Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders

557 Pages·2013·4.26 MB·English

by  Denise A. Spellberg

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 wondered 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,