Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders
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First, which of them has the highest proof of its divine origin? and which inculcates the purist morals? that is, of which have we the greatest certainty that it came from God? and which is calculated to do the most good to mankind?138
The cleric then argues that the “Alcoran” was “written by the finger of the Deity himself,” but the Bible was “written by men.” When Underhill weakly protests that he has “good evidence” of the “truth” in the Bible, the cleric also asserts the same for Islam, declaring that the Prophet “received the sacred volume from the hand of Gabriel.”139 Although this does not accurately represent the Muslim belief that the Angel Gabriel conveyed divine directives orally over time, Tyler’s intent here is clear: to depict Islam’s revelation as a direct communication from God, rather than from a human “impostor,” a position that supports Islamic tradition rather than Christian polemic.
Underhill goes on to argue that the truth of Christianity is proved “from its small beginnings and wonderful increase.” The Muslim counters that Mahomet was an “illiterate,” and adds, “Could he, who could not read or write, have published a book, which for its excellence has astonished the world?”140 Underhill the Christian recoils, fuming: “My blood boiled to hear this infidel vaunt himself thus triumphantly against my faith.”141 The Yankee then insists that the spread of the faith was not accomplished by coercion, in contrast to Islam: “Our religion was disseminated in peace; yours was promulgated by the sword.” The cleric retorts, “The history of the Christian church is a detail of bloody massacre,” citing the persecutions of the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine, the expulsion of the Muslims from Catholic Spain, and “the dragooning of the Huguenots” from Catholic France.142
The violence within Christianity is confirmed by the protagonist’s own past; Underhill’s ancestor had been banished from Puritan Massachusetts in the seventeenth century because “his ideas of religious toleration” were “more liberal than those around him”; Underhill also notes sympathetically that “the celebrated Anne Hutchinson” and “good Roger Williams” suffered the same fate.143 And so the protagonist comes around to Tyler’s own view that Christian religious history is one of violent persecution of fellow Christians and Muslims.
The Muslim cleric offers a final argument reflecting on the worldwide diffusion of Islam and the practice of allowing Christians and Jews to retain their faith in Islamic lands. The Muslim emphasizes the Qur’anic principle that there is to be no coercion in religion (Qur’an 2:256). In addition, he invokes the Qur’anic command to deal gently with slaves and, on their conversion, to manumit them (Qur’an 5:89). According to this tenet, even a slave would be received “as a brother” once he “pronounces the ineffable creed” of Islam.144
To this Muslim tolerance, the cleric contrasts “the Christians of your southern plantations” who “baptize the unfortunate African into your faith, and then use your brother Christians as brutes of the desert.” And Underhill is unable to defend his compatriots’ inhumane practice of slavery.145 The cleric judiciously admits, “Your Scriptures contain many excellent rules of life,” but he regrets that it does not forbid “gaming” and “the use of wine,” both prohibited in Islam.146
Underhill listens to a final entreaty to convert and “learn the unity of God,” which Tyler rightly identifies as the “fundamental doctrine” of the Qur’an.147 He would not be required to “renounce” his “prophet,” Jesus, whom Muslims “respect as a great apostle of God, but only to acknowledge that Mahomet is the seal of the prophets.” In the end, the American refuses to convert, though he offers no brilliant retort to the powerful arguments of the “artful priest.”148
Outwardly silent, the protagonist reveals his confusion in an inner monologue, admitting that he was “disgusted with [the cleric’s] fables, abashed by his assurance, and almost confounded by his sophistry.”149 Underhill also concedes that the Muslim cleric spoke Latin with “fluency and elegance,” but without the “proper” pronunciation used at Harvard.150 (Here the author, a graduate of Harvard, class of 1776, cannot resist a bit of chauvinism.)151 Still, in the face of the overwhelming polemic against Islam circulating in America, the dominance of the Muslim cleric in this religious exchange is not only unexpected but curious.
When Underhill becomes ill, the same Muslim cleric visits him in the infirmary. The captive resists renewed attempts to convert him, saying, “The religion of my country is all that I had left of the many blessings I once enjoyed in common with my fellow citizens.” This is a ringing endorsement of the nation, but not an effective argument for Christianity’s superiority. Underhill admits that the mullah had impressed him: “I was charmed with the man, though I abominated his faith.”152 Underhill thus acknowledges having found a Muslim worthy of respect in spite of his religion, though he concludes with a standard Christian polemic about the Prophet’s “ambition” and his invention of a “new religion.”153
The novel’s apparent sympathy for Islam does not extend to either Catholicism or Judaism. Jews are described as a “cunning race” that “solace themselves with a Messiah whose glory is enshrined in their coffers” and “wallow in secret wealth.”154 Underhill describes the Jewish quarter of Algiers and accurately portrays the importance of the Jews as intermediaries in North African rulers’ banking and diplomacy.155 He is befriended by an elderly Jew, who kindly (but against type) helps raise money for him to buy his freedom when his countrymen fail to do so; but his chance of release is dashed when the old man suddenly dies and the benevolent Jew’s son pretends not to know about his father’s beneficence.156 Underhill, who’d been a doctor, saves the younger Jew’s life, but the ingrate sells him into slavery a second time.157 Now he is put aboard a ship, and only a serendipitous intervention by the Portuguese navy returns the captive of Algiers to freedom.158
The most striking display of Tyler’s universalism occurs as Underhill derides the “bigoted aversion” of both George Sale, the translator of the Qur’an, and the anti-Islamic polemicist Humphrey Prideaux.159 Underhill declares that he will “endeavour to steer the middle course of impartiality,” and though he was not always objective, his mere attempt proved controversial.160
A reviewer for a Boston magazine would object to the Muslim cleric’s argument for Islam’s superiority, in contrast to Underhill’s inability to make a compelling case for Christianity.161 The novelist was forced to rebut the charge of “infidelity.” In his defense, Tyler admitted that he had intended “to do away the vulgar prejudices against Islamism,” and that, contrary to what his protagonist had said about Sale’s “bigoted aversion,” he himself had deliberately adopted “the liberality of the good Sale.” Despite these intentions, Tyler was forced to publicly traduce Islam again in favor of the “truths of Christianity,” writing apologetically:
[F]or the Author considered then, and now considers, that, after exhibiting Islamism in its best light, the Mahometan imposture will be obvious to those who compare the language, the dogmatic fables, the monstrous absurdities of the Koran, with the sublime doctrines, morals and language of the Gospel dispensation.162
Tyler should not have been surprised at the public outrage in eighteenth-century America at a failure to espouse Christianity’s absolute superiority over Islam. The charge of “infidelity” implies that Tyler was seen as not just an unbeliever but a Muslim, for that had been a significant part of the Christian definition of the word “infidel” in English since the fifteenth century.163
Tyler was not the first American to attempt to introduce a more positive view of Islam. Six years earlier, in 1791, New York Magazine had included a story entitled “Mahomet: A Dream.”164 In it, the Prophet is first called “an impostor,” but then upheld as “a great man,” and Islam is defined as a faith promising salvation and morality.165 Later, in 1801, a few years after the publication of The Algerine Captive, another novel entitled Humanity in Algiers would depict a Muslim who frees an American captive and leaves a bequest to do this annually.166 But thes
e three works were exceptions among contemporary texts that remained overwhelmingly hostile to Islam.
At the end of the eighteenth century, it was still theologically and politically dangerous to suggest that Islam retained some merit even for Muslims. In fact, Tyler had, in certain paragraphs in his novel, done just that. He had chastised the mutual enmity of Muslims and Christians and held each group to account for their violence as a perversion of their own creeds:
Neither their Alcoran nor their priests excite them to plunder, enslave, or torment. The former expressly recommends charity, justice, and mercy, towards their fellow men. I would not bring the sacred volume of our faith in any comparative view with the Alcoran of Mahomet; but I cannot help noticing it as extraordinary, that the Mahometan should abominate the Christian on account of his faith, and the Christian detest the Mussulman for his creed; when the Koran of the former acknowledges the divinity of the Christian Messias [sic], and the Bible of the latter commands us to love our enemies. If either would follow the obvious dictates of his own scripture, he would cease to hate, abominate, and destroy the other.167
The only factual flaw in this compelling passage was Tyler’s misunderstanding of the Islamic stance on Jesus: The Qur’an accepts Jesus only as a prophet, and does not acknowledge his “divinity.” But otherwise it was a cogent call for mutual tolerance.
There were, however, earlier European precedents for religious tolerance. A handful of scattered Christians spoke bravely against religious violence while it raged around them in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many were accused of heresy. Even fewer opposed systematic persecution by the state in the name of doctrinal difference. Among these, a subset of Catholics and Protestants also defended Muslims from coerced conversion, state persecution, and violence. Their ideas were never considered acceptable while they lived. But these ideas evolved over centuries, eventually to be espoused by Jefferson and other Founders as religious freedom, political equality, and citizenship.
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Positive European Christian Precedents for the Toleration of Muslims, and Their Presence in Colonial America, 1554–1706
Let them be heretikes, Turcks, Jewes, or whatsoever it apperteynes not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.
—Thomas Helwys, English Baptist, 1612
And I aske whether or no such as may hold forth other Worships or Religions, (Jewes, 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, and so offend not against the civill State and Peace; nor incurre the punishment of the civill Sword …
—Roger Williams, English Puritan exiled to Rhode Island, 1644
Besides, I think you are under a mistake, which shews your pretence against admitting Jews, Mahometans, and Pagans, to the civil rights of the commonwealth is ill-grounded; for what law I pray is there in England, that they who turn to any of those religions, forfeit the civil rights of the commonwealth by doing it?
—John Locke, English philosopher, 1692
ON APRIL 28, 1584, a garrulous miller from a town near Venice, Italy, told the Inquisition that Jesus commanded all to “Love God and your neighbor,” an application of the Golden Rule he interpreted to include Muslims: “the majesty of God has given the Holy Spirit to all, to Christians, to heretics, to Turks, and to Jews; and he considers them all dear, and they are all saved in the same manner.”1 Domenico Scandella, known by the nickname Menocchio (d. 1601), advocated the equality of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, a shocking and heretical idea for the Catholic inquisitors who believed there was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.2 But God, in this miller’s estimation, did not play favorites based on religion or Christian denomination. This meant that the church held no exclusive claim on the only or true faith—an intolerable heresy for the Inquisition.
Since the Italian miller believed God loved and saved everyone equally, he had argued for universal religious tolerance, although “tolerance” was a word he never used. In so doing, Menocchio had unwittingly professed the heresy of Origen of Alexandria (d. 254), and of that he was accused at his first Inquisition trial in 1584: “You brought again to light Origen’s heresy that all peoples would be saved, Jews, Turks, pagans, Christians, and all infidels, since the Holy Spirit has been given equally to them all.”3 For these and other heretical beliefs, Menocchio would be imprisoned for two years, in squalid conditions. His health broken, he was released, but required by Inquisition order to wear a smock with a cross as a penitential sign, and enjoined never to speak of his beliefs or leave his village.4
In his monumental inquiry into Menocchio’s cosmology and persecution, The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg first tried to make sense of these beliefs in the context of the Reformation, a time of religious violence throughout Europe that set Catholics against Protestants and various denominations of Protestants against one another.
The miller’s heretical ideas about tolerance toward Muslims were predicated upon his assumption of their ultimate capacity for salvation, an unusual position among both Catholics and Protestants. More commonly, the Christians who argued for the toleration of Muslims did so with an eye toward the eventual conversion of the adherents of Islam to Christianity, presumed to be the only Muslim path to heaven. Few indeed were those Christians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who would have argued for the toleration of Muslims as Muslims, and they never much disrupted the consensus of anti-Islamic sentiment among the Christian majority. Nevertheless, these ideas about universal tolerance evolved into policies that often explicitly included Muslim toleration in a variety of Christian societies on both sides of the Atlantic from the sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries.5 Eventually these marginalized views laid the groundwork for eighteenth-century ideas about Muslims as future citizens of the United States.
Menocchio’s defense of Muslims as saved and equal in God’s eyes extended also to Jews, who would be linked with Muslims in other European arguments about tolerance during this period. Unlike Muslims, who were a powerful external political force and for the most part lived outside of European society, Jews were a scattered, resident minority who were never considered a military danger to their Christian neighbors.6 But, like Muslims, Jews were deemed “quintessential religious outsiders,” whose refusal to convert and acknowledge Jesus as messiah provoked resentment and sporadic violence.7 The term “infidel,” synonymous with Muslims, would also be applied somewhat less frequently to Jews.8 Uniquely, Jews were also implicated as deicides, complicit in perpetuity for the death of Jesus.9 In Catholic and most Protestant theologies, both Muslims and Jews remained “in different ways, an immanent presence and perceived threat to Christian society.”10 Whether described as objects of Christian persecution, forced conversion, salvation, or tolerance, Muslims and Jews continued to be conjoined in these disputes.11
Some of Menocchio’s ideas of tolerance seem to echo earlier medieval European peasant lore about Muslims in Catholic France, Italy, and Spain. They remind us that these perspectives existed even among some common folk in Europe.12 Twenty years before Menocchio’s first Inquisition trial, an Italian poem by an anonymous peasant expressed ideas similar to his. In verses never published yet part of a rich peasant oral culture, the poet declaimed that Muslims, Jews, and Christians all had a “law” based on the Ten Commandments dictated to them by the same God. Describing Muhammad as “a prophet and a great warrior of God,” the poem commanded Turks and Christians to end their strife:
You Turk and you Christian by my decree
Do not go on as you have in the past:
Turk take a step forward
And you Christian take a step backward13
There is no proof that Menocchio heard these verses recited. Nor do we know whether the words circulated in nearby villages. However, the equality of the three monotheisms a
nd the divine command for Christians and Turks to cease military strife (even if this meant Christian retreat and Muslim advance to a stalemate) were consistent with the miller’s own worldview. Such pacifist sentiments are remarkable in light of the ongoing Ottoman military threat to Western Europe. Only thirty-five years before, in 1529, the Ottomans had attempted their first unsuccessful siege of Vienna. By 1537, Sultan Suleyman’s fleet had attacked the coasts of Italy, with the Ottoman military remaining a significant threat to Western Europe until the end of the seventeenth century.14
Menocchio paraphrased a second popular European source, known as The Legend of the Three Rings, an allegorical tale identifying the God of Muslims as the one of Christians and Jews.15 In this medieval tale, all three religions were literally a family, with God as their father. As Menocchio boldly told his inquisitors in a second trial in 1599, God was merciful to all his children:
Likewise, God the Father has various children whom he loves, such as Christians, Turks, and Jews and to each of them he has given the will to live by his own law, and we do not know which is the right one. That is why I said that since I was born a Christian I want to remain a Christian, and if I had been born a Turk I would want to live like a Turk.16
If Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were all religions of the same God, then no religion could claim superiority. Menocchio’s implication that Christianity was not the religion, but merely one religion among the three divinely inspired, was a dangerous departure from the vast majority of his contemporaries.
The inquisitors seized upon the miller’s heretical words, and immediately asked him which religion represented the “right law.”17 The only doctrinally correct answer—Christianity—was obvious, but Menocchio refused to provide it. Instead, he offered a sociological reason for the existence of religious differences. The miller affirmed, “Yes sir, I do believe that every person considers his faith to be right, and we do not know which is the right one: but because my grandfather, my father, and my people have been Christians, I want to remain a Christian, and believe that this is the right one.”18 The correct answer but for the wrong reasons. This failure to assert the summary superiority of Christianity confirmed Menocchio as a heretic.19