon Silzell undertook varied research tasks with care.
The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin generously provided me with both supported leave and leave without pay to write this book. Evan Carton, director of the UT Humanities Institute in 2007, and other members of the institute offered valuable encouragement at an early stage. In 2009, the Carnegie Foundation intervened with the generous award of their Carnegie Scholarship, without which I could not possibly have finished this project. The timely intercession of Gail Davis, then History Department administrator extraordinaire, prompted me to submit the initial Carnegie Scholarship application at my university when I might otherwise have missed the deadline.
My thanks go to Columbia University Press for allowing me to draw upon an early part of chapter 1 that first appeared in my wonderful dissertation advisor Richard W. Bulliet’s festschrift as “Islam on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Voltaire’s Mahomet Crosses the Atlantic,” in Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet, ed. Neguin Yavari, Lawrence G. Potter, and Jean-Marc Ran Oppenheim (New York: Columbia University Press for the Middle East Institute, 2004), 245–60. Thanks also go to the editor Julia Simon for allowing me to use portions of an early version of chapter 5, previously published as “Could a Muslim Be President? An Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39 (2006): 485–506. (The final paragraph of that article I now utterly disavow.) My thanks to the editor Gregory Starrett for allowing me to use parts of “Islam in America: Adventures in Neo-Orientalism,” Review of Middle Eastern Studies 43 (2009): 25–35.
This has been a long, unforgiving first decade of the twenty-first century for many close friends and my immediate family. At the University of Texas, I lost two powerful female mentors. The first, Elizabeth W. Fernea, a pioneer in the study of Middle Eastern Muslim women, I remember as a rare colleague. Unfailingly thoughtful, she read a very early draft of what became one of this book’s chapters, insisting that she had faith in the project when few others did. In the History Department, Janet Meisel, a spectacular teacher and loyal friend, listened to my ideas with customary generosity. Despite years of ill health, her integrity and sense of fairness never ebbed. Both women were giants in their own way, and both I deeply miss. Their exemplary courage in the face of adversity still inspires.
I could not have completed this project, or kept my job, without the extraordinary intervention of Paula Malkey, who helped care for both of my ailing and elderly parents over a period of eight difficult years. It is no exaggeration to add that Paula, a great soul and an utterly generous Texan, saved my family and my sanity. Without her professional expertise in elder matters, energy, a
nd sagacity, dosed always with her unfailing sense of humor, I would have been unable to teach or write during multiple periods of parental illness. After she had ministered to so many with such kindness, Paula’s sudden death in 2012 shocked me. I lost in her friendship a protean strength, a person rare and irreplaceable. She could laugh at anything except bigotry. I feel her absence profoundly because she is no longer here to be thanked for all her years of strength and support.
Near the beginning of this past decade, after years of suffering, my mother died. Two years before the end of this project, my father abruptly joined her. I mourn their loss, but know that this is a book they would have understood. My father, Israel Abraham, known to his friends in the South End of Boston as Larry, and my mother, Angelina Rita, who preferred Ann, were two people who wanted to fit into their country desperately at a time when they believed that meant choosing less obvious religiously and ethnically identified monikers. Both believed in God and found one another in spite of theological differences. In the face of prejudice, they proved always true to themselves and each other.
When I asked my mother what she thought was an individual’s most important quality, she replied instantly, “Fairness.” My father’s favorite song, “You’ve Got to Be Taught,” from the 1949 musical South Pacific, lyrically proclaimed that “hate and fear” were lessons learned early about “people whose skin was a different shade and people whose eyes are oddly made.” But my father refused to “hate all the people your relatives hate.” Neither parent ever lectured, but they were both powerful teachers.
Their integrity, as much as their refusal to make religion a barrier to respect or love, shaped my world, as did their shared insistence that all people deserve to be treated equally—without exception. When I began to notice that the idea of the Muslim as citizen at the founding of the United States was as contentious a subject as the citizenship of Jews and Catholics, I felt as if my study of the Islamic world had led me to appreciate an aspect of the American past that specialists had overlooked. Thus all history is autobiography, however unintended.
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