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The Founding Fathers Weren't Anti-Islam
The Founding Fathers were not nearly as anti-Muslim as many current American Christians.
As Ted Widmer writes at Boston.com:
The
Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a
country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the
fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence
that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They
knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is
not alien to American history — but inside it.No book states
the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the
citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known
as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Koran, from the personal collection of
John Adams. There is nothing particularly ornate about this humble
book, one of a collection of 2,400 that belonged to the second
president. But it tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly
the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up
like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like
we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment,
dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing
empires. Yet better than we, they saw the world as it is, and refused
the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply
pretend they didn’t exist.Reports of Korans in American
libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of
Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its
foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first
Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in
1806.Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the
Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Koran in 1806?
Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in
the Islamic scripture. The legendary bluenose Cotton Mather had his
faults, but a lack of curiosity about the world was not one of them.
Mather paid scrupulous attention to the Ottoman Empire in his voracious
reading, and cited the Koran often in passing. True, much of it was in
his pinched voice — as far back as the 17th century, New England
sailors were being kidnapped by North African pirates, a source of
never ending vexation, and Mather denounced the pirates as “Mahometan
Turks, and Moors and Devils.” But he admired Arab and Ottoman learning,
and when Turks in Constantinople and Smyrna succeeded in inoculating
patients against smallpox, he led a public campaign to do the same in
Boston (a campaign for which he was much vilified by those who called
inoculation the “work of the Devil,” merely because of its Islamic
origin). It was one of his finer moments.This theory was
eloquently expressed around the time the Constitution was written. One
of its models was the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which John Adams
had helped to create, and which, in the words of one of its drafters,
Theophilus Parsons, was designed to ensure “the most ample of liberty
of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”As
the Founders deliberated over what types of people would ultimately
populate the strange new country they were creating, they cited Muslims
as an extreme of foreign-ness whom it would be important to protect in
the future. Perhaps, they daydreamed, a Muslim or a Catholic might
even be president someday? Like everything, they debated it. Some
disapproved, but Richard Henry Lee insisted that “true freedom embraces
the Mahometan and Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.”
George Washington went out of his way to praise Muslims on several
occasions, and suggested that he would welcome them at Mount Vernon if
they were willing to work. Benjamin Franklin argued that Muslims should
be able to preach to Christians if we insisted on the right to preach
to them. Near the end of his life, he impersonated a Muslim essayist,
to mock American hypocrisy over slavery.Thomas Jefferson,
especially, had a familiarity with Islam that borders on the
astonishing. Like Adams, he owned a Koran, a 1764 English edition that
he bought while studying law as a young man in Williamsburg, Va. Only
two years ago, that Koran became the center of a controversy, when the
first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, a Democrat from
Minnesota, asked if he could place his hand on it while taking his oath
of office — a request that elicited tremendous screeches from the talk
radio extremists. Jefferson even tried to learn Arabic, and wrote his
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to protect “the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of
every denomination.”Jefferson and Adams led many of our early
negotiations with the Islamic powers as the United States lurched into
existence. A favorable treaty was signed with Morocco, simply because
the Moroccans considered the Americans ahl-al-kitab, or “people of the
book,” similar to Muslims, who likewise eschewed the idolatry of
Europe’s ornate state religions.
What are Muslims Like?
Some Muslims really are terrorists.
Some Christians are as well.
In
truth, the percentage of Muslim and Christian terrorists is very small
compared to the huge numbers of adherents of those faiths.
Just
like Christians range from abortion doctor killers to mystics, Muslims
range from jihadis to poets like Rumi (Sufism - the mystical branch of
Islam - is peaceful and contemplative).
As prominent Christian writer, psychiatrist and former army doctor M. Scott Peck wrote, all humans - no matter what religion might be dominant in their culture - go through 4 stages of development:
1st: Chaos (a heroin addict, for example, who robs to support his habit)
2nd:
Fundamentalism (clinging to dogma in order to fight off chaos;
believing the book - whether Bible, Koran or Bhagavad Gita - is THE
truth, and anyone who disagrees is evil)
3rd: Skepticism and questioning (feeling stable enough to question the dogma of the dominant religion and other institutions)
4th:
Maturity (keeping the skepticism and questioning, but also being open
to life's beauty, love and mystery; using both one's head and heart;
being passionate and dedicated to making the world a better place)
(These
4 steps are not necessarily the full and complete truth, but they
present one possible description which is useful for starting a
discussion on religion).
Ignore the clothes, the skin color and the accent, and what do we see?
A drug addict in Saudi Arabia, America or Israel will look fairly similar. Fundamentalist
Christians, Muslims and Jews all think the other guy is evil, and that
God wants them to wipe the other guy out. Skeptics look the same
everywhere. And people who integrate their head and their heart all are
operating out of the same basic dynamic.
We Helped Radicalize Islam
Moreover - in order to know our history and perhaps become a tad more humble in the process - it is important to recognize that we helped to create "radical Islam".
President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has openly admitted that he created the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And it continued under President Reagan (here's a picture of President Reagan meeting with some of these folks).
As the Council on Foreign Relations writes:
The 9/11 Commission report (PDF)
released in 2004 said some of Pakistan's religious schools or
madrassas served as "incubators for violent extremism." Since then,
there has been much debate over madrassas and their connection to
militancy.
***
It was Pakistan's leading
role in the anti-Soviet campaign in neighboring Afghanistan during
this time that radicalized some of these madrassas. New madrassas
sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, where students were encouraged to join the Afghan resistance.
And see this.
And veteran journalist Robert Dreyfuss writes:
For
half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I
call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
***
Today
it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But ... in
the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among
Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for
two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and
because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel
Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.In the 1950s, the United
States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed
many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains.
But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards
who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the
USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s,
rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the
Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in
league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi
Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the
United States has ever made in the Middle East.A second big
mistake ... occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War
and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States
either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in
countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the
Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel,
and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against
Syria. And ... Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim
Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of
Hamas.Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam
would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to
America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But ... America’s
alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan
in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned
civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban,
and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.Would the
Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not
a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the
virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many
of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and
beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made
other choices during the Cold War.
And the chief of the visa section at the U.S.
consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (J. Michael Springmann, who is now
an attorney in private practice) says
that the CIA insisted that visas be issued to Afghanis so they could
travel to the U.S. to be trained in terrorism in the United States, and
then sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
In other words,
if the U.S. and our allies hadn't backed the radical violent Muslims
instead of more stable, peaceful groups in the Middle East, radical
Islam wouldn't have grown so large.
Stopping the Bad Guys
That's
not to say that we don't need to stop the handful of Muslim terrorists
that are threatening the U.S. (to give you an idea of numbers, there
may be less than 50 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan according to the CIA itself).
But war is not the way to protect America, and defeating Islam is the way to safety. And see this.
Specifically, according to top security analysts, the global war on terror is weakening, rather than strengthening, our national security, and making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks:
For
those who still think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are
necessary to fight terrorism, remember that a leading advisor to the
U.S. military - the very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation -
released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".
The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security.
As a press release about the study states:
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.
(And no ... 9/11 did not "change everything".)
Beware of False Prophets
The neoconservatives who launched the wars in the Middle East may not even be people of faith themselves.
As I noted last year:
The godfather of the Neoconservative movement - Leo Strauss - taught
that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve
the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not
believe in religion.As I have previously written:
Leo
Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including
many leaders of the current administration. Indeed, some of the main
neocon players were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago,
where he taught for many years. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli.Strauss believed that "A
political order can be stable only if it is united by an external
threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external
threat exists then one has to be manufactured" (quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).Therefore, it is unknown whether the [Neocons] who [launched the wars in the Middle East] actually believed that the brown-skinned people they wished to [destroy] were Satan-worshippers who needed either to be converted or destroyed.
More
likely, they just followed the old Straussian playbook in creating a
threat which didn't exist - Satanic Muslims who wanted to take over
the world - and using religion to rally the mid- and lower-level
participants in the ... program to carry out their orders.
Atheists Versus People of Faith
I want to address one more divisive issue related to religion, which I think disempowers those of us working for a better world.
Many
atheists believe that all religious people are pedophiles, idiots,
crackpots or charlatans, and many people of faith think that all
atheists are selfish, rootless, valueless and crude.
But let's look at the facts.
Initially, about two-thirds of American scientists believe in God if you count the social sciences. About 40%
of physical scientists believe in God, and that number has stayed
constant for almost 100 years. So atheists shouldn't assume that all
people of faith are idiots.
And the Bible says that you shall know them by their fruits, not by what they say. So believers shouldn't assume that all people who say they are Christians are good guys.
Some Christians are pedophiles, murderers and con men. But others are fighting hard for justice, truth and social justice.
Some
atheists are selfless, valueless hedonists. But others are tireless in
their struggle for liberty, have a passion for freedom which they are
willing to sacrifice their lives for, are selfless in their service and
their love for the smallest of us.
Making the other side the "bad guys" only adds to the ability of the powers-that-be to divide and conquer us.
The
left-right split is false, and hundreds of millions of Americans are
waking up to the fact that the whole Republicans-Versus-Democrats
things is a dog-and-pony show. They are waking up to the fact that
both parties serve the big banks, big pharma, military-industrial
complex, and the whole oligarchy.
These
Americans realize that it doesn't matter whether a politician wears a
red tie or a blue one: he or she either serves the big money boys or
the American people, and that the "team" he's on doesn't matter.
We also have to wake up to the false dichotomy about faith.
Just
as it is urgent that we recognize the left-versus-right split for the
game it is, we atheists have to tolerate religious folks ... and we
people of faith have to tolerate non-believers.I am lucky to call
some incredible atheists and some amazing believers my friends and
colleagues in the struggle for a better world. We may not see
everything exactly the same ... but it is a big tent.
Postscript: Granted,
there have always been some radical factions in Islam, just as there
have always been radical factions in Christianity and Judaism. But -
contrary to what fundamentalists would tell you - Muslims claim that
the Quran does not promote going out and killing non-Muslims.
While
there might be some stage 2 (using M. Scott Peck's system) Muslims
who believe the Quran commands them to kill the "other guys", just
as some stage 2 Christians or stage 2 Jews think that the Bible
commands them to kill Muslims (the Crusades, for example) or atheists or abortion doctors or others. And remember, governments often use tactics to make the other guy seem more violent.
But again, the problem isn't any
particular religion, it is the immaturity of a small handful of its
followers, and the misuse of religion by the powers-that-be to divide
and conquer us.
- advertisements -
Big propaganda.
Christianity supports primogeniture. And one root of the US revolution was a rejection of primogeniture.
Please explain how a revolution that rejects a principle can be considered being of that principle?
And the US were not tolerant of other religions'.
Always better to look at facts. Plurality of religions have better fared in other places of the world than it has fared in the US.
Christianity was pushed violenty on non monotheistic believers, more violently than places where such behaviour was tried and failed.
The US and some other places were more efficient than others. That did not make them less violent. On the contrary.
Plurality of religions have better fared in other places of the world than it has fared in the US.
My friends, Truth and Honesty, would like to have a word with you ...
http://euro-med.dk/?p=14302
um, yes? Any post is a soap box for you?
Keep your propaganda for yourself and people who like it.
I wrote about religion plurality and how it's fared better in some countries than in the US.
The US is mainly a harbour for Christianity. Being one religion is not religious plurality.
Deists. Difference.
Islamic Crusades 5: Why did they hate us in 1783?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUuH2G7dPFk
Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2jig2WLkao&feature=related
And what does that reasoned argument have to do with our desire to increase the defense budget and export murder and suffering? Any excuse is good enough if it serves the purpose.
This is for you George, since you are promoting intellectual terrorism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6864335520571762844#
I have not watched your video, but it is accurate to say that in America today protest is now considered "low-level terrorism" (see this, this, this and this).
perhaps you should actually know history of the Barbary Wars before you speak? Islam has a Long history of Slave trade and piratical practices... foreign to the ideas of Free speak and Constitutional representation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Slave_Trade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Barbary_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoli
No Christian nation ever permitted slavery. Christianity was never used as an excuse to extend slavery over others. Never happened. Muslim bad, Christian good.
Youre's is the typical cop-out.
How does the wrongs of Christianity make the case of the Founding Fathers supporting Islam? Most slavery in Christian nations has been by the Jewish living in those lands , not Christians. I believe the number before the civil war was 90% Jewish masters 10% Christian , with most Christian families having no part in slavery at all. However; slavery has been used by near every culture at one point or another throughout history, captives of wars , in ancient times the Greeks used certain islands as slave trading post, selling on average 10,000 per day into bondage, the lack of laws defending human rights and not having the technology to replace human labor in the fields, mining etc, etc.
Most slavery in Christian nations has been by the Jewish living in those lands , not Christians. I believe the number before the civil war was 90% Jewish masters 10% Christian
That has to be either the stupidest or the craziest thing I've ever read on the Hedge. Congratulations.
Thanks... now I know you know nothing.
Is there even one person here who agrees with Segestan's assertion that, "the number before the civil war was 90% Jewish masters 10% Christian?
Bueller?
Anyone?
In the antebellum South, about 5000 Jews (out of 20000) owned one or more slaves, making up 1.25 percent of Southern slaveowners. ...
www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slav_fact.cfm -
Jews, the Slave Trade, and Slavery
LOL yeah now the deep South was filled with Jew slave owners - WTF go South and try to find any Jews - ou'll have some luck when you get to West Palm.
Anyone who needs to cite a nobel prize winner is immediately discredited. How about quoting the documents and discussions of the founding fathers instead?
You are casting pearls before swine. Thanks anyway.
When secular nationalist leaders like Nasser, Ghadaffi, Saddam Hussein, Assad posed the greatest threat to the expansionist plans of the Jewish colonial enterprise in Palestine, Americans dutifully obliged and hated the nationalist arabs.
Now that the nationalists have been by and large absorbed into the Imperial kleptocracy and are invested in maintaining the status quo, only Islamic resistence can still spoil the the Zionists' genocidal plans.
On cue, the great enthusiasts of military spending and aggression during the Cold War, who happen to be mostly jewish intelligence/gun-running double agents like Michael Ledeen, Elliot Abrahms, Podhoretz, found a new calling under the bogus "Clash of Civilizations".
It is of course a mere coincidence that the "catalizing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" they so longed for followed the exact script of the previous papers produced for the Likud by jewish double agents Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and others. A paper that merely rehashed the older expansionist protocols of Zion written by Oded Yinon in 1982.
When the Zionists say "jump", Americans reply, "how high?" even if that will cost them their beloved Empire, treasure, blood and national unity.
A truly lovely essay, George.
Jefferson was appalled by Islam and presented such in findings to Congress whilst acting in capacity as a US ambassador.
Public record.
Wait, I thought Blankfein was doing God's work, destroying the economy? Or is financial terrorism too complex?
it has a lot more government support
What does, destroying the economy or economic terrorism?
Oh, wait.
It doesn't really matter where we reside philosophically when we are all stewing together while trying to stand one upon the other will never quite get one to the surface.
Too often our leaders who are extreme factions in these groups try to whip up hatred to divide us. It is how are corrupt leaders keep us down. If we fight each other, they win.
Always easier to be identified as the anti candidate of manufactured animus than to actually have to produce that stuff known as results to the rest of society.
Too often people vote with their emotions and not with the minds. It is easy to manipulate emotions. If a candidate makes people believe they are bringing change, then they will support agendas that may even hurt them as a result.
Motivating society to do what is painful to achieve a common goal is the very definition of political leadership .. and clearly identifies why society believes there is no one minding the store. Because there isn't in a leadership vacuum.
I suspect we have seen our first two year presidency as lame duck status will be in full effect on the first Wednesday of November.
Short BHO?
And just about anything else that fancies itself "the reasonable center" to gather with "sophisticated investors" and other such nonsense of the age. After all, puttin' society in a petro crackin' tower then expecting to mix jp5 with #2 is what the reasonable middle is trying to sell. The kick is that this sales job is happening when more folks either firmly believe the only job of the US is to prepare for the rapture or that that the only job of the US is to serve their own rapture.
I REALLY hate it when I don't get memos...
Then I guess it is a good thing we are a republic...well, kinda sorta.
This is one of the weaknesses of our Republican system. Sometimes, people do not vote in their own interest. The only way to fight this is proper, bias free education.
But in their own mind, they think they are voting for their own interest. Hope & Change. WTF.
We don't have a country any more because it is inhabited by consumers, not citizens - lorded over by an endless parade assholes.
Ignorance IS treason.
+1000! Ignorance is bliss until they take everything away.
Those guys are all evil extremists and I am going to have to kill them all so that rational people like myself don't get exterminated! My god is better than their god anyhow.
Holy Land will be inhabited rather by the muslim people who consider the Son of The Chief Lawyer as THE PROPHET, instead by the jews people who still consider Him as a criminal.
United States of America, you, as a supporter of modern Israel and as a center and a source of world's idolatries, listen to the verdict by the Owner of Holy Land:
Drop dead, United States.
Isreal is the only state in the middle east who supports what the US believes in, freedom of expresssion and justice. If you don't like it, get the f*ck out!
Did you say "freedom" and "justice"? Where? In USA? On TV screens or in a life reality?
Is it a joke?
USA beleives in oil, the whore of Babylon. USA beleives in iPods and computers, not in God.
Do you mean "freedom" in Israel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
I guess you are unware that according to the law of modern Israel, THE KING DAVID IS NOT A JEW (and cannot obtain Israel's citizenship)!
Because his grand-grand-mother was not a "pure kosher jew".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law
Would you give freedom to a group who wants nothing to do but annihilate your state and enslave everyone you know? Anyone who is reasonable would say no. I can't necessarily agree with all of Israel's policies, but they are doing it in their own self interest.
I think they have evolved beyond egalitarian slavery, you know, where everywhere can become a slave one day.
I think their project is more in line with the US project. Freedom for some and slavery for others. And both have in common putting black people first in slavery to the exclusion of their own.
They are brethern in soul.
The medieval feudal system was very much a slavery like system. Serfs worked on land they did not own and they had no say in any politics what so ever. If you are of European descent, that means you were once enslaved by your own race at some point in time.
The point is we need societies to move beyond slavery of any sorts. The past is water under the bridge. The present and the future are what count. They can be altered.
Serfdom was no slavery.
The past matters as it is the foundation of the present.
Your post does not answer to mine which answered to yours though.
USA ia a bunch of idolatries, public and hidden.
That is why this country deserves any threat: both external and internal (from a group of pro-Israel jew financial "geniuses", including Ben Bernanke and Bernie Madoff).
Yeah, I am guessing Saddam Hussain was a nice guy through murdering thousands of his own people. Great guy. He was a muslim so I guess it was OK. /sarcasm
I pose a question to you DrLamer, if you are so against everything the US does why are you here? Why don't you live in a muslim country? I will tell you why, because those societies are failures. Plain and simple. If you want muslim countries to get ahead, they will have to adopt concepts such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Until then, those places are trapped in a state similar to that which existed 1000 years ago.
I am here, on Zerohedge truth-loving web-site because THIS WAS MY JOB.
Until now my job was to tell you what is wrong and what is right in modern world.
Now you have heard the VERDICT.
Pray.
Goodbye.
I guess you are unware that Turkey is also a free, democratic state.
Turkey free and democratic? Funny stuff. Try telling that to a Kurd, Jew, Armenian. Turkey is an oppressor of minorities, aka a Muslim nation.
Fuckstick