Jefferson's Quran
What the founder really thought about Islam.
By Christopher Hitchens
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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?
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