Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an

September 23, 2013
Spellberg, a professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas, Austin, presents for the reader a comprehensive survey of attitudes toward Islam in Europe and America in the 17th and 18th centuries, detailing Thomas Jefferson's vision of a religiously pluralist society and his positive answer to the question of whether a Muslim could be a full citizen of the new United States. The book's focus is often undecided, though, as it wanders away from Jefferson to explore prominent early political figures such as John Adams and John Leland, and even the question of Islam among African-American slaves; it doesn't provide enough in-depth material on other founders to fully justify the subtitle or turn the main spotlight from Jefferson himself. In its stronger moments, the book explores some fascinating topics relevant to the modern political landscape, such as the First Barbary War, and accusations by Jefferson's political opponents that he was a secret Muslim, and makes a convincing case that Muslims have always served as the Other in American discourse. In its weaker moments, however, its dry tone and dense lists of facts, often without full context or analysis, will make it more appealing to academics with a specialty in the subject than to the lay reader.

August 15, 2013
The intriguing story of Thomas Jefferson and his reading of the holy book of Islam. Spellberg (History and Middle Eastern Studies/Univ. of Texas; Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of Aisha bint Abi Bakr, 1994, etc.) is straightforward about Jefferson's numerous contradictions of thought throughout his political career. On one hand, the cosmopolitan bibliophile purchased George Sale's translation of the Quran more than a decade before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, examining it carefully as he formulated his thoughts on religious freedom in the new nation. On the other hand, Jefferson "remained rather tenaciously a man of his times," carrying the biases of his day about Muslims (and slaves). In this fascinating and timely study, Spellberg exposes the early American views about Muslims. While the early Americans inherited many biases from Europe, others intimately acquainted with religious persecution, like Roger Williams, embraced a view of "liberty of conscience" that logically had to tolerate the views of all religions--Jews, Catholics and Muslims alike. Jefferson, whose great Enlightenment hero was John Locke, drew on Locke's seminal A Letter Concerning Toleration as he refined his ideas about toleration for non-Anglican Protestants in the Virginia Commonwealth. Judiciously, he urged for religious toleration of dissenters to keep them from fomenting "seditious conspiracies." Spellberg reveals Jefferson's tortuous thought processes regarding religious freedom, as he could not envision how the "universal" legislation regarding liberty of conscience could extend to the West African slaves, who happened to be the only Muslims in America at the time. The victim of a presidential smear campaign, Jefferson recognized personally the danger in hurtful rhetoric about the "infidel." Meticulous research and a well-structured text combine in this important study of the early American political leaders and their convictions regarding religious and social tolerance.

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September 15, 2013
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 thoughtit is not clear how much of the two-volume work he read or what he learned from itbut 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)