'So if I own Mein Kampf I'm a supporter of Hitler?'

I got an interesting comment from a post made about a month ago called "People of the Book."  It was about an article written by Ted Widmer which explored the forgotten and/or ignored presence of Islam during the creation and infancy of our nation.  It's a fascinating article with a lot of interesting information that I didn't know beforehand, such as:

• Founding Fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both owned their own copies of the Quran.
• The earliest documented instance of a copy of the Quran showing up in North America was 1683, almost a century before the Declaration of Independence (and there may have been even earlier instances, but this is the first documented account).
• The Massachusetts Constitution, written at around the same time as another significant Constitution (the drafting of which was assisted by John Adams), has this great bit in it: “the most ample of liberty of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”
• 
  Muslims and Catholics were often held in the same "extremely foreign" religion category.
• Thomas Jefferson tried to learn Arabic, and his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom was meant to protect "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination."
• Widmer:  "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. When Adams was president, a treaty with Tripoli (Libya) insisted that the United States was 'not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion' and therefore has 'no character of enmity against the laws, religion and tranquility of Mussulmen.'
• Islam may have been a religious belief of up to 1 in every 5 African American slaves before emancipation.
• Washington in a letter to the people of Rhode Island:  "May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

Any way you cut it, Widmer's article shines a light on a little-explored area of American history.

So I was kind of surprised to get a comment on the post this morning from my old friend Steve.  "So if I own Mein kampf I'm a supporter of Hitler?"  My first response was to just write a comment back on the post.  But as I started to type, I had a hard time narrowing my responses down to just one argument.

Ergo, this post.  Feel free to apply one, any or all answers back to your comment, Steve.

• So I guess you didn't read the article, which was about much more than the quote I originally referenced.
• In a Fox News 24-hour spin cycle, you might be.  Look at Van Jones, for instance.  Or Shirley Sherrod.  You owning Mein Kampf could be spun that way.  That's not the truth, I'd imagine.  There's probably a lot more to it, as there was with Jefferson and Adams each owning their own copies.  But if you want to boil it down to a right-wing talking point without exploring the issue at all, then sure.  Heil Steve.
• Interesting how you compare ownership of the Quran to ownership of Mein Kampf.  And by 'interesting,' I mean 'disturbingly telling.'  Why not use another religious tome to make a comparison, like the Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the I-Ching, the Book of Mormon, Hubbard's "Dianetics," or the Zohar?  What makes you think that comparing the holy scripture of an established and widespread religion to an autobiography written by a genocidal fuckhead was accurate in any way?  Imagine I'm cooking dinner for Kristen and I tell you "Kristen loves tomatoes.  I bet she'd really like marinara sauce on her pasta."  And you reply by saying "So if I own Mein Kampf I'm a supporter of Hitler?"  That wouldn't exactly be an appropriate comparison, would it?  Nor is comparing the Quran to Mein Kampf.
• Do you actually own a copy of Mein Kampf?
• No, you're not a supporter of Hitler (that I know of).  And by posting an article about the history of Muslims in Colonial America, I'm not a Jihadist.  Or a historian.
• Did you know before reading my post that Adams and Jefferson personally owned copies of the Quran?  Do you think the majority of the Evangelical Right (or the US population in general) does?
• Your comment almost comes off as threatened by the fact that two of our country's founders owned Qurans.  Does this threaten you?

Eagerly awaiting your reply, Steve.  You should visit my blog more than once a month anyway...

People of the Book

Brown University's Ted Widmer had a piece published in the Boston Globe a few weeks ago focusing on the historic relationship between the Founding Fathers and non-Christian religions (and locally unpopular denominations at the time, like Catholicism).  As the media circus from last month illustrates, religious tolerance is as much a powder-keg issue as it has ever been. 

The religious right loves to take the position that the US is a Christian nation, and that Christianity should be the dominating religious influence within the country.  Even if that means denying other religious institutions their own rights.  And a lot of the vitriol stems from a more modern belief (especially by members of the Tea Party) that religious intolerance is somehow connected the founding principles of the country.

Not true, as Widmer has gone to some lengths to illustrate.  In fact, two of the Founding Fathers actually owned their own copies of the Koran:

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.

Funny how Fox News never brings this up, isn't it?  Read the entire article if you get a chance, it's a fascinating look at the tolerance and respect of all religions that went into founding our country.