Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (28 page)

Adams’s official assessment for the secretary of state was that peace with Tripoli, though dear, would not simply keep pirates at bay, but would favor the prestige and finances of America in the long run. “If a perpetual peace were made with these states, the character of the United States would instantly rise all over the world. Our commerce, navigation, and fisheries would extend into the Mediterranean to Spain and Portugal, France and England. The additional profits would richly repay the interest, and our credit would be adequate to all wants.”
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He also reported that Jefferson had arrived in London on March 11, partly to assist in the effort with Tripoli, but mainly to conclude his own negotiations with Portugal.
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In Jefferson’s presence Abd al-Rahman would invoke the Qur’anic justification for continued conflict and the seizure of American captives, but his preoccupation with the finances would persist.
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Though signed by both Jefferson and Adams, the report of the fourth meeting was clearly written by the latter, who began the page-and-a-half-long missive to John Jay by observing, “Soon after the arrival of Mr. J. in London, we had a conference with the Ambassador of Tripoli, at his House.”
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Perhaps as ambassador to Britain, the country in which they were negotiating, Adams considered it his responsibility to author the report, but Jefferson would certainly have read and approved the contents.

The meeting began and ended with America’s financial dilemma; the new country was eager for peace but short on funds. Abd al-Rahman confirmed the price difference between a “perpetual” and a limited-term deal, again advising that “a perpetual peace was in all respects the most advisable, because a temporary treaty would leave room for increasing demands upon every renewal of it, and a stipulation
for annual payments would be liable to failures of performance which would renew the war, repeat the negotiations and continually augment the claims of his nation.”
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The price asked for even one year seemed staggering to the Americans: 12,500 guineas, plus 10 percent for the ambassador. The perpetual peace at over twice as much was a bargain, though further out of reach: 30,000 guineas, plus the ambassador’s £3,000, or 10 percent
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(in present-value terms about $2.6 million).
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Abd al-Rahman, then, had a considerable personal stake in the outcome of negotiations, one for which he offered no justification, diplomatic or Qur’anic. For the same price, he said, Tunis would also be covered, but the ambassador could not predict what terms Algiers or Morocco would demand.

At this point, Adams and Jefferson attempted a diversion from the subject of money. They reminded Abd al-Rahman that the United States did not consider Tripoli, or any other nation, an enemy. It was an attempt at declaring peace unilaterally, and perhaps solving the problem by means of a technicality. The pair wrote, “We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.”
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It was worth a try.

It was now that Abd al-Rahman offered a religious rationale for the state of hostilities, one that conveniently also happened to support his financial objectives, both diplomatic and personal. Tripoli’s bellicosity toward the United States, he allowed, “was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
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It was, to be sure, a selective presentation of the Qur’an’s teaching, but not one meant to invite discussion even if the Americans had been so inclined or prepared.
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In fact, all of the ambassador’s references to the Qur’an were accurate, including the precedents for preemptive war against People of the
Book, meaning Christians and Jews (Qur’an 9:29); the taking of captives (Qur’an 47:4); and the heavenly rewards for slain Muslim warriors (Qur’an 2:154). Jefferson may have recalled some of them from his reading of Sale’s translation eleven years before in Virginia. Might he also have remembered that various verses about warfare had been revealed in the midst of seventh-century Muslim struggles in Arabia against superior, pagan foes whom the good Muslim was obliged to fight to the death, failing an effort to convert them (Qur’an 9:5)? The presumably Christian Europeans and now Americans, as People of the Book, however, could justifiably be fought only until they were dominated. In piratical warfare in the Mediterranean, this did not mean submitting to Islamic rule and paying the
jizya
, or poll tax, but merely accepting Islamic terms of tribute for peace and the ransom of prisoners. To this extent, Abd al-Rahman’s quest for peace and a lucrative treaty were acceptable Islamic practices.
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All Sunni legal schools promoted the idea that peace, when in the interest of the Islamic community, was an acceptable alternative to war, even the variety of war known as
jihad
, or struggle.
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Variants of the word “jihad” occur in thirty-six verses of the Qur’an, covering various forms of religious exertion, but there are only ten explicitly on warfare.
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Traditionally,
jihad
is not considered in references to warfare and killing, the justification of which was limited to righting wrongs or self-defense: “And whoso defendeth himself after he hath suffered wrong—for such, there is no way [of blame] against them” (Qur’an 42:41).
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But Abd al-Rahman might have based his declaration of war against the United States on continuing European bombardments of Tripoli and other Muslim ports in the eighteenth century. An American captive in Algiers had explained to Jefferson that the locals retained a special hatred against the Spanish “for persecuting the Mahometan religion” and for expelling those Muslims who remained in Catholic
Spain in 1609.
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But the United States, as Adams and Jefferson pointed out, had nothing to do with those assaults. (James Madison would later argue more broadly that the United States did not share this European Christian history of Muslim persecution.) Nonetheless, all the North African pirate states, including Tripoli, believed themselves to be safeguarding the Islamic frontier—on land and sea. How, Abd al-Rahman might have wondered, could the policy of the United States toward Tripoli be shown to differ from that of their European coreligionists? Nevertheless, however sound his scriptural justification for war, the fact was that hostilities, even if
presumed, had never been continuous. Thanks to treaties dictated by the North African powers, interludes of peace had frequently occurred from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries.

The ambassador omitted to tell Adams and Jefferson that even the most bellicose pronouncements in the Qur’an included injunctions to limit conflict, establishing terms with the enemy if they were to submit and request a treaty. And this, after all, was what the Americans were attempting to do by refusing the notion of a presumed state of war with Tripoli. If he had been inclined to accept the American protestations, he could have cited very different Qur’anic verses, including one depicting Muslim reluctance to initiate conflict: “Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! God loveth not aggressors” (Qur’an 2:190).
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War is elsewhere described in the Qur’an as something Muslims must engage in, despite the fact that it is “hateful unto you” (Qur’an 2:216).
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Abd al-Rahman might also have referred to the second chapter of the Qur’an, where there is a marked emphasis on accepting surrender and terms of peace with one’s enemies: “But if they desist, then lo! God is forgiving, merciful” (Qur’an 2:192).
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Elsewhere, the Islamic sacred text states, “And if they incline to peace, incline thou also unto it, and trust in Allah” (Qur’an 8:61).
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Numerous verses insist that fighting must end when one’s enemy wishes to end it: “So, if they hold aloof from you and wage not war against you and offer you peace, Allah alloweth you no way against them” (Qur’an 4:90).
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Other verses repeat these sentiments, and some invoke the fulfillment and establishment of treaties for peace (Qur’an 2:193, 8:39, 9:4, 9:7). There is no mention of payment for peace in any of these verses.

Nor did the ambassador emphasize that treaties are acceptable in the Qur’an and Muslims are to abide by their terms: “Fulfill the covenant of Allah when ye have covenanted, and break not your oaths after the assertion of them, and after ye have made Allah surety over you. Lo! Allah knoweth what you do” (Qur’an 16:91).
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Abd al-Rahman’s offer of a perpetual peace for the United States, the most costly kind, had little precedent in Islamic history. Sunni jurists disagreed about the proper duration of treaties, and while many allowed for two years at most, others specified that the terms should not exceed a decade.
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The idea of perpetual peace seems to have been a financially motivated North African invention.

When Abd al-Rahman described the heavenly rewards of piracy to Thomas Jefferson, the latter may have remembered, as George Sale made clear in his first volume, that the religious impetus to fight for heavenly reward was not uniquely Islamic; it had likewise motivated both Jews and Christians.
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In any case the official copy of the letter to Jay suggests that Jefferson was more focused on the tribute demanded than on any Qur’anic justification offered. His original copy of the report, preserved in his correspondence, reveals a telling orthographical error: “laws of the profit,” which in the official version was corrected to read “laws of the prophet.”
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The error suggests Jefferson’s skepticism of Abd al-Rahman’s rationale, and it conforms neatly with his numerous references to “avarice” and “cupidity” where pirates were concerned. It was perhaps not an uncommon play on words: a couple of months later in a letter from Captain
Richard O’Brien, a captive in Algiers, Jefferson would be told, “but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet,” a variation on the Islamic creedal statement “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Prophet.”
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Finally, Abd al-Rahman thought he would seal the deal for the priciest option, perpetual peace, by painting a picture of what American sailors could expect in a pirate assault:

It was probably a wild overstatement of the pirate’s martial zeal as well as his lust for captives—and the ransom they would bring, particularly considering that war for the sake of profit is condemned in the Qur’an as the practice of liars, hypocrites, and unbelievers (Qur’an 48:15). But it was true that the seizure of prisoners, who might be killed, sold into slavery, or ransomed, could be sanctioned by the sacred text (Qur’an 33:26–27, 47:4). Not surprisingly, the ambassador failed to mention that the Qur’an also enjoined Muslims to feed
prisoners, out of compassion toward the less fortunate (Qur’an 76:8). And while it was lawful to keep property seized in warfare (Qur’an 48:15, 48:19, 48:20, 8:69), the rules had not always been the same. During the Prophet’s lifetime, a revelation called for one-fifth designated for the financial support for his relatives as well as the poor (Qur’an 8:41). Over time, more complex calculations evolved for the divisions of spoils, both property (
ghanima
) and captives (
asra
).
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The ambassador’s description of the devil’s involvement as guarantor of Muslim success was simply wrong.
Al-shaytan
, meaning Satan or the devil, far from aiding Muslims in the Qur’an, is a beguiler, who lies in wait to lead them astray, as he did both Adam and Eve in the garden of heaven (Qur’an 4:76, 4:60, 20:120–23).
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But even without satanic assistance, the ambassador had the Americans where he wanted them.

The Americans hazarded no response based on Christian belief to this line of reasoning, realizing that their only option was to accede to the demands, which they must have reluctantly understood from the beginning. Adams and Jefferson recorded no comment on Abd al-Rahman’s selective reading of the Qur’an. In the same paragraph reporting invocation of the devil, they merely said, “We took time to consider and promised an answer, but we can give him no other, than that the demands exceed our expectations, and that of Congress, so much that we can proceed no further without fresh instructions.”
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In the penultimate paragraph, Adams and Jefferson suggest why Holland might be the only potential source of the necessary funds, before presenting an update on their agent’s negotiations with Algiers and Morocco, commenting grimly, “and we wish it may not be made more disagreeable than this from Tunis and Tripoli.”
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Adams and Jefferson understood the predicament in which they found themselves.
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Though of divided opinion on the influence of religion in the conflict, they were in perfect agreement as to the ultimate issue. As
Frank Lambert observed, “Indeed, in all of the treaty negotiations, tribute, not theology, was the sticking point.”
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