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In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country.
Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done.
As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.
- Sales Rank: #46654 in Books
- Published on: 2014-07-01
- Released on: 2014-07-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l, .66 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
From Booklist
The English translation of the Qur’an that Thomas Jefferson purchased in 1765 made its most public appearance in 2007, when Minnesota congressman-electKeith 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
Review
“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
About the Author
Denise A. Spellberg is an associate professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses on Islamic civilization and Islam in Europe and America.
Most helpful customer reviews
127 of 142 people found the following review helpful.
Setting the Record Straight
By R Marie Jones Collins
I take issue with the previous reviewer, Shaun Kennedy, who has perpetrated erroneous charges against Spellberg's meticulous documentation, while perpetrating three factual errors of his own. If he had read the book, and there's little evidence he has, he would have seen that the pivotal quote Jefferson noted from John Locke may be found in Chapter 3, p.106, note 183. The reference is directly to the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, volume 1, p. 548. Second, to confirm that Jefferson considered Muslim civil rights, Spellberg includes an illustration of Jefferson's actual handwritten reference to Muslims from John Locke reproduced on p. 107. (The original is in the Library of Congress.) Third, Kennedy is wrong about the source of the quotation, which he says is from "The Second Treatise" instead of Spellberg's correct identification of the quotation from Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Spellberg's analysis of why these eighteenth-century precedents about Muslims as future citizens now matter is compelling, based on real founding precedents.
76 of 90 people found the following review helpful.
Surprising, Fascinating and Detailed
By John C. Snider
This book might also be called "The Enlightenment, America and Islam." It's a detailed exploration of how the West viewed Islam during the Enlightenment era, culminating in the Founders' views on religious liberty. While Islam remained a distant, poorly understood belief system to the Founding Fathers, they nonetheless defended rights of conscience to include such (to them) outrageously fringe belief systems as Islam. Jefferson and Adams would be disgusted by the willful ignorance and blithe bigotry of present-day politicians and talking heads, many of whom have made shockingly offensive statements denying that Muslims should enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of us (and by that, of course, they mean "Christians"). Too bad this book wasn't around when Keith Ellison was taking the oath of office on Jefferson's personal copy of the Qur'an.
51 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
America and the Muslims
By Rob Hardy
We are still trying to figure out the place of Islam and of Muslims in America. We shouldn’t be going through this; the Founding Fathers considered the rules for Muslims to participate in the new government. They did so even though the Muslims they were considering were hypothetical, since there was little visible Muslim presence in the new nation. The enlightening _Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders_ (Knopf) by historian Denise A. Spellberg shows how Jefferson and his fellows worked out how the nation would solve the knotty problems of religious toleration. It also shows that the admirable solution is still being imperfectly applied.
Jefferson and the founders knew about Islam but they didn’t know Muslims. This was partly due to uncaring blindness; many of the slaves brought from Africa were of course Muslims, but this would have made little impression on the founders. What they knew about Muslims was that they were vastly different. Many Americans, if they thought of the issue at all, suspected that Muslims were dangerous threats to America and to the Christian religion. This enabled those championing religious toleration in the new nation, like Jefferson, Madison, and Washington, to use Muslims as a bogey, a worst-case scenario, and to show that even then, there ought to be no restrictions on either their ability to practice their religion or to participate fully as citizens. Given the historic introduction Spellberg gives, Jefferson’s views were breathtakingly radical. Jefferson himself, like many of the founders, was a deist, one who saw God at work at the inception of the universe but who denied the role of miracles, and the divinity of Jesus, within it. He drew inspiration from the Bible and knew it well, but he proposed that the government had no role in the religious salvation of its citizens which he knew to be an inherently personal matter of conscience. During the ratification controversy over the US Constitution, even before the Bill of Rights was passed, the main document held a ban on any religious tests for holding federal office. The opponents against this provision fulminated that if it were included, “a Jew, Turk, or infidel” might become president. Though Spellberg’s book is mostly about acceptance of practitioners of Islam, Jefferson and the other legislators of the time were thinking also of these other religions, and about Catholics. Both those in favor of equality and inclusion and those in favor of maintaining mainstream Protestants as the only potential officeholders used Muslims as the chief example or counter-example.
Spellberg winds up her illuminating book to show that Jefferson’s enlightened view that anyone’s religious opinions should have no effect on citizenship or service has yet to be accepted by all our citizens. Jefferson, with his unorthodox religious ideas, was derided as being a Muslim himself during a vicious political campaign. President Obama has also been accused of being a Muslim (although it must be said that the accusations come from the same quarters that refuse to accept his birth certificate). The right reply to such accusations is simply, “So what?” The president, thanks to the constitutional debates over two hundred years ago, can take any religion he wants. Sarah Palin promoting her recent book denouncing the delusional “war on Christmas” says that only moral, religious people can understand or abide by the Constitution, ignoring that it is specifically written without religious qualifiers. When Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, was sworn in in 2007, he did so with his hand on the very Qur’an from Jefferson’s library, which made some Christians furious. There is a requirement that there be an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, but anyone can lay a hand on any book desired while taking that oath. One columnist wrote that if you can’t take an oath on a Bible, you should not serve in Congress; other citizens phoned or e-mailed death threats. It is improbable that such people will read Spellberg’s history, but it is fun to imagine them doing so and admitting: America has no official religion, no religious requirement for its citizens, and none for its officials. Here is the amazing story of how that came to be.
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