美國建國初期雖然在法律上有談到穆斯林，給予不同宗教信仰的自由與保障，但這段文章重點是放在為何「宗教自由」會是那個時期討論的焦點。
Thomas Jefferson, lithographed and
published by H. Robinson, N.Y., created between 1840 and 1851. (Library of
Congress)
This post has been updated
with President Obama's comments. The Fix originally wrote about Thomas
Jefferson and Muslims in December.
Muslims are at the center of a
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.
"Islam has always been a part of
America,"
President Obama said during his first
visit to a U.S. mosque Wednesday.
Indeed, 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.
"When enshrining the freedom of religion in our Constitution and our
Bill of Rights, our Founders meant what they said when they said it applied to
all religions," Obama said Wednesday at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. "Back then, Muslims were often called Mahometans, and
Thomas Jefferson explained that the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom that
he wrote was designed to protect all faiths — and I'm quoting Thomas Jefferson
now — 'the Jew and the gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan.'"
Muslims, who were also alluded to
in those years as "Turks," did live in this country at the time,
Obama said. 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 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.
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."
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.
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." (介紹當時「宗教自由的背景」)
Evangelicals had been subjected to
religious persecution not long before. Prior to the American Revolution, more
than half of Virginia's Baptist ministers were jailed for preaching, Ragosta
said. "These people knew what they were talking about."
Opponents of Jefferson's proposal
wrote letters to the Virginia Gazette, arguing that it would allow atheists,
Muslims and Jews to hold office — to which evangelicals responded, “that’s
right,” Ragosta said.
The Hanover Presbytery sent a series of
statements to the Virginia General Assembly during the debate
on Jefferson's statute. In one, supporting
freedom of religion and opposing a state-established religion,
they mentioned Muslims:
In this enlightened age, and in a
land where all of every denomination are united in the most strenuous efforts
to be free, we hope and expect that our representatives will cheerfully concur
in removing every species of religious as well as civil bondage.
Certain it is that every argument
for civil liberty gains additional strength when applied to liberty in the
concerns of religion, and there is no
argument in favor of establishing the Christian religion but what may be
pleaded with equal propriety for establishing the tenets of Mohammed by those
who believe the Al Koran.
Ragosta said that while people have
more recently argued that "separation of church and state and religious
freedom that applies to everybody is a 20th-century invention — no, it was
something that was being talked about and thought about” during the founding of
the United States.
A Muslim president?
At the time, Muslims were often
grouped together with others who were viewed negatively or were outside of the
religious mainstream, such as Catholics and
Jews, said Spellberg, the "Islam and the Founders" author. While a
Muslim citizen was theoretical, a Catholic one was not. And worries that a
Catholic president would hold an allegiance to a foreign pope persisted well
into the 20th century, during the campaign of John F. Kennedy.
Many early Americans supported
religious tests to guard against such a prospect. And once again,
Muslims were mentioned in debates over whether to ratify a constitution that explicitly
forbade such tests.
During North Carolina's 1788
constitution ratification debate, Muslims were mentioned five times, Jews seven
times and Catholics 10 times, according to
Spellberg. The connection between the presidency
and Islam was raised three times.
During the North Carolina debate,
anti-Federalist Henry Abbot argued that eliminating a religious test meant it
would be possible "that pagans and deists, and Mahometans might obtain
offices among us, and that the senators and representatives might all be
pagans," as noted in Spellberg's book.
Federalist James Iredell, dubbed
"the ablest defender of the Constitution," then mounted his
counter-argument — while also trying to convince skeptical delegates that it
was highly unlikely citizens would elect officials with beliefs so out of the
mainstream.
"It is to be objected that the
people of America may, perhaps, choose representatives who have no religion at
all, and that pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into offices," Iredell
said. "But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking
away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend
for?”
Eliminating religious tests was a
major source of contention in New England. Madison wrote to
Jefferson in 1788 that "one of the objections in New
England was that the Constitution by prohibiting religious tests opened a door
for Jews, Turks and infidels."
Jefferson on religion
Such defense of religious liberty
didn't leave Jefferson immune to criticism. He was eventually accused of being
an atheist and "infidel."
“Thomas Jefferson’s opponents tried
to stir things up by suggesting that he was a Muslim; so, I was not the
first," Obama said as the audience at the Islamic Society of Baltimore
laughed. "No, it’s true. Look it up. I’m in good company.”
Raised in the Anglican church,
Jefferson came to be associated with tenets of Unitarianism while remaining
reluctant to publicly speak about his personal beliefs.
He clearly favored
Christianity as one of the greatest blueprints for a moral code. At
one point, he asked a scientist friend to complete a comparative
study of the world's major religions "to extract the essence they had in
common," said O’Shaughnessy, the Monticello scholar.
"He saw Jesus as a great
social philosopher in setting out the greatest system of morals, but no doubt
he thought, if you integrated other faiths as well, you could even improve the
system," O’Shaughnessy said.
Jefferson rejected miracles, and
reason reigned supreme for him. In one
letter, he urged his nephew to "question with boldness even the existence
of god." (無神論者?)
In 1765, while he was studying law,
Jefferson purchased an English translation of the Koran. He later went on to criticize the religion as anti-science
and anti-reason.
Despite his personal opinions,
however, Jefferson staunchly defended the right of Americans to hold any
religious belief, no matter how absurd or wrong they seemed to him.
"The legitimate powers of
government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others," Jefferson wrote
in "Notes on the State of Virginia," his only book.
"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or
no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
This post was originally
published on Dec. 11, 2015.
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