Whenever there is the swearing-in of a Muslim on Jefferson’s Qur’an, or whenever there is an Iftar Dinner held at the White House, Denise Spellberg uses the occasion to trot out the same article she’s been republishing for the last five years, as here or here, the one entitled “Jefferson’s Quran” or “Jefferson’s Iftar Dinner,” or “Why Jefferson’s Vision Of American Islam Matters Today.” She is dutifully interviewed on television, where she claims that the fact that Jefferson once bought a Qur’an shows that “Islam has been part of American history for a long time.” No one thinks to ask her: If Jefferson had bought a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, would that show that Hinduism had always been “part of America’s story”?
Here’s the latest iteration by Spellberg of the same article, with only a handful of words changed to connect it to what’s currently in the news at the time of writing — from Keith Ellison’s swearing-in to President Trump’s failure to hold an Iftar Dinner in 2017, to Rashida Tlaib’s recent swearing-in, like Keith Ellison’s before her, that was announced to be on Jefferson’s Qur’an, but turned out to on her own copy.
Muslims arrived in North America as early as the 17th century, eventually composing 15 to 30 percent of the enslaved West African population of British America. (Muslims from the Middle East did not begin to immigrate here as free citizens until the late 19th century.) Even key American Founding Fathers demonstrated a marked interest in the faith and its practitioners, most notably Thomas Jefferson.
This claim that 15-30 percent of slaves in America were Muslims, a claim now so often repeated that it has become unquestioned “common knowledge,” defies belief. How is it that the slave owners themselves failed to notice all these Muslims among their slaves? And why did the other, non-Muslim slaves, not report to their masters on the existence of these Muslims? Why did this subject come up only in the last few decades, coinciding with the attempts to claim that “Muslims have always been part of America’s story”? This does not mean there were no Muslim slaves; we do have records of about 10-20 slaves who appear to have been Muslims. But to leap from this number — one one-thousandth of 1% of the total number of slaves — to the claim that “15-30%”of the slaves were Muslim” — is absurd.
“Even key American Founding Fathers demonstrated a marked interest in the faith and its practitioners,” she claims. No, they did not. Neither Washington, nor John Adams, nor Madison, nor Alexander Hamilton, nor John Jay, nor Benjamin Franklin. And what little they did write about Islam was always negative. As for John Adams, his owning a Qur’an did not signify an endorsement of Islam. On July 16, 1814, in a letter to Jefferson, John Adams described the Muslim prophet Muhammad as one of those (he listed others as well) who could rightly be considered a “military fanatic,” one who “denies that laws were made for him; he arrogates everything to himself by force of arms.” Adams is nowhere on record as praising any aspect of Islam, nor even “advocating” its toleration. The only president who ever exhibited a “marked interest” in Islam, the only one known to have actually read the Qur’an, was John Quincy Adams, the son of a Founding Father and the most learned of our presidents. J. Q. Adams did study Islam, and wrote about it at great and horrified length. He grasped its essence perfectly:
The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.
Spellberg describes Jefferson as “advocating for the rights of the practitioners of the [Muslim] faith.” This implies special pleading on his part for Islam. What Jefferson actually did was “advocate” for the principle of religious freedom in general, and famously quoted a line from John Locke’s 1698 A Letter Concerning Religious Toleration: “neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” What Spellberg does not mention is that Locke himself, from whose writings Jefferson derived his own views on religious toleration, later exempted from such toleration those believers who exhibited certain unacceptable features. He expressly excluded, according to his own criteria, four kinds of believers. First, those whose religious opinions are contrary to “those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society”; second, believers in a religion that “teaches expressly and openly, that men are not obliged to keep their promise”; third, those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion…and that they only ask leave to be tolerated by the magistrate so long, until they find themselves strong enough to [seize the government]”; fourth, “all those who see themselves as having allegiance to another civil authority.” Specifically, Locke gives the example of the Muslim who lives among Christians and would have difficulty submitting to the government of a “Christian nation” when he comes from a Muslim country where the civil magistrate was also the religious authority. Locke notes that such a person would have serious difficulty serving as a soldier in his adopted nation (cf. the 2009 Fort Hood shooting spree by Nidal Hassan,who shouted “Allahu akbar” as he opened fire, killing 13 and wounding 32).
Islam meets not just one, but all four of Locke’s criteria for being exempt from “toleration.” Did Jefferson see Locke’s list of criteria for exempting a faith from toleration? We don’t know. But his attitude toward Islam, whatever he thought about tolerating it, remained consistently negative. Contrary to the impression Spellberg hopes to give, by sleight of word, Jefferson never found anything good to say about Islam.
Jefferson’s first encounter with real Muslims came when he, along with John Adams, met with the Tripolitanian envoy Sidi Haji Abdrahaman in London in 1786. They asked the envoy “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury” to deserve being attacked, and the ambassador replied, as Jefferson reported:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.
And later, Jefferson reported to Secretary of State John Jay and to Congress at greater length:
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.
These reports did not come from someone who thought well of Islam. The more dealings Jefferson had with the representatives of the Barbary states, the more he grasped the aggressive nature of Islam, as first set out to him by that Tripolitanian envoy: the centrality of Jihad (even if Jefferson did not use that word), holy war waged as by right against non-Muslims, the inculcation of permanent hostility toward non-Muslims, and the heavenly reward for Muslims slain in battle against the Infidels.
Stacy Girl says
If this were Jeopardy, I’d take Colonial Sharia for $500: Were the prostitutes demanded by President Jefferson’s moslem guests allowed at this dinner?
BC says
With autocratic leaders from Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, etc. who committed genocide there is no question that Mohammad should be on the list
Emilie Green says
TJ bought a Qur’an to learn the thinking behind one of America’s enemies (the Muslim ship pirates operating in the Mediterranean). He was following the wisdom of military leaders throughout the ages: know your enemy.
vlparker says
A concept that today’s American generals don’t bother with.
Rarely says
Neither do the presidents. e.g. Dubya’s “slight” miscalculation vis-a-vie Iraq.
Mirren10 says
Another enabler of the jihad. Blech.
She loves sharia too, tried to get that book ”The Jewel of Medina” withdrawn on the grounds it would enrage mohammedans. Why not just recite the shehada, and don a hijab ? Or maybe she has, in secret !
gravenimage says
Thanks for mentioning that.
The irony was that the “Jewel of Medina” was itself Islamophilic. But trying to crush freedom of speech for Islam is even worse.
eduardo odraude says
Great article by Hugh Fitzgerald. I had not seen the passages from Locke before. Especially liked the quote I had not seen from John Adams:
eduardo odraude says
For saying that publicly just about anywhere in the Islamic world today, our great John Adams would have been killed or imprisoned till he recanted. Wake up, Americans! Islam is a knife pointed at the heart of who we are! Yes, there are nominal Muslims who don’t know or don’t care about what Muhammad and the core texts of Islam teach. Those Muslims are innocent of Islam, though perhaps negligent in remaining associated with it. But the Muslim leadership knows well and supports Muhammad’s totalitarian teachings and ambitions.
Been There Got the Tee Shirt says
She is doing us a public service but she’s too dumb to realize it. The one good thing about Dumbass…err Denise Spellberg spouting off with her illogic; there are great new (to me and others) historical quotes that are printed here to refute her mythical stories. These are historical facts that we all can learn from.
When our leaders were preparing for war with the Barbary pirates, I would certainly expect them to understand the enemy’s motivations,and yes, they did. Islam was not unknown in 1800, and our leaders were able to perceive the obvious and take corrective action.
If only our leaders in the last couple of decades had the same wisdom as TJ we would not have the mess in our world today.
dan christensen says
” Islam meets not just one, but all four of Locke’s criteria for being exempt from “toleration.” ” From 1698.
Many politicians have passed an academic degree in political science. Thus they ought to be familiar with John Locke and his works.
This Scotsman wrote down all the politicians need to know today about islam as a religion/political system. These politicians cannot claim ignorance when they allowed a totalitarian criminal system, disguised as a religion, to coexist in a modern society with decent law abiding religions.
No wonder that ordinary voters detest politicians in general as lower species – the politicians will sell their own country for a fat chair anywhere.
Wellington says
There is zero chance Thomas Jefferson would have been in any way positive about Islam. He did not believe in miracles and revelation and said so quite clearly in letters to close associates like Dr. Benjamin Rush and (in his old age) John Adams. He composed what is known as the Jefferson Bible, whereby he took out all references in the Gospels to Jesus’s divinity and any miracles alleged to have been performed by Jesus (Jefferson’s ancient Greek was superb and he made direct translations from the Greek New Testament in to English) because he was convinced such “elements” were later additions after Jesus’s death. Jefferson greatly admired Jesus’s ethical teachings but left it at that. He did believe in a Higher Power, he was no atheist, but neither was he conventionally religious in any way. Like so many Founding Fathers of America his approach to God was philosophical and not religious, though he understood the importance of religion in society at large.
Even more important, the Sage from Monticello detested religious intolerance and Islam has had its intolerance manifested over the centuries not only in action but also in its own theological blueprint. Hate exists all around in Islam and the Koran alone demonstrates this overwhelmingly, never mind the hadiths and sira and what the major schools of Islamic theology, Sunni or Shiite, assert. Also, the striking differences between Jesus and Mohammed would have left no room for Jefferson to admire Mohammed whatsoever.
There is simply no way that a man like Thomas Jefferson who despised, utterly despised, religious intolerance and was extremely proud of his authoring the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), which stressed both freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state (both inimical to Islam), could have ever admired Islam which is an enemy of liberty and demands there be no separation of church and state.
Put simply, anyone averring that Thomas Jefferson would have been in any way an admirer of Islam (or Mohammed) simply doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Everything that made up this man would have led him to despise Islam and Mohammed through and through.
eduardo odraude says
Yes. Only someone who could not really give a fig about Jefferson could write the tripe that Spellberg writes about him. She is using Jefferson to advance her own fashionable, conformist, pc, foolish agenda.
Wellington says
Agreed, eduardo. Moreover, so what if Jefferson had a copy of the Koran in his library? I have a copy of the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf (both in English translation) in my library—and I detest both Marxism and Nazism.
Kepha says
Very true. We’ve seen in Ms. Spellberg’s spiel the appalling ignorance of America’s chattering classes. I have some of Marx’s writings in my personal library, as well as the Qur’an in English, and some Buddhist sutras, but I adhere to neither Marxism, Islam, nor Buddhism. Indeed, I count Marxism and Buddhism among the worst religions for producing the willfully ignorant, misleaders, and out-and-out liars. I own portions of the Soncino edition of the Talmud, but I am not a Rabbinical Jew. I own some of Rousseau’s work, but I strongly disagree with his assessment of human nature. Perhaps Ms. Spellberg belongs to one of those miserable secular sects which reads only that with which it is in complete agreement, and assumes everyone else must be equally provincial.
As a Christian, I cannot agree with Jefferson’s theology. But as a historian, I readily recognize in TJ a curious, questing mind. If, among the books in Jefferson’s personal library, someone found he owned a Jesuit Latin translation of the Chinese Classics, it would not be surprising, but at the same time, it was prove TJ neither a Jesuit nor a Confucian.
Further, the assertion that a large portion of the African slaves brought over here were Muslim is a monument to the notions of the Silly ‘Sixties. If Malcolm X said so, it must be true. Hmmmph. Certainly there was a Muslim presence. One Mohammed Yerrow, a freedman who bought and sold Georgetown/Washington real estate and got painted by one of the Peales, was a practicing Muslim who had to be buried in his own garden when he died because he refused to be buried with Kufr (and his descendants are Baptists and Methodists). Certainly there were at least “folk Muslims” among some Mandingo and other sold over this way. But, in those pre-1808 days. most coastal peoples between today’s Liberia and Angola–the peoples and regions from whence most victims of the translatlantic slave trade came– were non-Muslims.
It was a pleasure to read both Wellington’s and Eduardo’s comments.
Wellington says
It was equally a pleasure to read what you wrote, Kepha. It invariably is a pleasure to read whatever you convey.
I found particularly interesting your negative take on Buddhism. Surely, the world would be better off if every Muslim woke up tomorrow a devout Buddhist, no? My major reservation about all Eastern religions is that they’re too collectivist, not emphasizing the importance and dignity of the individual as much as Christianity and Judaism do (and the implications here for liberty, democracy, original thinking, et al. are enormous). And while I have many reservations about Nietzsche (e.g., he admired Islam), I do recall his rather amusing and scathing critique of Buddhism, which perhaps you are familiar with, to wit, that it is a religion of weariness.
Finally, I would just like to state that no Founding Father of America was an atheist (unless one considers Thomas Paine a Founding Father which I and most do not), though many were not conventional Christians (though many were). All believed in a Supreme Being and all recognized the importance of religion in the life of the new American Republic. And you find references to God/religion/Jesus in many early American documents, including Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, the 1787 Northwest Ordinance and, contrary to much opinion, even in the Constitution of the United States of America where in Article VII it states “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven….” I think it is pretty clear to all but the most obtuse who is meant by “Our Lord.” Imagine if statutes presently passed by Congress had the words “Our Lord” in them. Many would raise holy hell about this but I for one would not and think it absurd when anyone denies the Judeo-Christian element being a major factor in the founding of America. Interesting and instructive how so many people opposed to religion in public life or to religion in general make a religion out of not having one. Of course, the irony of this is always lost on such folks,
Hope you and yours are doing well, Take care, Kepha.
gravenimage says
Good exchange, Wellington and Eduardo.
gravenimage says
And Kepha.
PRCS says
“Islam has been part of American history for a long time.
That’s true.
As a foe, since at least the early 19th century.
eduardo odraude says
Quite a lot of people in the West don’t care enough about basic human rights and freedoms to be vigilant about the gravest threats to those rights. Such people are entirely focused on petty political pet peeves within the US and in their provinciality of imagination do not even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in states without the basic rights they take for granted. The same thing happened with Soviet communism. Many Americans simply could not imagine it and thought “how could it be that bad? If it was so bad, the Russian people would change the government. Only intellectuals care about the lack of freedom of speech.” Those Americans were simply too incapable of thinking concretely and consequentially to understand that the relative lack of apparent resistance to the Soviets was due to the fact that it was a police state with pervasive surveillance that immediately jailed or killed anyone who dared to criticize it. Half the American population today takes the same attitude to the Islamic world. Because of a narcissistic or provincialized imagination or lack of imagination, the Americans in question will only recognize what Islam is when they find themselves living under it. The same provincial modern mentality is behind the fact that Europe has taken so long and is only now beginning to wake up politically to what it has been importing for decades.
WPM says
The United States Marine Corps were formed because of the Islamic threat to our sailors being enslaved. The term “leather Necks” was because the early Marine wore leather collars to protect them from beheading by Moslems. The colt semi-auto 45 cal. “1911” pistol was made to put down Moslem Jihadist in the Philippines quickly before they could knife Marines there. Early Americans knew the threat to Americans by Moslem Jihadist we would do well to remember real heroes and defenders of early America. No the fake history peddled by Islamic loving libtards who deep down hate America and western civilizations as a whole..
rubiconcrest says
Thanks Hugh for exposing how Denise Spellberg shills for Islam. I had not read John Locke on the topic and found it very interesting. He could read and think for himself and saw clearly the dangers the Islamic ideology could pose to civil society.
Michael Copeland says
“Islam has been part of American history for a long time”, says Denise Spellberg.
In fact, Islam was (unwittingly) part of America’s history before America was discovered by Europeans. Columbus was sponsored to seek a Westerly trade route to the East because of the endless depredations by muslim pirates and highwaymen upon the merchant ships and caravans in the Mediterranean and east.
gravenimage says
+1
gravenimage says
Hugh Fitzgerald: Denise Spellberg on Jefferson’s “Marked Interest” In Islam (Part One)
………………….
Thomas Jefferson had a “marked interest” in Islam the way that Winston Churchill had a “marked interest” in Fascism…
Kepha says
One point about a long Islamic presence in America: Records of Dutch Nieuw Amsterdam show that an Egyptian trader named Noureddine was killed by Indians who thought he’d swindled them back in the 1600’s. A form of the name Nur-ud-din indicates the guy was a Muslim rather than a Copt or a Jew.
PRCS says
Interesting.
LytchZam says
Swearing in on Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an is like they’re just spikin’ the ball after a victory. The mosque on the Temple Mount, the Hagia Sofia, @GroundZero. and on and on.
DiploNerd says
With each jihad attack, more and more of us kuffar are developing a “marked interest” in Islam. Robert Spencer, David Wood, Pamela Geller, Bill Warner, and all of us readers and viewers of their work. Why do we have this “marked interest”? Is it because we’re all a bunch of wannabe Muslims? Apparently Jefferson’s establishment of the U.S. Marine Corps to take out the Barbary pirates was because he was a wannabe Muslim, too. Just like the polytheists used to say about Muhammad, this lady is “all ears” — that is, she’ll believe anything she hears.
Philip Wynne says
On or about April 10, 2014, Dr. Denise Spellberg, associate professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, while at the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Atlanta, Georgia, gave an interview to C-SPAN in which she stated that Jews and Christians “have a revealed faith according to Islamic tradition…whose faith is acceptable and protected under Islamic law. I think that that precedent for early toleration is important.”
What she’s referring to is the “toleration” that comes with a slave-like existence called “dhimmitude” whereby Jews and Christians (and possibly Zoroastrians also), as opposed to other non-Muslims, whom the Quran allows Muslims to slaughter immediately, can live among their Muslim oppressors without fear of being murdered as long as they pay a tax called the jizya and agree to a number of other restrictions such as the inability to hire or work for non-Muslims and the inability to repair their houses of worship or construct new ones.
THAT is what Dr. Spellberg so exaltingly claims is Islam’s “toleration,” as if that warped version of “toleration” were somehow laudatory or worthy of respect or admiration. That would be like a claim that some Southern slavemasters were “tolerant” for not raping or murdering their slaves on a whim as long as they accepted their proper role as slaves and went about their field work with a good attitude.