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

by Denise A. Spellberg

  70. GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 329; Peek, Behind the Backlash, 23.

  71. Moore, Al-Mughtaribun, xi.

  72. Quoted in Peek, Behind the Backlash, 24.

  73. Quoted in Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11, 40.

  74. Ibid., 2–4.

  75. “ ‘Islam Is Peace’ Says President: Remarks by the President at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., September 17, 2001,” georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov.

  76. Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11, 3.

  77. Ibid., 130.

  78. Ibid., 131.

  79. This description is based on Peek, Behind the Backlash, 34.

  80. Sec. 102, “Sense of Congress Condemning Discrimination against Arab and Muslim Americans,” U.S. Congress, “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001, H.R. 3162 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001), 1, 8–10. The best analysis of this contradictory governmental policy is provided by Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 84. Brown offers this pertinent observation of the U.S. government: “Yet at the same time that the state represents itself as securing social equality and rhetorically enjoins the citizenry from prejudice and persecution, the state engages in extralegal persecutorial actions toward the very group that it calls upon the citizenry to be tolerant toward.”

  81. Herbert N. Foerstel, The Patriot Act: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008), 58–60; Smith, Islam in America, 2nd ed., 186–89.

  82. Quoted in Foerstel, Patriot Act, 60.

  83. Ibid., 61–63.

  84. Ibid., 66.

  85. Quoted in Peek, Behind the Backlash, 32; GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 328.

  86. Quoted in Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11, 197.

  87. Ibid., 139; Peek, Behind the Backlash, 31; “NYPD Monitored Muslim Students All over Northeast,” Huffington Post, February 18, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/18/nypd-monitored-muslim-stu__O_n_1286647.htm.

  88. This is not a new observation; precedents for it may be found in GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 327, and Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11, 141.

  89. GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 362–63.

  90. Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11, 197; GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 365–77. Comedic pioneers include The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, starring Maz Jobrani, Aron Kader, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidallah, which aired April 3, 2007 (Chatsworth, CA: Levity Productions, 2007), DVD, and, more recently, Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah’s hilarious film critique of American Islamophobia, The Muslims Are Coming!, which premiered in Austin, Texas, in October 2012.

  91. Quoted in Peek, Behind the Backlash, 39. For a thoughtful analysis of youthful American Muslim responses to citizenship options, see Sunaina Maira, “Islamophobia and the War on Terror: Youth, Citizenship, and Dissent,” in Islamophobia, ed. Esposito and Kalin, 113–22.

  92. These are the partial findings of a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and authored by David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman, and Ebrahim Moosa, “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans,” January 6, 2010, http://www.sanford.duke.edu/news/Schanzer_Kurzman_Moosa_Anti-Terror_Lessons.pdf.

  93. Quoted in Abdulkader H. Sinno, “Muslim Underrepresentation in American Politics,” in Muslims in Western Politics, ed. Abdulkader H. Sinno (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 80–90.

  94. I have borrowed this phrase from Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Islamophobia, 111.

  95. Ibid.; GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 347; Sinno, “Muslim Underrepresentation in American Politics,” 80–90.

  96. Quoted in Rachel L. Swarns, “Congressman Criticizes Election of Muslim,” New York Times, December 21, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/us/21koran.html.

  97. For the most detailed reading of Ellison’s election, with a different conclusion about the issue of Jefferson’s Qur’an and religious tests, see Kathleeen M. Moore, The Unfamiliar Abode: Islamic Law in the United States and Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 82–101.

  98. Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 40 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–), 1:548. Hereafter cited as Papers of Thomas Jefferson.

  99. Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1888), 4:198–99. For one editorial that referenced the eighteenth-century North Carolina debate, see Sam Fleischacker, “Muslim in Congress? Framers of Constitution Would Approve,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 1, 2007, http://articles.philly.com/2007-01-01/news/25221193_1_constitution-strict-immigration-policies-muslims.

  100. Quoted in Swarns, “Congressman Criticizes Election of Muslim.”

  101. Quoted in Jacqueline Trescott, “Ed Koch Calls for Ouster of ‘Bigot’ on Holocaust Board,” Washington Post, December 14, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/13/AR2006121302260.html.

  102. Quoted in Omar Sacirbey, “Conservatives Attack Use of Koran for Oath,” Washington Post, December 9, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120801482.html.

  103. Quoted in Swarns, “Congressman Criticizes Election of Muslim.”

  104. Quoted in “CNN’s Beck to First-Ever Muslim Congressman: ‘[W]hat I Feel Like Saying Is, “Sir, Prove to Me That You Are Not Working with Our Enemies,” ’ ” Media Matters for America, November 15, 2006, http://www.mediamatters.org/video/2006/11/15/cnns-beck-to-first-ever-congressman-what-137311; Gottschalk and Greenberg, Islamophobia, 144.

  105. Quoted in “CNN’s Beck.”

  106. Quoted ibid.

  107. Quoted in Keith Ellison, “Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion,” Newsweek, Washington Post, January 4, 2007, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2007/01/04/.

  108. Quoted in Neil MacFarquhar, “Muslim’s Election Is Celebrated Here and in Mideast,” New York Times, November 10, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/us/politics/10muslims.html.

  109. Christopher Hayes, “The New Right-Wing Smear Machine,” Nation, November 12, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/article/new-right-wing-smear-machine.

  110. Quoted ibid. Hayes first noted the importance of this supposed typo.

  111. Ibid.

  112. Charles Babington and Darlene Superville, “Obama ‘Christian by Choice’: President Responds to Questioner,” Huffington Post, September 29, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/28/obama-christian-by-choice_n_742124.html.

  113. Quoted ibid.

  114. David Weigel, “Birtherism Is Dead. Long Live Birtherism: The History of a National Embarrassment, and Why It’s Not Over Yet,” Slate, April 27, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/2011/04/birtherism_is_dead_long_live_birtherism.html.

  115. For documentation of attacks on Obama’s loyalty and citizenship, see Bill Press, The Obama Hate Machine: The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President and Who Is Behind Them (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012), 75–76, 137–71. For an example of this Islamic conspiracy, see B. J. Armstrong, Is Barack Hussein Obama “Claiming America” for Islam? Obama’s Ancestry vs. America & Christianity (2011).

  116. This report includes data beginning in 2008; “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim,” Pew Research Center, August 18, 2010, http://www.pew forum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Growing-Number-of-Americans-Say-Obama-is-a-Muslim.aspx.

  117. Quoted in Jonathan Marin and Amie Parnes, “McCain: Obama Not an Arab, Crowd Boos,” Politico, October 10, 2008, http://politico.com/news/stories/1008/14479.html.

  118. This incident has been analyzed by Sherman A. Jackson, “Muslims, Islam(s), Race and American Islamophobia”; Juan Cole, “Islamophobia in
American Foreign Policy Rhetoric”; and Mohamed Nimer, “Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Measurements, Dynamics, and Consequences,” all in Islamophobia, ed. Esposito and Kalin, 103–4, 135–38.

  119. Andrea Elliott, “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama,” New York Times, June 24, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html.

  120. President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on a New Beginning,” Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009, www.whitehouse.gov/blog/NewBeginnings/transcripts.

  121. Campbell Brown, “Commentary: So What If Obama Were a Muslim or an Arab?” CNN Politics, October 13, 2008, www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/campbell.brown.obama/.

  122. Ibid.

  123. Elliott, “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama.”

  124. Brown, “So What If Obama Were a Muslim or an Arab?”

  125. Quoted in Robert Mackey, “More on the Soldier Kareem R. Khan,” The Lede blog, New York Times, October 19, 2008.

  126. Elliot, Debates, 4:215.

  127. Josh Gerstein, “Poll: 46% of GOP Thinks Obama’s Muslim,” Politico, August 19, 2010, http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0810/Poll_46_of_GOP_thinks_Obamas_Muslim.html.

  128. The two scholars are Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, as cited by David A. Graham, “The Problem with Polls about Whether Obama Is a Muslim,” Atlantic, March 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/the-problem-with-polls-about-whether-obama-is-a-muslim/254380/.

  129. The scholar is Julian Sanchez, cited ibid.

  130. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 2:545–46.

  131. Nimer, “Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism,” in Islamophobia, ed. Esposito and Kalin, 82–84.

  132. David Weigel, “Perry Dodges the Sharia Bullet,” Slate, August 19, 2011, http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/08/19/perry_dodges_the_sharia_bullet.html.

  133. Quoted ibid.

  134. Quoted in Justin Elliott, “Rick Perry: The Pro-Shariah Candidate?” Salon, August 10, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/08/10/rick_perry_muslims/; Weigel, “Perry Dodges the Sharia Bullet”; Glen Rose, “Is Rick Perry Upholding Shariah Law in Texas? Halal Food Law HB 470-2003,” Salon, August 20, 2011, http://salon.glenrose.net?view=plink&id=14147.

  135. Quoted in Terrence Dopp, “Christie Defends Muslim Pick for New Jersey Judge, Calls Critics ‘Crazies,’ ” Bloomberg, August 5, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-05/christie-defends-muslim-pick-for-new-jersey-judge-calls-critics-crazies-.html.

  136. Amanda Terkel, “Newt Gingrich: I’d Support a Muslim Running for President Only If They’d Commit to ‘Give Up Sharia,’ ” Huffington Post, January 17, 2012; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/17/newt-gingrich-muslim-president-sharia_n_; “Michele Bachmann: Sharia Law Would ‘Usurp’ the U.S. Constitution,” Huffington Post, November 3, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/michele-bachmann-sharia-law-constitution-_n_1074009.html.

  137. “Gingrich: I’d Support a Muslim Only If.”

  138. Andrea Elliott, “The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement,” New York Times, July 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31shariah.html?pagewanted=all.

  139. Quoting the assertion of reporter Andrea Elliott, ibid.

  140. Anver Emon, “Banning Shari‘a,” The Immanent Frame, September 9, 2011, Social Science Research Council, http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/09/06/banning-shari‘a/.

  141. Ibid.

  142. Elliott, “The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement.”

  143. Ibid.

  144. Emon, “Banning Shari‘a.”

  145. Elliott, “The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement.”

  146. William G. “Jerry” Boykin and Harry Edward Soyster et al., Shariah: The Threat to America, Center for Security Policy, September 13, 2010, http://www.shariahthethreat.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Shariah-The-Threat-to-America-Team-B-Report-Web-09292010.pdf.

  147. Quoted in Erik Eckholm, “General Withdraws from West Point Talk,” New York Times, January 30, 2012.

  148. Boykin and Soyster, Shariah, 4.

  149. Ibid., 5.

  150. Ibid., 50.

  151. Muhammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Dissimulation,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe, 6 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 1:540-42.

  152. Robert Steinback, “The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle,” Intelligence Report, no. 142 (Summer 2011), Southern Poverty Law Center.

  153. Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 262.

  154. Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012), 148.

  155. John Esposito also raises this point in What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 162.

  156. Muneer Awad v. Paul Ziriax et al. (112 KB) No. 10-6273 (10th Cir. January 10, 2012) (unpublished) (available at http://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/10/10-6273.pdf).

  157. Ibid.

  158. Emon, “Banning Shari‘a”; Nussbaum, New Religious Intolerance, 11–12. For insightful historical perspective on the practical role of Sharia law in the United States, see Sadakat Kadri, Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari‘a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 279–81.

  159. “Map—Nationwide Anti-Mosque Activity,” American Civil Liberties Union, http://www.aclu.org/maps/map-nationwide-anti-mosque-activity.

  160. Moore, Al-Mughtaribun, 117–34.

  161. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Moving the Mountain: Beyond Ground Zero to a New Vision of Islam in America (New York: Free Press, 2012), 18.

  162. Nussbaum, New Religious Intolerance, 188–202.

  163. Quoted in Robert Hillenbrand, “ ‘The Ornament of the World’: Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Center,” in The Legacy of Islamic Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 1:114, says the origin of this Islamic precedent in Cordoba was in Umayyad Damascus.

  164. Nussbaum, New Religious Intolerance, 189.

  165. Ibid., 237.

  166. Robert Steinback, “The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle.”

  167. Nussbaum, New Religious Intolerance, 195.

  168. Quoted in Adam Lisberg, “Mayor Bloomberg Stands Up for Mosque,” New York Daily News, August 3, 2010, http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/08/bloomberg-stands-up-for-mosque.html.

  169. “Flushing Remonstrance, 1657,” in The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 109.

  170. “Eisenhower’s 1957 Speech at Islamic Center of Washington,” available at: iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2007/06/20070626154822lnkais0.6946985.html#axzz2NjGVfXDB. The speech appears in a somewhat redacted form in GhaneaBassiri, History of Islam in America, 255–57.

  171. Jane Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 168.

  172. For the best analysis of the Cold War and changing American views of Muslims, see Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Doubleday, 2004).

  173. Quoted in Frederic J. Frommer, “Ellison Uses Thomas Jefferson’s Quran,” Washington Post (Associated Press), January 4, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401188.html.

  174. Boykin and Soyster, Shariah, 223–24. Frank J. Gaffney Jr. and David Yerushalmi, both listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as belonging to anti-Islamic hate groups, also contributed to this report; see Steinback, “The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle.”

  175. Boykin and Soyster, Shariah, 223–24.

  176. Bryan Fischer, “Islam and the First Amendment: Privileges but Not Rights,” Rightly Concerned blog, American Family Association, March 23, 2011, http://www.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147504696. I would like to thank my colleague Kamran Aghaie for drawing my attention to this statement.

&n
bsp; 177. “Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli … ratified by the U.S. June 10, 1797,” in Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, ed. Hunter Miller (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 2:365.

  178. “To the Bashaw of Tripoli from President Thomas Jefferson,” May 21, 1801, in Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers: Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from 1785 Through 1801, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), 1:470; “Thomas Jefferson to Bey of Tunis,” June 28, 1806, in The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651–1827, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib016251, image 303.

  179. Fischer, “Islam and the First Amendment.”

  180. “To Thomas Jefferson Smith from Thomas Jefferson,” February 21, 1825, in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 655.

  181. Ellison, “Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion.” In June 2012 Congressman Ellison’s loyalties were attacked by Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four congressional colleagues from the Republican Party, who baselessly claimed that the American Muslim congressman was somehow in league with the country’s enemies, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood; see Tomer Ovadia, “Rep. Keith Ellison: Michele Bachmann ‘Wanted Attention,’ ” Politico, July 20, 2012, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78784.html.

  182. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:544.

  183. Thomas Helwys, The Mistery of Iniquity (London: Kingsgate Press, 1935), 69.

  184. Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, ed. Samuel L. Caldwell, vol. 3 of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 142.

  Index

  Abbot, Henry, 5.1, 5.2

  Abd Allah, Muhammad ibn, Moroccan sultan

  Abd al-Rahman. See Tripolitan ambassador

  Abd al-Rahman, Ibrahima, Muslim slave, itr.1, 5.1, 5.2, nts.1n156

  Abdul Rauf, Feisal

  abolitionism

  Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism (Stubbe), 2.1, nts.1n200