Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC
Courtesy of Hanif Koya, California
Author: Denise Spellberg
Introduction
Reviews
The English translation of the Qur’an that Thomas Jefferson purchased in 1765 made its most public appearance in 2007, when Minnesota congressman-elect Keith Ellison used it for a photo-op reenactment of his taking the oath of office. Jefferson’s Qur’an is, Spellberg shows in this fresh and timely account, important not because it directly influenced Jefferson’s thought—it is not clear how much of the two-volume work he read or what he learned from it—but because its presence in Jefferson’s library reminds us of his progressive positions on religious tolerance, and the extent to which the Founding Fathers’ ideas were shaped by their ideas about Muslims, even though most of the Founders had probably never actually met a Muslim. Spellberg illustrates her thesis in part by describing the slight but significant ways in which colonial Americans came into contact with Muslims, who were thought to reflect the outer limits of a diverse American population. She scours Jefferson’s writings and draws inferences from, among other things, where in his library Jefferson shelved his Qur’an. But Jefferson’s political and diplomatic dealings, which reveal a thoughtful if complicated approach to Islam, are perhaps more revealing. And we are reminded that, in a messy election campaign against John Adams, Jefferson may have been the first presidential candidate to be maliciously accused of being a Muslim. –Brendan Driscoll –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Denise Spellberg is an associate professor of American and Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Fascinating. . . . Revelatory. . . . Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an breaks fresh ground.” —The New York Times Book Review“Wonderful. . . . Spellberg provides valuable historical context for the struggle for religious tolerance and inclusion. In itself, her book constitutes a step toward inclusiveness in the ongoing construction of American history.” —Jonathan P. Berkey, San Francisco Chronicle“Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an examines the intersection during the nation’s founding era of two contentious themes in culture wars—the relationship of Islam to America, and the proper relationship between church and state. The story that it tells ought to be familiar to most Americans, and is familiar to historians of the nation’s founding. And yet, by using Islam as her book’s touchstone, Spellberg brings illuminating freshness to an oft-told tale…Compelling, formidably documented . . . Spellberg’s book is essential reading in these troubled times.” —R.B. Bernstein, The Daily Beast“Denise Spellberg has done a great thing here by recovering the spirit and the substance of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of true religious liberty. For Jefferson and many of his Founding colleagues, the shift from ‘toleration’ to ‘liberty’ marked a profound change, extending protection and, yes, sanctuary to those of any faith whatsoever, including those of no faith. By focusing on the Jeffersonian understanding of Islam, Spellberg tells a fresh story in engaging fashion and shows us that the past, while surely not perfect, still has much to teach us all these years distant.” —Jon Meacham, winner of the Pulitzer prize and author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power“An impressive and timely book, explaining in detail the universalism of Jefferson’s religious toleration, his contemplation of full citizenship and equality not only for Jews and Catholics but for Muslims as well, while still accepting the traditional view of the ‘errors’ of Islam. Denise Spellberg documents in detail ‘where, when, and how Muslims were first included in American ideals.’ An exploration of the extent of the Founders’ pluralism, the book is not only a notable addition to our understanding of Jefferson but a significant comment on the world today.” —Bernard Bailyn. Two-time winner of the Pulitzer prize and author of The Barbarous Years
“In this ground breaking book, Spellberg explores how America’s founding fathers intended religious tolerance as a key American ideal not only for various Protestant groups, but also for its future Muslim citizens. As her book explores how tolerant attitudes towards Catholics, Jews, and Muslims led key early American thinkers to consider religious freedom in the widest possible terms, it offers a crucial corrective to those who today resist the nation’s inherent blueprint for religious pluralism. In tracing the transatlantic development of these ideas, Spellberg has laid critical groundwork for those interested in European and American perceptions of Islam and religious diversity at the time of the founding of the United States.” —Ali Asani, Professor and Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University
Additional Reading
President Thomas Jefferson — Was he a monotheist?
America is not a Christian nation: The dark capitalist roots of our country’s most destructive myth
Amazon Book Review: Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Foundershttp://t.co/lVTZoRyoi0 pic.twitter.com/XCv4l4WtHH
— The Muslim Times (@The_MuslimTimes) October 15, 2014
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Categories: Americas, Book, Book Release, Book Review, Book Reviews, Highlight, Law, Law and Religion, MUSLIM HERITAGE, Muslim Heritage, United States
Salaam Mr Zia Shah ,
JEFFERSON, MOHAMMED & THE KORAN
It was quite witty of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to short-circuit the hostility of those who criticized him for taking his oath on the Quran and to ask the Library of Congress for the loan of Thomas Jefferson’s copy of that holy book. But the irony of this, which certainly made his stupid Christian fundamentalist critics look even stupider, ought to be partly at his own expense as well.
In the first place, concern over Ellison’s political and religious background has little to do with his formal adherence to Islam. In his student days and subsequently, he was a supporter of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, a racist and crackpot cult organization that is in schism with the Muslim faith and even with the Sunni orthodoxy now preached by the son of the NOI’s popularizer Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan’s sect explicitly describes a large part of the human species—the so-called white part—as an invention of the devil and has issued tirades against the Jews that exceed what even the most fanatical Islamists have said. Farrakhan himself has boasted of the “punishment” meted out to Malcolm X by armed gangsters of the NOI (see the brilliant documentary Brother Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X, which catches him in the act of doing this). If Ellison now wants to use his faith to justify an appeal to pluralism and inclusiveness and diversity, he needs to repudiate the Nation of Islam, and in much more unambivalent terms than any I have yet heard from him.
As to the invocation of Jefferson, we know that when he and James Madison first proposed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (the frame and basis of the later First Amendment to the Constitution) in 1779, the preamble began, “Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free.” Patrick Henry and other devout Christians attempted to substitute the words “Jesus Christ” for “Almighty God” in this opening passage and were overwhelmingly voted down. This vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia’s representatives wanted the law “to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” Quite right, too, and so far so good, even if the term Mahomedan would not be used today, and even if Jefferson’s own private sympathies were with the last named in that list.
A few years later, in 1786, the new United States found that it was having to deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion. The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of today’s Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery. The fledgling United States of America was in an especially difficult position, having forfeited the protection of the British Royal Navy. Under this pressure, Congress gave assent to the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by Jefferson’s friend Joel Barlow, which stated roundly that “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen.” This has often been taken as a secular affirmation, which it probably was, but the difficulty for secularists is that it also attempted to buy off the Muslim pirates by the payment of tribute. That this might not be so easy was discovered by Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:
The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
Medieval as it is, this has a modern ring to it. Abdrahaman did not fail to add that a commission paid directly to Tripoli—and another paid to himself—would secure some temporary lenience. I believe on the evidence that it was at this moment that Jefferson decided to make war on the Muslim states of North Africa as soon as the opportunity presented itself. And, even if I am wrong, we can be sure that the dispatch of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to the Barbary shore was the first and most important act of his presidency. It took several years of bombardment before the practice of kidnap and piracy and slavery was put down, but put down it was, Quranic justification or not.
Jefferson did not demand regime change of the Barbary states, only policy change. And as far as I can find, he avoided any comment on the religious dimension of the war. But then, he avoided public comment on faith whenever possible. It was not until long after his death that we became able to read most of his scornful writings on revelation and redemption (recently cited with great clarity by Brooke Allen in her book Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers). And it was not until long after his death that The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth was publishable. Sometimes known as “the Jefferson Bible” for short, this consists of the four gospels of the New Testament as redacted by our third president with (literally) a razor blade in his hand. With this blade, he excised every verse dealing with virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and other puerile superstition, thus leaving him (and us) with a very much shorter book. In 1904 (those were the days), the Jefferson Bible was printed by order of Congress, and for many years was presented to all newly elected members of that body. Here’s a tradition worth reviving: Why not ask all new members of Congress to swear on that?
And here’s a tradition worth inaugurating: The Quran repeats and plagiarizes many passages of the New Testament, including some of the most fantastic and mythical ones. Is it not time to apply the razor and produce a reasonable Quran as well? What could be more inclusive? What could be a better application of Jeffersonian original intent?
AND HERE IS SOMETHING ELSE FOR YOU TO PONDER ON:
IS ALLAH OF MOHAMMEDANISM THE SAME AS THE GOD OF THE BIBLE ?
Question:
In the Hausa translation of the Bible in northern Nigeria it uses Allah as a designation for the true God. Is Allah therefore the same divine being in both the Islamic and Jewish faiths?
Answer:
The translators, by using a term familiar to the Muslims in northern Nigeria, no doubt thought they were being helpful. But by using Allah in the Hausa language, they have succeeded, instead, in creating confusion. Allah is no mere linguistic designation for God, as Dios in Spanish or Dieu in French. Allah is the name of the god of Mohammed and Mohammedanism. In fact, Allah was the name of the chief god among the numerous idols in the Kaaba in Mecca, which represented the deities of travelers passing through in the caravans. Allah was the god of the local Quraish, Mohammed’s tribe, before Mohammedanism was invented. Muhammad smashed the idols but kept the black stone which is still kissed today by Mohammedans. He kept, too, the name Allah for the god of Mohammedanism (its sign was the crescent moon) in order to appeal to his own tribe.
Allah has definite characteristics: he is not a father, has no son, is not a triune being but a single (and thus incomplete) entity who destroys rather than saves sinners, has compassion on only the righteous, does not deal in grace but only rewards good deeds, has no way to redeem the lost sinners, etc.
Allah is not the God of the Bible.
The God of Israel, too, has a name, YHWH, now pronounced Jehovah but more anciently as Jahweh. Most Christians are unaware of God’s name because the Old Testament substitutes Lord for YHWH. In Exodus 6:3 God says,
”By my name YHWH was I not known to them”; and at the burning bush when Moses asked His name, God explained the meaning of it by saying I AM THAT I AM; thus YHWH means not just one who is, but the self-existent One who is in and of Himself (Exodus. 3:13-14).
The God of the Bible is love, which is an impossibility for Allah. As a single entity, Allah was lonely and could not love or fellowship until other entities came into existence. Not so with YHWH (Jehovah). He is three persons in One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, complete in Himself and in need of no others to love and fellowship with (“The Father loveth the Son” [John 3:35], there is communion within the Godhead, etc.). Only of this God could it be said that He is love in Himself.
Allah could never say, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) and the Muslim scholar has no explanation for this expression, which is even found in the Koran’s paraphrase of this Bible verse. We could point out other reasons, but this should be enough to show that to use in the Hausa translation the name Allah for the God of the Bible is a great error! In fact Allah is a false god on a par with any other pagan deity.
Question:
“Is Allah, of the Muslim/Islam religion, the same God of the Bible?”
Are you spreading lies about Islam by denying this truth?
Answer:
Allah is not the God of the Bible is very clear. The biblical God is called Yahweh (or Jehovah) nearly 9,000 times. Yet Allah is not called by that name even once in the Koran. Why not, if Allah is the same God? God is also referred to as Elohim more than 2,500 times in the Bible, but again that word never appears for Allah in the Koran. Why? The God of the Bible is called “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob “Israel” (Jacob’s name was changed by God to Israel later in life, so he is referred to by either name). He is the father of the Jews.
The God of the Bible revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush by this name (“God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “Israel”) and told Moses,
“this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Exodus 3:1-16). If Allah is the God of the Bible, why is he never called by these names? The God of the Bible tells us again and again that He is the God of the Jews. Many times He is called “the God of Israel.” Yet there is such hatred for Israel among Mohammedans! The Koran talks about Abraham and Ishmael, it even claims they built the Kaaba, but gives Isaac no prominence. The Bible mentions Isaac favorably and prominently more than 150 times. God very clearly says that His covenant is with Isaac, not with Ishmael (Genesis 17:19-21), from whom the Arabs claim they are descended. The God of the Bible calls the Jews His chosen people. He loves them and gave the land of Israel to them as a heritage forever, as hundreds of verses in the Bible declare. Islam denies this basic biblical truth. The Jews are certainly not Allah’s chosen people! How can Allah be the God of the Bible, yet not choose the Jews?
In the Koran, Allah commands Muslims,
“Take not the Jews and Christians as friends” Surah 5:51,
So Allah is not the God of the Christians either.
In the hadith, Muhammad himself said,
“The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them”
(Mishkat al Masabih Sh. M. Ashraf, 1990, pp. 147, 721, 810-11, 1130, etc.).
Islam’s god hates the Jews; the God of the Bible loves them as His chosen people! Allah is very clearly not Jehovah, Elohim, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of the Bible!
The God of the Bible chose Jerusalem as His holy city. Forty times He calls Jerusalem “the city of David” and repeatedly He promises that the Messiah will be descended from David and will rule on David’s throne in Jerusalem over the whole world (2 Chronicles 6:6; 33:7; 2 Samuel 7: 16; Psalm 89:3-29, etc.).
Never does the Bible (or the God of the Bible) mention Mecca or Medina, but Jerusalem is mentioned more than 800 times. Yet Allah never mentions Jerusalem. How can this be if Allah is the God of the Bible? And how can the Muslims today claim Jerusalem as a holy city of Islam, when it isn’t even mentioned in the Koran? That recent claim comes from those who want to take that city from the Jews.
That Allah has no son is further proof that He is not the God of the Bible, who definitely has a Son, as both the Old and New Testaments declare. Psalms 2 says, “Kiss the Son.” Referring to the God of the Bible, Solomon says, “What is his son’s name…?” (Proverbs 30:4). The angel Gabriel, whom Islam claims to honor, told the virgin Mary (Islam accepts the virgin birth of Jesus),
“And, behold, thou shalt…bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be…called the Son of the Highest …the Son of God…and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David…” (Luke 1:31-35).
That throne is in Jerusalem, not in Mecca.
Mohammedans insist that the name “Allah” must be used in every language; it cannot be translated Dios in Spanish, Dieu in French, or God in English.
Muslims thus treat “Allah” not as a generic word for God, but as the name of a particular god. In fact, Allah was the god of the Quraish tribe centuries before Muhammad was born. Mohammedans deny that he was the chief god in the Kaaba, but they admit there were for centuries 360 idols in the Kaaba and one of these was called Allah.
What is Allah doing in a temple among 360 idols if he is the God of the Bible, who forbids idolatry?
Why does Mohammedanism keep this idol temple, and why must Mohammedans to this day make a pilgrimage there? That Allah was the chief idol in the Kaaba is documented history. Let me quote one of the greatest historians:
The desert Arab…feared and worshiped incalculable deities in stars and moons….Now and then he offered human sacrifice; and here and there he worshiped sacred stones. The center of this stone worship was Mecca (with) the Kaaba and its sacred Black Stone…in its southeast corner, five feet from the ground, just right for kissing.…
Within the Kaaba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing gods. One was called Allah…three others were Allah’s daughters, al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manah. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the mention of A1-il Lat (AI-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century B.C. Greek historian] as a major Arabian deity. The Quraish [Muhammad’s tribe controlling Mecca] paved the way for monotheism by worshiping Allah as chief god; He was presented to the Meccans as the Lord of their soil, to Whom they must pay a tithe of their crops and the first-born of their herds. The Quraish, as alleged descendants of Abraham and Ishmael, appointed the priests and guardians of the shrine and managed its revenues
(Will Durant, “The Story of Civilization,” IV: 160-61).
The Kaaba still stands, without its idols, but with the Black Stone. The pilgrimage to the Kaaba, to kiss the sacred stone, to run between Safa and Marwa, and to climb Mount Arafa, was practiced by pious pagan Arabs for centuries before Muhammad.
Why did Mohammed keep, as part of Mohammedanism, these pagan rituals?
Mohammedans say:
“Mohammedanism is the religion of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus…”
Do you think Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, et al. journeyed to the idol temple, the Kaaba, and kissed its Black Stone?
Impossible!
Not one follower of the God of the Bible would ever have gone near the Kaaba, because the God of the Bible forbids any association with idols; and Mohammedans admit (as history tells us) that the Kaaba was filled with idols before Mohammed destroyed them all. In history and the Bible, M ohammedans will find no mention of Mohammedanism or any religion like it. How could one have Mohammedanism without the Koran and Muhammad?
The only people who journeyed to the Kaaba and kissed the Black Stone were PAGAN Arabs who worshiped one or more of the idols within and around it. Mohammed started a new religion called Mohammedanism to which Arabs, Persians, Egyptians, Turks and everyone else in the region had to convert at the point of the sword. They became Mohammedans, and there is no way one can say that Mohammedanism was the original religion of that or any other region.
Mohammedans ask me to explain,
“The God of the Bible is love, an impossibility for Allah.”
If Allah is a single being, as Muslims insist, then he cannot be love in and of himself, because he had no one to love until he created others; but the God of the Bible is love in and of Himself because He is three Persons but One God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit loved and communed with one another before men or angels were created.
While the Jews know that Allah is not Jehovah, they try to say (as Muslims do for Allah) that Jehovah is a single being. If so, then why does the Bible refer to Him more than 2,500 times with the plural Elohim (gods)?
Interestingly, however, always with the plural noun there is a singular verb. One cannot escape the plurality combined with singularity repeatedly used.
The famous shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), the most fundamental saying about God for a Jew, declares,
“Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah.”
Far from declaring that the God of the Bible is a singular being, the Hebrew word translated “one” is echad, which means a unity of several becoming one, as when God said the man and woman became “one (echad) flesh” (Genesis 2:24); when many soldiers became “one (echad) troop” (2 Samuel 2:25) or when two sticks became “one (echad) stick” (Ezekiel 37:17) etc.
The Bible teaches that God’s very essence is love and says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). This is not true of Allah. The Bible repeatedly speaks of God’s love for man and the love we must have for Him. But love is scarcely mentioned in the Koran. Not once is “love” listed in the index of the popular Marmaduke Pickthall translation of the Koran.
Of Allah’s 99 attributes, love is not one.
The Koran does say that Allah loves “the beneficent” (Surah 2:195), “the stedfast (and) those whose deeds are good” (Surah 3:146-48), and “those who battle for his cause” (Surah 61:4).
But never does it say he loves all mankind, much less sinners; but the God of the Bible loves sinners, even those who hate Him. Allah is said to be merciful, but he does not show mercy to those who need it. The God of the Bible, however, is merciful to all, ready to forgive confessed sin.
The first of the Ten Commandments is that we are to love the God of the Bible with our whole heart; but never does the Koran say a Mohammedan is to love Allah. You cannot love Allah, because he is unknowable.
The God of the Bible can be known and repeatedly calls upon men to know Him; but the Koran says no one can know Allah because he is too great. In spite of being infinite, without beginning and end, and the Creator of the universe, the biblical God reveals himself so that men can know Him. Jesus himself said,
“This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
THIS SAHIH HADITH SHOULD READ:
SAHIH (Authentic) BUKHARI
Volume 5, Book 58, Number 169
Narrated by ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar
YHWH THE GOD OF ABRAHAM
Narrated Ibn ‘Umar:
Zaid bin ‘Amr bin Nufail went to Sham, inquiring about a true religion to follow. He met a Jewish religious scholar and asked him about their religion.
He said,
“I intend to embrace your religion, so tell me some thing about it.”
The Jew said,
“You will not embrace our religion unless you receive your share of YHWH’s Anger.”
Zaid said,
“I do not run except from YHWH’s Anger, and I will never bear a bit of it if I have the power to avoid it. Can you tell me of some other religion?”
He said,
“I do not know any other religion except the Hanif.”
Zaid enquired,
“What is Hanif?”
He said,
“Hanif is the religion of Abraham who was neither a Jew nor a Christian, and he used to worship None but YHWH.”
Then Zaid went out and met a Christian religious scholar and told him the same as before.
The Christian said,
“You will not embrace our religion unless you get a share of YHWH’s Curse.”
Zaid replied,
“I do not run except from YHWH’s Curse, and I will never bear any of YHWH’s Curse and His Anger if I have the power to avoid them. Will you tell me of some other religion?”
He replied,
“I do not know any other religion except Hanif.”
Zaid enquired,
“What is Hanif?”
He replied,
“Hanif is the religion of Abraham who was neither a Jew nor a Christian and he used to worship None but YHWH”
When Zaid heard their Statement about Abraham, he left that place, and when he came out, he raised both his hands and said,
“O YHWH! I make You my Witness that I am of the religion of Abraham.”
Narrated Asma bint Abi Bakr:
I saw Zaid bin Amr bin Nufail standing with his back against the Ka’ba and saying,
“O people of Quraish! By YHWH, none amongst you is of the religion of Abraham except me.”
He used to preserve the lives of little girls: If somebody wanted to kill his daughter he would say to him,
“Do not kill her for I will feed her on your behalf.”
So he would take her, and when she grew up nicely, he would say to her father,
“Now if you want her, I will give her to you, and if you wish, I will feed her on your behalf.”
1765 Protests “Jefferson is a Muslim”. Not true.
2008? Protests “Obama is a Muslim”. Not true.
One day it will be true.
Once again a great collection and commentaries. Jefferson’s possession of Quran and the framework of US Constitution should intrigue all students of law and religion as so many essentials of the Islam are carefully reflected in the US Constitution given the dark error in which it was first conceptualized that could not have been possible solely on the basis of Bible and with what prevailed in the then known world in terms of published literally work.
Only a very acute mind influenced by divine help and deeply conscientious inner spirit could and think and articulate freedom of speech, expression and tights of all that seem so distinctly and singularly expressed in islam both as its principles in the Quran and final sermon of the Holy Prophet of Islam that no modern intellectual can afford to ignore and be so articulate.