The Twin Truths of a Muslim American

By: Dhuha Baig

No where, in the constitution does it mention Islam, Muslims, or Allah by name. To our knowledge, not a single Founding Father was a Muslim, and no constitutional framer spoke about the faith at any convention. One could go as far as to argue that the Muslim voice was not present, nor considered important, when the blueprints of this country were being drawn. With this news in mind, it could be very easy to recognize Islam and Muslims as a foreign concept to this nation, and without the proper historical analysis, it is very easy to dismiss the Muslim presence in America as insignificant.

The Muslim-American duality is not new. Our presence in these lands takes us back centuries, before immigration bans, before the coining of anti-Muslim sentiment, before the uncovering of the Islamophobia Network. 1 This duality is deeply intertwined with suffering, success, and revolution. It is present, and it demands to be understood and learned from. If we are to divulge in Muslim-American identity, we must do so by setting the context, recognizing and learning from the past, in order to live presently and justly.

Our history tells us that the first Muslims to walk the lands of America, and to engage with this nation, walked in chains. They were uprooted and forcibly stacked like cargo, shipped to the New World. Among their brothers and sisters of different faiths, they were forced to build the foundation of this country, brick-by-brick. Richard Brent Turner, scholar and author, explains that researchers disagree over the number of Muslim slaves that were brought to the America’s, and estimates range from 40,000 (in just the US) all the way to 3 million across North and South America and the Caribbean. 2 Large numbers of Moriscos, former Muslims of Spain and Portugal, also came to the Spanish colonies, many areas of which are the United States today. Although enslaved people were unjustly denied freedom of religion, many did practice their faith in secret and passed it on to their children. There are several autobiographies of Muslim slaves that survive

from this period, including some by individuals who were involved in the Abolitionist movement and were Union soldiers during the Civil War. 3

Historian Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, whose book, A History of Islam in America, is one of the most comprehensive on the subject, states, “Muslims in colonial and antebellum America came from a variety of ethnic, educational, and economic backgrounds. In America, their experiences varied depending on when, where, and how they were transported to these shores.” 4 This tells us that although the Muslim presence was inarguably there, the Ummah existed in diversity, a diversity completely ignored by the oppressors. The Muslims were grouped solely by color and were stripped of their humanity. Their tribes, families, languages, faiths were not bothered to be known.

Allah SWT says in the Qur’an: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.” (49:13)

Despite the realities of the environment we live in, we must not let the environment cause divisions within us. Our diversity is our strength, and while outside forces seek to divide us, we must not let them control our narratives. A Muslim American loves, respects, honors, and remains in servitude their community and community members, from all walks of life. This ayah discusses the Muslim Ummah unlike any other and highlights the importance of knowing one other: a knowing that deeply reflects, recognizes, and validates. We owe it to Americas first Muslims to know and share their stories.

Only after recognizing the Muslim presence can we begin the discourse of the Muslim in the American state. James H. Huston, the chief of the Manuscript Division of the U.S. Library of Congress, explains how the Founding Fathers explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic: “Freedom of religion, as they conceived it, encompassed it [Islam].” 5

Many people dismiss Islam as a new, foreign concept. Right-wing media pushes an agenda labeling Islam as a “political ideology” rather than a faith. While this has many legal ramifications, removing the context of Islam as a way of life makes it easier to box it as dangerous, problematic and a threat to democracy. However, at the very heart of our democratic nation, Thomas Jefferson, while campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, demanded “recognition of the religious rights of the ‘Mahamdan,’ the Jew and the ‘pagan.’” 6

In recent years, Jefferson has been popularized for owning a Qur’an. The 1734 English translation now sits in the Library of Congress and has been used for the official swearing in ceremony twice in history: the first time was in 2007 for Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim congress member in American history. The second time was for Representative Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian Muslim Representative member in American History.

“It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country,” Ellison told Associated Press, “…we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Qur’an.” 7

While this is somewhat true, there is still more to the story. Jefferson’s 1734 translation of the Qur’an was not produced out of a special love for Islam, but rather to further Christian missionary efforts in Muslim lands. 8 The translator, George Sale, wrote in his introduction to the reader:

“Whatever uses an impartial version of the Korân may be of in other respects, it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared, have entertained too favourable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture.” 9

You see, while the truth of Jefferson’s Qur’an offers a story of acceptance and tolerance, it also provides the first example of the duality of Muslims in America. These twin truths, as Yair Rosenburg, senior writer at Tablet Magazine coins, shows that on the one hand, the work’s existence shows Islam has been part of the American story from the beginning. On the other hand, as Sale’s translation reminds us, so has fear and misunderstanding of Muslims.

American Muslims can recall the feeling of witnessing the presidency of President Barack Obama during the time where a series of allegations accusing him of being a secret Muslim somehow disqualified him from legitimacy. These allegations, however, were not original. An antifederalist writer in 1788 fretted that without a religious test in the Constitution, “we may have a Papist, a Mohamatan, a Deist, yea an Atheist at the helm of the Government.” 10

As Speaker Pelosi swore in Representative Tlaib, as she swore in Ellison before her, the representatives placed their hands on the centuries old cover of Jefferson’s Qur’anic translation and took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” In 2019, Tlaib, dressed in her Palestinian clothes surrounded by the Muslim American community, made the conscious movement of interjecting the Muslim voice in the space that was never really welcoming or deemed fit for. We must remind ourselves that the existence of Jefferson’s Qur’an is not merely a positive, warm, welcoming of Islam, but an important symbol of Muslim American history. Recognizing our history will help shape who we are and where we identify in the future. It has become the case where Muslims-Americans have sided on two extremes. On one side, we are completely removed and consciously remove ourselves from the political and social landscape. We take positions that dismiss civic engagement as religiously unacceptable and instead take the position of sitting back and allowing the chaos to unfold. On the other side, we find ourselves over engaged, and subsequently letting go serious practices of our faith for people without our best interests in mind. As the Ummatul Wasatha, we must create a balance.

1 “Hijacked by Hate: American Philanthropy and the Islamophobia Network.” Islamophobia, http://www.islamophobia.org/reports/243-hijacked-by-hate-american-philanthropy-and-the-islamophobia-network.html. Accessed 20 Feb. 2020.

2 Hammer, Juliane, and Omid Safi. The Cambridge Companion to American Islam. Cambridge University Press, 2013

3 “American Muslims in the United States.” Teaching Tolerance, 11 Oct. 2012, https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/publications/what-is-the-truth-about-americanmuslims/american-muslims-in-the-united.

4 GhaneaBassiri, K. (2010). A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/ CBO9780511780493

5 Hutson, James. The Founding Fathers and Islam (May 2002) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020.

6 Ibid

7 “Congressman Uses Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an at Swearing in.” The Seattle Times, 4 Jan. 2007, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/congressman-uses-thomas-jeffersons-Qur’an-at-swearing-in/.

8 Ibid

9 Rosenberg, Yair. “Perspective | The Complicated History of Thomas Jefferson’s Koran.” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/02/ complicated-history-thomas-jeffersons-koran/. Accessed 23 Feb. 2020.

10 Ibid