Loading ...The fascinating history of how Jefferson and other Founding Fathers defended Muslim rights
By Elahe Izadi
The Washington Post
Muslims are at the center of today’s roiling debate over religious freedom in the United States. But they’ve actually been a part of that heated conversation from the very beginning of the nation’s founding.
A number of the Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Muslims — along with other believers outside the prevailing Protestant mainstream — as they outlined the parameters of religious freedom and equal protection.
Muslims, referred to in those years as “Mahometans” or alluded to as “Turks,” likely lived in this country; an estimated 20 percent of enslaved Africans were Muslim. But much of the citizenry at the time didn’t acknowledge that Muslims existed in America, according to several historians.
So unlike Jews and Catholics, Muslims were discussed in the hypothetical — and often with negative opinions, including those held by Thomas Jefferson — to show “how far tolerance and equal civil rights extends,” said Denise Spellberg, author of “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders.”
“In the formation of the American ideal and principles of what we consider to be exceptional American values, Muslims were, at the beginning, the litmus test for whether the reach of American constitutional principles would include every believer, every kind, or not,” Spellberg said in an interview.
Thomas Jefferson’s defense of religious liberty
Jefferson authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and asked that it be one of just three accomplishments listed on his tombstone. The Virginia law became the foundation of the religious freedom protections later delineated in the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson’s tomb. (Library of Congress)
Virginia went from having a strong state-established church, which Virginians had to pay taxes to support, to protecting freedom of conscience and separating church and state. Jefferson specifically mentioned Muslims when describing the broad scope of protections he intended by his legislation, which was passed in 1786.
“What he wanted to do was get the state of Virginia out of the business of deciding which was the best religion, and who had to pay taxes to support it,” said Spellberg, a professor of history and Islamic studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
During the bill’s debate, some legislators wanted to insert the term “Jesus Christ,” which was rejected. Writing in 1821, Jefferson reflected that “singular proposition proved that [the bill’s] protection of opinion was meant to be universal.”
He continued:
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo [Hindu], and Infidel of every denomination.”
Jefferson’s opinions on religious liberty were heavily influenced by John Locke, as noted by James H. Hutson, writing in 2002 as chief of the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division:
In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”
James Madison, whose views on religious liberty aligned with Jefferson’s, helped usher the Virginia bill to final passage. In a document arguing against religious taxes that received thousands of signatures, Madison referenced foreign religious persecution — specifically the Inquisition.
He also argued that separation of church and state would actually promote Christianity, writing that an open society would be welcoming to those “remaining under the dominion of false Religions.” Establishing an official church, he wrote, “discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation.”
‘Clearly going out of their way’
It’s not as if Muslims were an overarching concern for early Americans, a Monticello scholar says.
“There just wasn’t a large Muslim presence” in the United States — at least not an acknowledged one, said Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.
Thomas Jefferson’s Koran. (Library of Congress)
“The real significance” was that Muslims were mentioned at all, O’Shaughnessy said, pointing to specific mentions of Muslims in “several petitions” — some written by Baptists — in favor of Jefferson’s religious freedom statute.
“It is very significant because they were clearly going out of their way to show just how broad and complete was the idea of religious freedom,” O’Shaughnessy said.
Indeed, it wasn’t just Jefferson and Madison who were discussing the bounds of religious freedom in the crucial Virginia debate, said historian John Ragosta, author of numerous books on Jefferson and religious freedom.
“Baptists and Presbyterians were really demanding religious freedom in the 18th century because they were dissenters from the established church,” Ragosta said. “And they were talking about Muslims and ‘infidels’ and Jews.”
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