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?
http://www.slate.com/id/2157314/