Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders
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IN A LETTER to Thomas Jefferson in Paris in October 1788, James Madison in New York warned that “one of the objections in New England was that the Constitution by prohibiting religious tests opened a door for Jews Turks and infidels.”1 Madison clearly thought such fears of non-Protestant officeholders were absurd, but they elicited no comment from Jefferson, who in 1776 had recorded in his notes Locke’s support for the religious and civil rights of Muslims, along with Jews and pagans.2 He could not have forgotten that in 1779 opposition to his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom “dominated” the Virginia Gazette and had elicited anxiety about the same issue Madison was inclined to dismiss.3 By affirming “that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities,”4 Jefferson’s bill had indeed opened a door, at least theoretically, to a prospect of political equality many found unthinkable.
One of Jefferson’s Virginia critics at the time, writing under the pseudonym a “Social Christian,” admonished him about the need for laws to support a purely Protestant Christian America. He distinguished between toleration of non-Christians (freedom from persecution, not religious freedom), which he could endorse, and political equality, which he could not: “if there be a few who are Jews, Mahomedans, Atheists or Deists among us, though I would not wish to torture or persecute them on account of their opinions, yet to exclude such from our publick offices, is prudent and just.”5 To do so was necessary in order “to restrain them from publishing their singular opinions to the disturbance of society.”6 The access of non-Protestants to positions of government authority might one day result in their control over the Protestant majority, of which even the remotest possibility had to be avoided, argued Jefferson’s opponents, at all costs. Accordingly, in November a petition was sent to the legislature from Amherst County, Virginia, demanding that no Catholic, “Jew, Turk, or Infidel” should “be allowed to hold a civil or military position” in the state.7
While Jefferson remained in Paris, attempting to forge treaties with North African and European powers, Madison helped draft and promote the new Constitution at home, where the ultimate fear of a Muslim becoming president entered national debates about the necessity of a religious test, nowhere more vociferously than in New England. In Massachusetts, an Anti-Federalist from Worcester in the western part of the Commonwealth wrote in February 1788, expressing fear that without a bill of rights, freedom of conscience would be imperiled. But the anonymous author only worried about religious freedom for Christians. Without a religious test in the Constitution, he wrote, “There is a door opened for Jews, Turks, and Heathens to enter into publick office, and be seated at the head of the government of the United States.”8 Meanwhile, in Freeman’s Oracle that same month, an Anti-Federalist tract addressed to “the Inhabitants of New Hampshire” warned that “according to this” Constitution “we may have a Papist, a Mohomatan, a Deist, yea an Atheist at the helm of the Government.”9
The same anxiety would echo throughout the New Hampshire ratification debate, during which at least one delegate to the state convention actually raised the specter of a Muslim president.10 In a private letter to a friend in Massachusetts, John Sullivan of Durham, a supporter of the Constitution and former Revolutionary War general, reported the incident among various “specimens of New Hampshire ingenuity.”11 As president of the convention, Sullivan was in a position to observe all the arguments over the abolition of religious tests, which ran almost an entire day as Anti-Federalists struggled to limit government offices to Protestants.12 Unfortunately, these exchanges were not preserved in their entirety.13 Sullivan did, however, record with some irony the insistence of a fellow delegate that presidential candidates at least “ought to be compelled to submit” to the test, for otherwise “a Turk, a Jew, a Rom[an] Catholic, and what is worse than all, a Universal[ist], may be President of the United States.”14
Universalism’s doctrine of universal salvation was considered heretical by most Protestant denominations and as dangerous as Deism.15 Coupling the Universalist with “a Turk,” or Muslim, represented the height of Protestant invective, the ultimate sectarian slur, though the threat of a Universalist or Jewish or Catholic president was obviously considered marginally more imminent than that of a Muslim. Still, the fear was that members of all these religions were threats to American Protestant exclusivity in government control.16
Could a Muslim in fact become president of the United States? Only if at least nine of the thirteen states ratified the Constitution, including Article VI, section 3, which declared:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
To swear to support the Constitution, a civic oath rather than a religious test of the sort then operative in all the states, seemed the unraveling of the Protestant order to some.17 And although it was conceived mainly to eradicate “Protestant sectarian warfare”—the fear that one group would dominate and exclude others—unintended consequences nevertheless abounded in some delegates’ imaginations.18 Both Federalists and Anti-Federalists would refer to Muslims respectively to assuage fears or to stoke them about the fate of Protestant dominance.
It was quite inadvertently, then, that the abolition of a religious test heralded a new vision, one of a future that included Muslim citizens, as well as citizenship for minorities of Jews and Catholics already known to exist in the country. Previous studies of those groups in the early Republic have treated the presence of Muslims alongside them in this political rhetoric as accidental, derogatory, or unimportant. But the presence of all three in the North Carolina debate challenging religious tests defies prevailing scholarly assumptions that Muslims were deemed “totally behind the horizon of civility”19 and “outlandish,”20 and thus mentioned with other non-Protestants merely for rhetorical effect. In fact they played a more substantial role, particularly in North Carolina, where the record of debate concerning the question of a religious test is best preserved and most detailed.
On July 30, 1788, for the first time, Federalist delegates to North Carolina’s ratification debate at Hillsborough defended a new American political ideal: the possibility that in the United States a Jew or a Catholic—or a Muslim—might become president. Analysis of their debate complicates our conceptions of Muslims in this context by introducing a momentous if momentary exception to this pivotal era’s otherwise prevalent negative references to Muslims and Islam.
THE PREDOMINANCE OF TEST OATHS IN THE COLONIES PRIOR TO 1787
When the Constitution was first drafted in 1787 and presented for ratification, almost every one of the thirteen states promoted Christianity, and more specifically Protestantism, as the sole religion acceptable for political officeholders. Most state officials submitted to a religious test or otherwise affirmed their belief in God, along with particular aspects of some Protestant creed. And so to propose removing such a bar to non-Protestants was, at the federal level, truly new, provocative, and revolutionary, a precedent that would encourage a religiously plural future for the United States.21
Most states codified the superiority of Christianity, and particularly Protestantism. New York was the sole exception, with the thirty-eighth article of its 1777 state constitution extending religious liberty, implicitly at least, to its small Jewish community—and to whatever other non-Christians might one day appear, theoretically including Muslims:
And whereas we are required by the benevolent principles of rational liberty, not only to expel civil tyranny, but also to guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance, wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have scourged mankind, this
convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of the State, ordain, determine, and declare, that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed, within this State to all mankind.22
Despite this promulgation of universal freedom of conscience, Catholics were excluded from holding state office under a clause that judged their religious beliefs “inconsistent with the peace and safety” of the state.23 This exclusion, based on the prevailing fear that their political allegiance was to a foreign power, the pope, was the only one worth specifying, it seems, the prospects for non-Christians being so remote.
In Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin had opposed religious tests for state officeholders, but to no avail.24 The 1776 state constitution extended religious freedom to all, affirming that “all men have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding.” But language that defended anyone “who acknowledges the being of a God” from being “deprived or abridged of any civil rights as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship,” was qualified by an oath for officeholders, inserted over Franklin’s objections:25
I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration.26
In contrast to New York, this requirement excluded Jews and Muslims, who would not accept the New Testament, but not Catholics. An earlier proposal that the oath affirm “merely belief in one God” met with opposition precisely because it would provide “Jews and Turks” access to political power.27 An explicit provision against Jews and atheists taking seats in the legislature was enacted later in the year. But even this could not placate one Lutheran minister, who warned that Christians “were [to be] ruled by Jews, Turks, Spinozists, Deists [and] perverted naturalists.”28
In Delaware, state officers were obliged to swear to the Trinity, the doctrine over which so many had died in Europe.29 This provision excluded American Jews and any Muslims who might arrive. New Jersey allowed only Protestants to be elected.30 Massachusetts in 1778 prohibited non-Protestants from public office, while the 1780 constitution more broadly allowed “Christians,”31 though for Catholics a special oath “renouncing the superiority of papal authority” was required.32 New Hampshire also prohibited non-Protestants, despite objections from William Plumer, later to be a senator but for now “a solitary voice.”33 Rhode Island and Connecticut both denied Jews political equality,34 the former persisting in this arrangement until 1842.35 In Maryland, Catholics, who had founded the colony, had political equality, but Jews did not.36 Virginia was notably distinct, passing in 1786 Jefferson’s first state law to mandate religious freedom and political equality for all faiths, including Catholics.37
RELIGIOUS TESTS IN NORTH CAROLINA BEFORE THE CONSTITUTION
North Carolina was geographically and politically positioned between Virginia, with its universal religious freedom and political equality, and South Carolina, which had Protestantism as the state’s “established religion.”38 Farther south, Georgia similarly mandated that all representatives “shall be of the Protestant religion.”39 The 1776 state constitution of North Carolina ended the establishment of “any one religious church or denomination in the State, in preference to any other,” but in Article 32 maintained that officeholders take an oath to affirm “the truth of the Protestant religion”:
That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within the State.40
The insertion of this language was spearheaded by Reverend David Caldwell, a Presbyterian minister, who would later urge the inclusion of a religious test in the federal Constitution.41 The state constitution also had more explicit language excluding Catholics for having religious principles “incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State,” though Article 32 was deemed sufficient protection against Jews and, theoretically, Muslims.42
Samuel Johnston (1733–1816), who would preside over North Carolina’s 1788 constitutional convention, had opposed a religious test for state officials since the 1776 state constitutional convention. As he wrote to his sister, Hannah, he had hoped to “get home in a few days, but unfortunately one of the members of the back country introduced a test, by which every person, before he should be admitted to a share in the Legislature, should swear that he believed in the Holy Trinity, and that the Scriptures of the old Testament was written by divine inspiration. This was carried after a very warm debate, and has blown up such a flame, that everything is in danger of being thrown into confusion.”43 The final version of Caldwell’s Article 32 would leave out the oath to the Trinity, but inserted along with the Old Testament the affirmation that the New Testament was also of divine origin, to much the same effect.44
REFERENCES TO OTTOMAN DESPOTISM IN DEBATES ON THE CONSTITUTION
Although by 1788 the Ottoman Empire had long ceased to be a European military problem, its image as an oppressive regime remained central to British Whig rhetoric, which Americans then adopted in framing their Constitution. Islam came up sporadically during ratification debates throughout 1787 and 1788, with references to Ottoman despotism or the predations of the four pirate states of North Africa. It was ironically unknown to the delegates from the political parties in North Carolina, both of whose members owned slaves, that they themselves may have lived in proximity to real Muslims of West African origin, for whom they were the oppressors.45 What they did know about Muslims had been filtered through a complex web of associations both foreign and frightening, as attested by their persistent allusions to Islam as a civilization of threat.
Robert J. Allison first noted that references to the Ottoman Empire as the source of eternal despotism worked for both Federalists and Anti-Federalists, who, despite their political differences, “agreed that Islam fostered religious and political oppression.”46 But the Anti-Federalist strategy of fearmongering in opposition to the Constitution found more use in invoking such images, particularly in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and South Carolina.47 The other side responded to these assertions but did not emphasize them in The Federalist Papers, the influential series of newspaper tracts written in support of the Constitution by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.48
On May 22, 1788, the Anti-Federalist Patrick Dollard of South Carolina invoked the Ottoman infantry, the janissaries, to warn that similar forces of despotism threatened should the United States support a standing army under a central government.49 It was an echo from the 1720s, when Radical Whig pamphlets, such as Cato’s Letters, arrived in the colonies, portraying Ottoman tyranny as the very antithesis of a civil society with natural religious and political rights for individual men. In 1787, even Thomas Jefferson in Paris was not immune to this rhetorical tactic, writing James Madison about the constitutional feature, “I dislike, and greatly dislike: ‘the abandonment in every instance of the necessity of rotation in office, and most particularly in the case of the President.’ ” In his litany of historical examples of hereditary power and its dangers, he included the Algerian ruler, known as the dey: “The Roman emperors, the popes, while they were of any importance, the German emperors till they became hereditary in practice, the kings of Poland, the Deys of the Ottoman dependencies.” As Jefferson was learning, negotiating with these Islamic powers depended on the inclinations of one, usually disinclined, ruler.50 In another letter to Madison, he would call Turkey a place where “the sole nod of the despot is death.”51
In his forceful argument against the centralization of military power, the Anti-Federalist Dollard said that his consti
tuents saw the new government as a breeding monster, “big with political mischiefs, and pregnant with a greater variety of impending woes to the good people of the southern states, especially South-Carolina, than all the plagues supposed to issue from the poisonous box of Pandora.”52 The people of South Carolina, he promised, would resist the standing army, believing it better left to “the meridian of despotic aristocracy” where “Turkish Janizaries enforcing despotic laws, must ram it down their throats with the point of Bayonets.”53
His fears would be echoed on June 16, 1788, by another Anti-Federalist, Patrick Henry of Virginia, who in debate with James Madison at the Commonwealth’s ratification convention invoked a more immediate image of military oppression: “Is the government to place us in the situation of the English?” The British army’s abuses during the Revolutionary War were indeed fresh in the American memory, when Henry recalled how the redcoats had been billeted, even in times of peace, “in any manner—to tyrannize, oppress, and crush us.”54 But he too would eventually find his way to the Ottoman precedent:
Who has enslaved France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and other countries which groan under tyranny? They have been enslaved by the hands of their own people. If it will be so in America, it will be only as it has been every where else.55
Madison’s reply to Henry, in defense of the Constitution, was that a national army “is to be employed for national purposes,” and only “for executing its laws.” He defied Henry to maintain the new nation without an armed force: “Would it be wise to say, that we should have no defence?” He added further, “There never was a Government without force,” in the form of a national army.56