Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders
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That all American Muslim citizens who adhere to Sharia are necessarily disloyal and threatening to the U.S. government and its Constitution is a claim carefully weighed and dismissed by scholars of Islamic law, such as Andrew March. In his 2009 book Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, he asserts that a Muslim “who accepts the security of a non-Muslim state finds himself with a very strict set of duties toward that state, duties that can be argued to fulfill liberal demands of civic loyalty, including a duty to avoid harming or betraying (even during a legitimate war against that state).”153 As the scholar of law and ethics Martha Nussbaum has pointed out, Muslims are not the only group in America routinely thought treacherous because of the legalism of their faith: “Muslims, like Jews, are always accused of having a double loyalty, and both are seen to submit themselves to a double set of legal requirements—religious law somehow making them bad subjects of civil law.”154 The legitimate question is not whether Islam or Sharia is compatible with democracy, but whether American democratic institutions truly support the religious and legal equality of Muslim citizens, as they claim to do.155
The grounds upon which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit struck down the legality of Oklahoma’s “Save Our State” anti-Sharia constitutional amendment in January 2012 remain instructive. As approved by a majority of voters, the amendment read, in part, that “the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law.” The suit brought by a single American Muslim from Oklahoma was joined by representatives of Islamic, Jewish, Baptist, and secular interest groups such as the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Islamic Law Committee, the American Jewish Committee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Anti-Defamation League, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, Interfaith Alliance, and the Union for Reform Judaism.156
The claimant argued that the law had the effect of “stigmatizing him and others who practice the Islamic faith, inhibiting the practice of Islam, disabling a court from probating his last will and testament (which contains references to Sharia law), limiting the relief Muslims can obtain from Oklahoma state courts, and fostering excessive entanglements between government and religion.” Ultimately, the court of appeals found that the amendment was illegal for “singling out his religion for negative treatment” in violation of “both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment” of the Constitution.157 In response to this precedent, many state legislative attempts to ban Sharia have been altered to regulate only “foreign law,” though the objection to Islamic law remains implicit.158
Dovetailing with the anti-Sharia movement was a slew of attempts to attack, threaten, deface, oppose, or even ban the building of mosques at thirty sites throughout the country in 2010. There have been more since.159 Such opposition is also not new in the United States.160 But in 2010 sentiments coalesced to resist the Park 51 project in New York City, later known as the Cordoba House Initiative, which had been planned, according to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, as a “multifaith worship space, including a dedicated Islamic prayer space (a mosque), in a building that architecturally would be thoroughly American.”161 Opponents of Cordoba House dubbed the project, inaccurately, “the Ground Zero mosque,” even though the structure is two and a half blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks and not visible from there.162
The reference to Cordoba, while intended to recall a time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews peacefully coexisted in eighth-century Spain, unfortunately also provided grist for critics who pointed out that this was a period of Islamic rule, when Christians and Jews, though allowed to worship freely, did not enjoy equality. Opponents of the mosque thus charged it with Islamic triumphalism, reminiscent of the appropriation of Spanish churches for Muslim worship. In fact, under the medieval Muslim rule only half of the original cathedral was taken over and turned into a mosque, “leaving the other half free for Christian use—an unmistakable symbol of confessional tolerance.”163 Eventually, the Muslims purchased the land under the structure that came to be known as La Mezquita from the Christians resident there. But in any case, the custom of taking over houses of worship was not particular to Muslims; Christian conquerors commonly built their churches on the ruins of pagan or Jewish sites, the latter an especially common practice in Christian Spain. It is important to remember that the space for the proposed mosque in New York City was already the property of an American Muslim businessman—and that the two extant local mosques were unable to accommodate all worshippers.164
Nonetheless, this planned mosque in Manhattan inflamed for many the painful memory of 9/11, a wound on the national psyche that had not healed a decade later and remains associated with Islam, despite ample evidence dissociating terrorism from the faith. Loss and fear remain powerful emotions for all Americans who witnessed the attacks. Ironically, those who planned the mosque intended the building to bring Americans of different faiths together, not to divide them. But divide Americans it did.165
Anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer joined the fray insisting that the mosque represented an attempt by Muslims to take over the country, finishing what they claimed 9/11 had left half done. The two are the cofounders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which is defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2011, their film The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks was presented at the Conservative Political Action Conference.166 (Not surprisingly, Geller believes President Obama to be a Muslim.)167
New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, defended the right of American Muslims to build the mosque complex in lower Manhattan in 2010, citing clear constitutional principle in the midst of overwrought emotions: “Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.”168
Bloomberg even cited the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 as a precedent for contemporary freedom of religion. If he had been informed that the religious freedom of Muslims as well as Jews and all sects of Christians had been included in this extraordinary protest by Dutch settlers, his point might have been even more powerful. The Remonstrance clearly espouses a universal religious freedom in the seventeenth century, a time when to do so was to risk jail and banishment, as two members of the community eventually suffered. Still, the signatories insisted:
The law of love peace and libertie in the states extending to Jewes Turkes and Egiptians as they are Considered the sonnes of Adam which is the glory of the outward State of Holland, soe love peace and libertie, extending to all in Christ Jesus Condemns hatred, warre and bondage; … our desire is not to offend one of his little ones in what soever forme name or title hee appears in whether presbyterian independent Baptist or Quaker, but shall bee glad to see anything of god in any of them: desireing to doe unto all men as wee desire all men shoulde doe unto us which is the true law both of Church and State.169
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made his own case for the construction of the Islamic Center Mosque in the nation’s capital. Visiting the site in June of that year, he offered a definition of American principles that might seem entirely un-American to the anti-Muslim opponents of mosques throughout the United States. Eisenhower saw no difference between the new Muslim “church” in Washington, D.C., and “a similar edifice of any other religion.” His message to American Muslims was simple and direct:
Meeting with you now, in front of one of the newest and most beautiful buildings in Washington, it is fitting that we re-dedicate ourselves to the peaceful progress of all men under one God.
And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worshi
p, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience.
The concept is indeed part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.170
In the same spirit, Eisenhower would authorize the military to identify Muslim servicemen on their dog tags.171
Would a majority of Americans still affirm that “America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your conscience”? It bears mentioning that Eisenhower embraced Muslims as fellow believers “under one God,” at a time when the gravest threat to the United States was thought to be “godless” Communists, both at home and abroad.172 Events in the Middle East that would darken the image of Islam in the latter twentieth century had yet to occur. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that acceptance of Muslims into the American fold has deteriorated considerably in the past half century.
REMEMBERING THOMAS JEFFERSON’S QUR’AN: A DISPUTE OVER THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
Although many editorials celebrated the existence of Jefferson’s Qur’an as a novelty in the midst of Congressman Keith Ellison’s swearing-in controversy in 2007, those wedded to fears of Islam were at pains to deny what Ellison had affirmed about Jefferson, that he was “a visionary” who “believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.”173 The Boykin- and Soyster-directed anti-Sharia screed of 2010 argued that Jefferson had purchased the Qur’an in order to better know his enemies: “When confronted with an Islamic threat, they took the effort to consult primary sources and to conduct competent analysis of that threat.”174 According to Boykin and Soyster, the book was merely a remnant of his diplomatic encounter with the Muslim ambassador from Tripoli in London in 1786.175
Such assertions ignore the fact that Jefferson actually bought his Qur’an in 1765, twenty-one years before the diplomatic effort in question, and eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Although Jefferson doubtless did check the Qur’anic basis for Islamic piracy sometime after his 1786 meeting with the Muslim ambassador in London, he had much earlier documented his interest in the sacred text unrelated to foreign policy. Those who claim otherwise similarly ignore Jefferson’s pointed refusal to consider Muslims as either perpetual foreign or domestic enemies and his defense of their future, and that of all non-Christians, as potential citizens.
In March 2011, Bryan Fischer, director of issues analysis for the socially conservative American Family Association, a group with two million members headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, denied that Muslims and other non-Christians enjoyed the full protection of the First Amendment. To justify this assertion, he appears to repeat the analysis of Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an found in the 2010 Boykin and Soyster anti-Sharia manifesto, defining Islam not as a religion but as a “totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States.” Fischer writes, “The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam.” As to Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an, Fischer explains that too in a way that follows the Boykin-Soyster treatise:
We actually at the time were dealing with our first encounters with jihad in the form of the Barbary pirates, which is why Jefferson bought a copy of the Koran. He was told by the Bey of Tripoli that Islam requires Muslims to rob, kill and pillage infidel Christians where they find them. Jefferson naturally found that hard to believe, so he bought a copy of the Koran to read it for himself. Sure enough, it’s right in there.176
In fact, Jefferson had not met the ruler of Tripoli, but only his ambassador, who told him that the Qur’an provided the rationale for North African piracy. (Jefferson was also told, as chapter 4 of this book attests, that the devil had enabled those successful forays.) Of course, Fischer evinces no awareness that the treaty concluded with Tripoli states at the very outset that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”177 Nor, one expects, would Fischer be interested in the inconvenient historical truth that Jefferson as president addressed the Islamic rulers of both Tripoli and Tunis with an emphasis on their shared deity: “I pray God, very great and respected friend, to have you always in his holy keeping.”178 Possessing a serviceable knowledge of its basic tenets, Jefferson clearly thought Islam was a religion.
Jefferson did not hate Muslims, nor did he allow fear to inform his views of their future in the United States. In direct opposition to the stated goals of Jefferson’s most cherished legislation, Fischer’s excision of the civil rights of American Muslims also forecloses those of all non-Christian citizens:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.179
Nowhere is it more explicit that those who overtly deny the civil rights of Muslims often hold the rights of all non-Christians in equal contempt. And so the ultimate strength of those guarantees that in the eighteenth century deliberately included Muslims are now being tested, together with the seriousness of our national commitment to the cherished ideals of religious freedom, political equality, and pluralism. We remain in the midst of this struggle over the definition of national identity and citizenship.
JEFFERSON, THE GOLDEN RULE, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF MUSLIMS
A year before his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend’s son. The young man’s father had urged him to do so in order to “have a favorable influence.” Contemplating his own mortality, “as one from the dead,” Jefferson advised, “Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself.”180 His final reference to the Golden Rule is as clear a signal as we have of its irreducible importance and universal application in his personal ethics, as well as its centrality to his conception of patriotism.
On the very day of his swearing-in upon Jefferson’s Qur’an in 2007, Representative Ellison also invoked the Golden Rule as a pointed admonition to fellow citizens. In the editorial he wrote entitled, “Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion,” Ellison argued that the Christian majority had a pivotal decision to make about religious pluralism, based on their understanding of the New Testament. Was the Golden Rule applicable only to Christians—or all Americans, no matter their religion?
Will the preacher tell our young couple, “God loves you—but only you and people like you”? Or will the preacher say “God loves you and you must love your neighbors of all colors, cultures, or faiths as yourselves”? One message will lead to a stinginess of spirit, an exclusion of the “undeserving,” and the other will lead to a generosity of spirit and inclusion of all.181
Even Ellison’s opponents might agree that this was now an unavoidable question for the nation, however differently they might phrase it. What cannot be denied is how Jefferson and other important Founders answered.
Invoking the Golden Rule in this way, as a commandment to embrace humanity without qualification, linked Jefferson to a select fraternity of men who had suffered for the sake of this seemingly simple belief. When those who first espoused it in Europe refused to accept violence or coercion in religion’s name, they laid the foundation for the crucial question that Jefferson would pose in 1776, answering it with universal legislation: “Why persecute for difference in religious opinion?”182 In his own answer, the Italian miller Menocchio invoked his love for all who were his neighbors—whether Muslim, Christian heretic, or Jew—before his death on the Inquisition’s pyre in 1601. Just over a decade later, the Baptist Thomas Helwys echoed him from the London prison in which he would die, still proclaiming, “Let them be heretikes, Turcks, Jewes, or whats
oever it apperteynes not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”183 After a little more than thirty years, this same belief in the separation of religion from government and the individual’s absolute right to “soul liberty” would be expressed for the first time in North America by Roger Williams, who asserted:
And I aske whether or no such as may hold forth other Worships or Religions (Jews, Turkes, or Antichristians) may not be peaceable and quiet Subjects, loving and helpfull neighbours, faire and just dealers, true and loyall to the civill government? It is cleare they may from all Reason and Experience in many flourishing Cities and Kingdomes of the World.184
Aspects of Christian thought, often articulated as dissent by those the ruling majority decreed heretical, contained the roots of an end to religious persecution and the seeds of pluralism. These same inclusive precedents for the practice of the Golden Rule existed also in the Hebrew Bible.
Now, as in the eighteenth century, American Muslims symbolize the universality of religious inclusion and equality promised at the nation’s founding by Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Leland, and others, an ideal still in the course of being fully realized more than two centuries later. Any attack upon the rights of Muslim citizens should be recognized for what it remains: an assault upon the universal ideal of civil rights promised all believers at the country’s founding. No group, based on religion, should be excluded from these rights. To do so now would betray both our hard-won national legacy and the genius of those who conceived it.