Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:27:17.629Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet than the Devil?” Early American Uses of Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Thomas S. Kidd
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the last public act before his death, Benjamin Franklin parodied a proslavery speech in Congress by comparing it to a fictitious proslavery address “anno 1687” by a North African Muslim, a pirate named Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. Like proslavery southerners, the Algerian argued that he could not countenance the end of Christian slavery because it would hurt the interests of the Algerian state, there would be no way to compensate the Muslim slave masters, and nothing could safely be done with the freed slaves. Franklin's salvo against slavery was published in 1790 in major northern newspapers. His use of Muslims and Islamic images is one of the most famous in eighteenth-century America, but not unique. Islamic references pepper the public documents of early America, demonstrating that many were not only aware of the religion but also ready to use it as a rhetorical tool of argument. A close look at the uses of Islam in Anglo-American writing before 1800 shows that Franklin's use of the proslavery argument was another version of a well-established tradition: citing the similarities between an opponent's views and the “beliefs” of Islam as a means to discredit one's adversaries. Over the course of the eighteenth century, rhetorical uses of Islam became increasingly secularized. Early in the century, Islam was typically used for religious purposes in religious debates while later commentators often took knowledge “derived” from observations of despotic Islamic states to support political points. Although one should hesitate to describe early Americans as conversant with Islam, they certainly conversed about Islam regularly.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , December 2003 , pp. 766 - 790
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Reprinted in “Benjamin Franklin and Freedom,” Journal of Negro History 4 (January 1919): 48–50Google Scholar; see also Ellis, Joseph, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Knopf, 2000), 111–12Google Scholar; Allison, Robert J., The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 104–6.Google Scholar

2. Gomez, Michael A., “Muslims in Early America,” Journal of Southern History 60 (11 1994): 671–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raboteau, Albert, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 5–7.Google Scholar

3. Mather, Cotton, American Tears upon the Ruines of the Greek Churches (Boston, Mass.: B. Green and J. Allen, 1701), 38.Google Scholar

4. Matar, Nabil, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matar, Nabil, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

5. Said, Edward, Orientalism, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1994), 3–5.Google Scholar

6. Colley, Linda, Captives (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 43–72Google Scholar; Fuad, Sha'ban, Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought: The Roots of Orientalism in America (Durham, N.C.: Acorn, 1991), iGoogle Scholar; Friedman, Ellen, “Christian Captives at ‘Hard Labor’ in Algiers, 16th–18th Centuries,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 13 (No. 4, 1980): 616–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clissold, Stephen, The Barbary Slaves (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977).Google Scholar

7. Baepler, Paul, ed., White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 2–3Google Scholar; Matar, , Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 14–15.Google Scholar

8. Colley, , Captives, 4.Google Scholar

9. Okeley, William, Eben-ezer, or, a Small Monument of Great Mercy, 2nd ed. (London: Nat. Ponder, 1676), 13, 26–27.Google Scholar

10. Mather, Cotton, Decennium Luctuosum (Boston, Mass.: B. Green and J. Allen, 1699), 231.Google Scholar

11. Mather, Increase, A Relation of the Troubles (Boston, Mass.: John Foster, 1677), 8–9Google Scholar; Baepler, , White Slaves, African Masters, 7.Google Scholar

12. Matar, , Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 83–107.Google Scholar

13. Gee, Joshua and Charles Archibald, Goodwin, Narrative of Joshua Gee (Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1943), 29.Google Scholar

14. Brooks, Francis, Barbarian Cruelty (London: J. Salusbury and H. Newman, 1693), ix–x.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., 12.

16. Ibid., 32–34.

17. Ibid., 36–38.

18. Ibid., 58, 61.

19. Ibid., 67.

20. Muslim intellectuals, of course, have a long history of critical responses to Christianity, though none of those were written for a European audience in the early modem period. Matar, , Islam in Britain, 182Google Scholar; Matar, Nabil, ed., In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2003), xxxiii.Google Scholar For an overview of Muslim responses to Christianity, see Montgomery Watt, William, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (New York: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar English translations of the Qur'an, such as Alexander Ross's and George Sale's, were available in England and the colonies, but both included prefatory comments hostile to Islam. Matar, , Islam in Britain, 73–83Google Scholar; Sha'ban, , Islam and Arabs, 30–33Google Scholar; Isani, Mukhtar Ali, “Cotton Mather and the Orient,” New England Quarterly 43 (03 1970): 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Christian converts to Islam, see Matar, , Islam in Britain, 18–20.Google Scholar

21. Matar, , Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 71–77.Google Scholar

22. Mather, Cotton, Magnalia Christi Americana, (Hartford, Conn.: S. Andrus, 1853)Google Scholar, 2:671. Quoted in Isani, , ‘Cotton Mather and the Orient,” 51–52.Google Scholar

23. Mather, Cotton, A Pastoral Letter (Boston, Mass.: B. Green and J. Allen, 1698), 8Google Scholar; Isani, , “Mather and the Orient,” 52–53.Google Scholar

24. Mather, , A Pastoral Letter, 12.Google Scholar

25. Mather, Cotton, The Glory of Goodness (Boston, Mass.: T. Green, 1703), preface and 32–33.Google Scholar

26. Virginia, , A Collection of All the Acts of the Assembly (Williamsburg, Va.: William Parks, 1733), 220.Google Scholar

27. Mather, , The Glory of Goodness, 39.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 45, 46, 50. Matar, , Islam in Britain, 27.Google Scholar

29. Clissold, , Barbary Slaves, 149.Google Scholar

30. Allison, , Crescent Obscured, 39–41.Google Scholar

31. Emerson, Roger, “Peter Gay and the Heavenly City,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (07–09, 1967): 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stein, Stephen, “Editor's Introduction,” in Jonathan Edwards, Apocalyptic Writings, ed. Stein, Stephen, vol. 5 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), 63–64Google Scholar; Said, , Orientalism, 72.Google ScholarSaid, points out the near-simultaneous publication of d'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientate (1697), which called Mohammed “le fameux imposteur,” 65–66.Google Scholar

32. Prideaux, Humphrey, The True Nature of Imposture Displayed in the Life of Mahomet, 3rd ed. (London: William Rogers, 1698), iv–v.Google Scholar On the claim of pure knowledge as opposed to political knowledge, Said, , Orientalism, 9.Google Scholar

33. Prideaux, , True Nature of Imposture, viii–ix.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 13.

35. Ibid., 16; Allison, , Crescent Obscured, 38.Google Scholar

36. Isani, , “Cotton Mather and the Orient,” 50Google Scholar; Fuller, Robert, Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 54Google Scholar; Tobias Bjorck, Eric, A Little Olive Leaf (New York: William Bradford, 1704), 21.Google Scholar

37. Prideaux, , True Nature of Imposture, 27–28.Google Scholar

38. Prideaux, Humphrey, A Discourse for the Vindicating of Christianity, 3rd ed. (London: William Rogers, 1698), 7.Google Scholar

39. Library Company of Philadelphia, , Books Added to the Library Since the Year 1741 (Philadelphia, Penn.: Benjamin Franklin, 1746), 14Google Scholar; New-York Society Library, Philadelphia, , A Catalogue of the Books Belonging to the New-York Society Library (New York: H. Gaine, 1758), 14Google Scholar; Union Library Society of Wethersfield, , The Constitution and By-Laws of the Union Library Society of Wethersfield (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin, 1784), 17.Google Scholar

40. Caldwell, John, An Impartial Trial of the Spirit (Boston, Mass.: T. Fleet, 1742), 11.Google Scholar

41. Wells Bray, Thomas, A Dissertation on the Sixth Vial (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin, 1780), 29–30.Google Scholar

42. Leslie, Charles, The Religion of Jesus Christ the Only True Religion, or, A Short and Easie Method with the Deists (Boston, Mass.: T. Fleet, 1719), 24–25.Google Scholar

43. Dickinson, Jonathan, The Reasonableness of Christianity (Boston, Mass.: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1732), 60–61.Google Scholar

44. de Boulainvilliers, Henri, The Life of Mahomet, English translation (London: W. Hinchliffe, 1731), 219Google Scholar; Buranelli, Vincent, “The Historical and Political Thought of Boulainvilliers,” Journal of the History of Ideas 18 (10 1957): 475–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Colley, , Captives, 107.Google Scholar

46. Library Company of Philadelphia, , A Catalogue of Books (Philadelphia, Penn.: B. Franklin, 1741), D2Google Scholar; “A Catalogue of Books: In the Library of ‘Councillor’ Robert Carter, at Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, Va.,” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 10 (April 1902): 239.Google Scholar

47. Pailin, David, Attitudes to Other Religions: Comparative Religion in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1984), 104.Google Scholar

48. Williams, Roger, G. Fox Digg'd out of His Burrowes (Boston, Mass.: John Foster, 1676), A3, A6.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 158; Prideaux, , True Nature of Imposture, 49–50.Google Scholar

50. On the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English background to this eschatology, see Matar, , Islam in Britain, 153–83.Google Scholar

51. Cogley, Richard, “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the ‘Judeo-centric’ Strand of Puritan Millenarianism,” Church History 72 (06 2003): 304–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. Mather, Cotton, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated (Boston, Mass.: S. Green, 1690), 38–41.Google Scholar

53. Noyes, Nicholas, New-England's Duty and Interest (Boston, Mass.: Bartholomew Green and John Allen, 1698), 32–33.Google Scholar

54. Monis, Judah, The Whole Truth (Boston, Mass.: Daniel Henchman, 1722), 7.Google Scholar

55. Gillespie, George, A Treatise against the Deists or Free-Thinkers (Philadelphia, Penn.: A. Bradford, 1735), 40, 53.Google Scholar

56. Davies, Samuel, The Mediatorial Kingdom and Glories of Jesus Christ, in Sermons on the Most Useful and Important Subjects (London: J. Buckland, 1766)Google Scholar, in Sandoz, Ellis, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1998), 1:205.Google Scholar

57. Hatch, Nathan, “The Origins of Civil Millennialism in America: New England Clergymen, War with France, and the Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 31 (07 1974): 415–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58. Burr, Aaron, The Watchman's Answer (Boston, Mass.: S. Kneeland, 1757), 17–20, 34.Google Scholar

59. Pailin, , Attitudes to Other Religions, 103.Google Scholar

60. Paine, Thomas, Of the Evidence of Christ's Death, Burial, and Resurrection (Boston, Mass.: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1732), 15–16.Google Scholar

61. Walton, John, The Religion of Jesus Vindicated (Boston, Mass.: Samuel Kneeland and Timothy Green, 1736), 7.Google Scholar

62. The Sad Estate of the Unconverted (Boston, Mass.: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1736), 22–23.Google Scholar

63. Tennent, Gilbert, Twenty-three Sermons upon the Chief End of Man (Philadelphia, Penn.: William Bradford, 1744), 24–25.Google Scholar

64. Tyerman, Luke, The Life and Times of the Rev. George Whitefield (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1876), 1:360–61, 466.Google Scholar

65. Garden, Alexander, Take Heed How Ye Hear (Charles-Town, S.C.: Peter Timothy, 1741), 12, 26.Google Scholar

66. The Wonderful Narrative (Boston, Mass.: Rogers and Fowle, 1742), 6, 65–71.Google Scholar

67. Wonderful Narrative, 71Google Scholar; Casaubon, Meric, A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, 2nd ed. (London: Roger Daniel, 1656), 175–76.Google Scholar

68. Matar, , Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 229 n.20.Google Scholar

69. The Conversion of a Mehometan, 6th ed. (New London, Conn: T. Green, 1773), 5. The 1757 tract has been attributed to John Edwards.Google Scholar

70. Ibid., 12, 22.

71. Edwards, Jonathan, “Notes on the Apocalypse,” in Jonathan Edwards, Apocalyptic Writings, ed. Stein, Stephen, vol. 5 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), 173–76, quotes on 173, 176.Google Scholar

72. Edwards, Jonathan, “Events of an Hopeful Aspect on the State of Religion,” in Edwards, Apocalyptic Writings, 294.Google Scholar

73. Edwards, Jonathan, An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union (Boston, Mass.: T. Henchman, 1748), 150Google Scholar; McDermott, Gerald, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 169–71Google Scholar; Edwards, , Apocalyptic Writings, 45.Google Scholar

74. Edwards, Jonathan, “Mahometanism Compared with Christianity—Particularly with Respect to their Propagation,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Hickman, Edward, reprint (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1974), 2:491–92Google Scholar; McDermott, , Edwards Confronts the Gods, 167–69.Google Scholar

75. Edwards, , “Mahometanism,” 493Google Scholar; McDermott, , Edwards Confronts the Gods, 171–74Google Scholar; Pailin, , Attitudes to Other Religions, 101.Google Scholar

76. Poor Richard, 1741 (Philadelphia, Penn.: B. Franklin, 1740), May.Google Scholar

77. Emmons, Nathanael, The Dignify of Man (Providence, R.I.: Bennett Wheeler, 1787)Google Scholar, in Sandoz, , Political Sermons, 1:893.Google Scholar

78. May, Henry, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 154.Google Scholar

79. Allison, , Crescent Obscured, 47.Google Scholar

80. Leland, John, The Rights of Conscience Inalienable (New London, Conn.: T. Green arid Son, 1791)Google Scholar, in Sandoz, , Political Sermons, 2:1090–93.Google Scholar

81. Hitchcock, Enos, An Oration, in Commemoration of the Independence of the United States of America (Providence, R.I.: J. Carter, 1793)Google Scholar, in Sandoz, , Political Sermons, 2:1176–77Google Scholar. On Montesquieu's influence see May, , Enlightenment in America, 40–41.Google Scholar

82. Allison, , Crescent Obscured, 40–41.Google Scholar

83. Montgomery, Benilde, “White Captives, African Slaves: A Drama of Abolition,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (Summer 1994): 629–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baepler, , White Slaves, African Masters, 30–31.Google Scholar

84. Baepler, , White Slaves, African Masters, 47.Google Scholar

85. Tyler, Royall, The Algerine Captive (London: G. and J. Robinson, 1802), 1:136–39.Google Scholar

86. Ibid., 2:37–53, quote on 53.

87. Davidson, Cathy, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 208–9Google Scholar; Baepler, , White Slaves, African Masters, 46–47Google Scholar; Montgomery, , “White Captives, African Slaves,” 616–17.Google Scholar

88. Dwight, Timothy, The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis (New Haven, Conn.: Thomas and Samuel Green, 1798)Google Scholar, in Sandoz, , Political Sermons, 2:1392–93.Google Scholar

89. Walvoord, John, Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1990), 155–59.Google Scholar

90. Fuller, , Naming the Antichrist, 159–60.Google Scholar

91. Anour Majid gives a more hopeful historical survey of the possibilities for common ground “Living with Islam,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 49 (March 14, 2003), B10–11.Google Scholar