Islamic influences on John Locke

To understand John Locke one has to understand what was going on internationally. He was born in an era of ascendant Islam. On the eve of Locke’s birth the Ottomans Murad IV (r. 1623-40) was the ruler of the Ottomans. As a young man Locke may have heard stories about the reign of Sultan Ibrahim (r. 1640-48). But Locke’s major years saw Mehmed IV (January 2, 1642 – January 6, 1693) reigning a largest Ottoman empire.

In 1658 Greek mainland and islands fall under the control of the Ottoman Sultan. The Turks were knocking on the gages of Vienna in 1683. Locke also saw the British rebuffed in South Asia. The Reign of Jahangir, 1605-1627 had prevented the British any toe hold in South Asia. There are painting where Britishers were kneeling in front of Jahangir begging for trading rights. John Locke was born (August 29th 1632) at the beginning of the Reign of Shah Jahan, 1628-1658. At the death of John Locke (October 28th 1704) the Mughal Empire reached its peak under the leadership of Aurangzeb Alamgir.

John Locke was keenly aware of the barbarianism which destroyed the most enlightened era of Europe in Spain. A couple of centuries ago the Spanish Inquisition had ended Muslim rule in Spain but they had conquered Constantinople in 1453. The twilight of the Ottoman Empire was no where in sight.

In 1612, Iskandar Muda sent to England’s King James I (1566-1625) a lavishly gilded letter which had overwhelmed the British monarch. In the letter Iskandar Muda had described himself as “lord in power here and below the winds who holds the throne of Aceh and Samudra and all the countries adjacent”.

Locke was widely known as the Father of Liberalism, he was a British philosopher and physician. John Locke was a very brilliant man. He influenced Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison.

At the time of John Locke there was deep introspection in British society on what was going on in Europe. There was profound discussion of what was wrong with British society as benchmarked to Islamic societies of the time. He was born at a time of a “civil war of idea” between those who believed in “Unitarianism” versus those who believed in “Trinitarianism”. This British schism was brought on by the break of the Church of England from the Vatican. At the time the rational philosophers were looking at logical solutions to what was thought as errors that had crept into the Christian scriptures. Sir Isaac Newton and others had written extensively against the concepts of Trinity. John Locke was part of the British elite that searched for and found Islam proposing a very rational view of Christian Unitarianism. Locke is regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. He is considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. He was very influential on the American revolution and its constitutional development. He seems to have a natural curiosity for Islam.

Locke’s interest in Islam can be described by all that was happening around Britain. All of Europe faced Muslims all around them. The ottomans were a major cultural and political force and the British forays into “India” informed them of the might of the Mughals. A Chair of Arabic at the University of Oxford was established in 1636 which wss contemporaneous to a similar chair in Paris.

The Enlightenment not only heralded radical cultural change but also, quite understandably, brought the first signs of sharp reaction to it. The religious trend taking place at the Enlightenment is made clear by the very titles of some of its most important books: The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (John Locke, 1695), Christianity Not Mysterious (John Toland, 1696), and Christianity as Old as the Creation (Matthew Tindal, 1730). The books of the latter two authors aroused such indignation that Parliament ordered them to be burned.

His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

Although the idea of religious liberty and tolerance is a new issue in the West initiated with philosophers of the 18th century like John Locke and M Voltaire, it has always been a simple fact for Muslims, clearly declared in their religion.

John Locke’s “Irrationality Argument” stems from his “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, first published in 1689. The main thrust of the letter is Locke’s argument that religious intolerance by Christians is both unchristian and irrational. The latter “irrationality argument” is arguably the most important argument contained within the letter because while John Stuart Mill’s work focused on preserving a wide range of liberties, including freedom of speech and lifestyle, Locke’s greatest contribution to liberal thought was concerned with freedom of religious belief and his 1689 letter outlined his arguments in this matter.

The letter itself sought to answer two important questions:

• Whether a state should allow its citizens to follow the religion of their choosing, or should they be made to follow a state approved religion (in Locke’s case Christianity)?

• What are the limits of religious toleration?

There may have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims in the United States in 1776—imported as slaves from areas of Africa where Islam flourished. Although there is no evidence that the Founders were aware of the religious convictions of their bondsmen, it is clear that the Founding Fathers thought about the relationship of Islam to the new nation and were prepared to make a place for it in the republic.

In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”

In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.” George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to “obtain proper relief” from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome “Mohometans” to Mount Vernon if they were “good workmen” (see page 96). Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded “the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians,” a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810.snarla.Anonymous Arabist.

Locke’s assertion that there was only one necessary defining credal belief in Christianity accessible to all understandings, i.e. that Jesus was the Messiah. Edwards slyly commented that Locke ‘seems to have consulted the Mahometan bible’. We know that. Locke possessed an edition of the Koran (See J. Harrison and P. Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford, 1971), 70, which shows that Locke possessed the 1649 French translation of the Koran. See D. D. Wallace, ‘Socinianism, Justification by Faith, and the Sources of John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity’, JHI (1984). See de Beer, Correspondence of Locke, V, 86-7, 96, 135-42, 145-7, 172, 207-29, where Locke corresponded with Firmin, Furley and Limborch (himself another suspected Socinian), about the case of a Dutch ‘damsel’ who had converted to Judaism because of her opposition to the Trinity. The current research of both J. Marshall and R. Iliffe into the theologies of John Locke and Isaac Newton would suggest that Edward’s accusations were broadly correct.)

The complicity between Locke and Islam according to Edwards was the notion of the nature and divinity of Christ; the Koran treated Christ purely as a prophet, ‘as a great man, one commissioned by God, and sent by him into the world. This is of the like import with our good Ottoman writer the Vindicator saith of our saviour, and this he holds is the sum of all that is necessary to be believed concerning him’. Edwards insisted that Locke was ‘confounding Turky with Christendom. (J. Edwards, Socinianism Unmasked (1696), 53-4; Edwards also attacked The Letter of Resolution in the same terms in Socinian Creed (1697), 227-8.)

During the Restoration Socinianism appears to have extended its influence to the highest levels. The coterie surrounding the philanthropist Thomas Firmin included Locke, Tillotson the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and minor members of the Anglican Church, such as Stephen Nye (1648-1719) and Henry Hedworth (1626-1705). Indeed, it was the latter who used the term Unitarian for the first time in print in The Spirit of the Quakers Tried (1672). Such was the ubiquity of the movement that Andrew Marvell was able to comment in the same year that ‘the Socinian books are tolerated and sell as openly as the Bible’. By 1676 there were at least three Socinian meeting houses in London.

The religious settlement of 1689 saw Socinians classed with Roman Catholics in being placed beyond the comfort of toleration. The Socinians were to achieve liberty of worship in 1813. Persecution descended upon such men as Arthur Bury (1624-1713), rector of Exeter College, Oxford, for the publication of his Naked Gospel (1690). The author was excommunicated, deprived and fined £500, while his book was burnt. William Freke unwittingly sent his Brief but Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the Trinity to both Houses of Parliament in 1694. The result was that the work was condemned and burnt by the public hangman, while Freke was forced to recantation and fined. Thomas Aikenhead, a student of Edinburgh University, was condemned as an heretic for his Socinian opinions and hanged in 1697. In 1698 the ‘Act for the more effectual Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness’ attempted to proscribe all discussion of the Trinitarian controversy, imposing for a second conviction denial of all civil rights and three years imprisonment.

The act was reinforced by royal command in 1714 (H. J. McLachlan, ‘Links between Transylvania and British Unitarians from the Seventeenth Century Onwards’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 17 (1979-82); W. Whittaker, ‘The Open Trust Myth’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 1 (1917-18). See C. Leslie, ‘Of the Socinian Controversy’ in Works, II, 14, for reports of free distribution of Unitarian tracts. Leslie wrote of the Unitarians: ‘They have arrived to that pitch of assurance, as to set up public meetings in our halls in London, where some preach in them who have been spewed out even by the Presbyterians for their Socinianism.’ Wilbur, Unitarianism, 198-9, 212-14; McLachlan, Seventeenth-Century Socinianism, 285; on Aikenhead, see Levy, Treason Against God, 325-7. Note that Aikenhead was accused of preferring the Islamic scheme over the Christian, in particular he was charged with rejecting the canonicity of Scripture and reading atheistical texts. See T. B. Howell, (ed.), A Complete Collection of State Trials (1812), XIII, 918-39. The best account of the Aikenhead affair is the essay by M. Hunter, ‘Aikenhead the Atheist: The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century’ in Hunter and Wooton, Atheism. On general background, see Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion, 27-42. On Firmin, see S. Nye, Life of Firmin (1698 and reprinted 1791); H. W. Stephenson, ‘Thomas Firmin 1632-1697′ (3 volumes, D.Phil. Oxford, 1949), for a hostile contemporary account, see Luke Milbourne, A False Faith not Justified by Care For the Poor Prov’d in a Sermon, 28 August 1698. See also Hearne, Remarks and Collections, I, 102: ‘Tho. Firmin … a rank <108> Socinian was a great man with Dr Tillotson Archbp. of Cant. and others of the same leaven promoted by K. William to some of the best dignities and preferments.’)

Laure Principaud describes John Locke’s “Letter on Toleration”

John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the major English thinkers of the XVIIth century. He was the son of landed English gentry and studied classical literature, which destined him, first to a teaching post at the university and later, to ordination in the Church of England. To flee from that fate, Locke studied medicine and philosophy but the socio-political events in England at the time led him on to political interest. He acquired his political education when he worked for the first Earl of Shaftesbury, a powerful figure of the political scene in England. Locke was his medical advisor and became a permanent member of the household. Together with the Earl of Shaftesbury, he was exiled to Holland and returned to England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

In Locke’s time, England was in a state of socio-political chaos in which political and religious matters were closely meshed. England was Christian, but no longer Catholic, and in this part of Christendom, there existed, besides the Church of England, many dissenting churches in conflict. After the bloody dictatorship of Cromwell (died 1658), Locke had witnessed the reign of the Stuart dynasty, Charles II (1660-1685) and James II (1685-1688). These two kings were absolutist, secretly Catholic and tried indirectly to favour the return of their church.

Religious conflicts between all the dissident churches had reached a high level of violence. Moreover, the struggle between King and Parliament was constant: it was the time of creation of the two major political groups of the English Parliament: the Whigs who defended Parliament’s rights and the Tories who defended the Monarchy’s prerogatives. In 1679, the Whigs carried the vote of the Habeas Corpus Act which confirmed and extended the right to enjoy individual liberties. But James II, with the Tories’ support, managed to succeed to Charles: this marked the beginning of a brutal and clumsy reign. James II wanted to impose the return of absolutism and Catholicism: tensions reached a high level. The English people, through Parliament, then called on the Stathouder of Holland, William of Orange, who had married Mary, James’ elder daughter. On November 5, 1688, William landed in England; Jacques fled to France. The Parliament proposed the throne of England to William and Mary, subject to the condition that they sign the Bill Of Rights (1689) which defined and guaranteed the rights and liberties of Parliament. It was the « Glorious Revolution » which led England on the path towards a constitutional regime.

John Locke dedicates his « Letter concerning toleration » (1689) to William, the new king. Like all the Locke’s work, this « Letter » is by no means an apolitical philosophical paper, but the result of a pragmatic and political way of thinking. He observes and notes that before the Glorious Revolution there had been « a governement partial in matter of religion » and « religions who vindicate their own rights for the only interest of their own sects », in short « a narrowness of spirit on all sides » cause of the « miseries » of England. Locke presents his letter as an important and pragmatic body of thought concerning toleration between religious groups and the role of the State whose object was to guarantee peace and order in the country. In all his works, Locke meditates on individual liberties and the role of government. He is the founder of political Liberalism. His thought influenced Enlightenment ideas in Europe (Voltaire, Montesquieu…) and definitely played a role in the Revolutionary events at the end of the XVIIIth century.

Among Locke’s major works « Two treatises of Government » published in 1690, and « An Essay concerning Human Understanding », published in 1693, are worth mentioning.

2) Why is a « law of toleration » necessary? : Locke’s arguments

The entire «Letter concerning toleration » is a response to that question. So what is a « law of toleration »? It’s a law which defines and clearly separates the roles and powers of churches and the State concerning religious matters. The aim is to prevent the violence which exists between churches and between the churches and the State. The boundaries between the two must be clear and unmovable:

- The Churches’ actions must be limited to what concerns men’ souls.

- The State’s actions must be limited to what concerns the care of the commonwealth.

The stake is to guarantee « an absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.

* Churches
According to Locke, a church is « a voluntary society of men joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the salvation of their soul ». Thus, a church can be only a voluntary association of people who make the free choice of being there and who can leave the group if it seems to be no longer appropriated to their salvation. So the rules which organise the association can’t be imposed onto the whole society of England. The strongest power that a church has is to exclude a member from the community, but this member retains his civil rights, for « belonging to a church can’t be an argument to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments ». Civil rights are the same for all the citizens, whatever their denominations may be. In that way, Locke bases a great deal of his argumentation on religious considerations: he refers to the Bible in order to show that for the aim of Christianity, and the role of the church, the appropriate means are incompatible with terrestrial interest and the thirst for power. Indeed, the business of « true religion » is not the « striving for power and empire »: « the Kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, said our Saviour to his disciples, but ye shall not be so » (Luke XXII, 25, 26). The only role of church is to guide Christians in their « war upon (their) own lusts and vices ». For that purpose, the church’s servants have only one mean of action: « the exemplary holiness of their conversation », not violence and persecutions. « How easily the pretence of religion, and the care of soul serves for a cloak to covetousness, rapine and ambition ». Toleration, for Locke, is an evident necessity both for Christian reasons and reasonable reasons.

* State / Civil government

Civil magistrates caring for men’ souls is not only an absurdity to the common sense, for Locke, but also illegitimate (there is no legitimation by God for this in the Bible) and impossible: civil government has only one means, the laws, and these laws are not appropriate for inner and personal belief. Constraint can’t persuade.

The interest of the commonwealth refers only to « life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like ». So, the State’s role in the business of toleration is to guarantee civil rights and the civil peace: « laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud or the violence of the others ». To force someone by law to believe in what he doesn’t want to believe is not only absurd for Locke but it’s an offence done to God. The other consequence is that « neither pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commowealth because of his religion (…) the commonwealth which embraces indifferently all men that are honest, peacable and industrious ».

Civil power can’t interrupt a religious ceremony except if, in that ceremony, things forbidden in civil life (human sacrifices, for instance) are done, placing in danger the security and safety of Nation and people. Indeed, « the part of the magistrate is only to take care that the commonwealth receive no prejudice and that there be no injury done to any man ».

A civil power which shows itself incapable of doing this job can be overthrown by the people: in that way, liberty of conscience is finally the more important thing.

So the laws of toleration must guarantee civil peace and the State is a sort of regulator. With that in view, Locke also considers this as a rampart against the atheist’s arguments. Locke considers them as a danger for the civil order: « the taking away of God (…) dissolves all » so « those are not to be tolerated who deny the being of God ». Locke devolves to churches a role of moral regulation. In his approach to atheism, Locke’s view of toleration is a far cry from what we mostly accept today.

According to Locke, wars and troubles are not caused by the diversity of opinions (religious, but also political) but by:

- the refusal of toleration to those who are of different opinions

- the insatiable desire for domination and the credulity of the multitude.

And it is this unstable climate which goes against civil peace and all liberties (and against economic prosperity finally).

« If the law of toleration were once so settled, that all churches were obliged to lay down toleration as a foundation of their own liberty; and teach that liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right »

3) The main thrust of Locke’s thought

The stakes of toleration in Locke’s thought are the respect of civil liberties, of natural rights (liberty, life, and property) and public peace. These arguments are legislative and pragmatic: intolerance (or in-toleration) is a political inanity, the root cause of all disturbances. Thus the word « toleration » denotes a juridical act, contrary to the word « tolerance », which rather designates a state of mind, an individual or collective virtue. More than the dignity of other people or mutual comprehension, it is what constitutes the practical conditions of cohabitation in a pluri-religious state which interests Locke.

The Political Liberalism of Locke has a link with his theory of understanding (which, in short, says that each idea arises through individual experience, thus any idea can vary between one man and another). For Locke, concerning political and religious subjects, there is no one Truth but only some values which can be accepted or not; and the cohabitation of these values can be translated into laws.

Moreover, Locke grants an important role to individual concience, a conscience based upon reason. A thing is just and legitimate if it is accepted by the individual’s reason: the idea of individual responsibility is one of the main notions in Locke’s philosophy. So the legitimacy of civil government is based on Trust, on confidence. If civil government goes against that Trust, the people has the right and the duty to judge it and to rise up against it. In that way, Locke’s philosophy about toleration provides a first theoretical limit to sovereign power.

* Locke’s thought had an important repercussion in the Europe of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. Many thinkers of the Enlightenment were inspired by this political liberalism, including the French Revolution and the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights in 1789 (and up till today). Among French philosophers, Voltaire wrote about the toleration in his « Traité sur la tolérance », published in 1763. Voltaire wrote, like Locke, in a troubled socio-political context and was inspired by the British model, but his philosophy of toleration is quite different. At the end of Louis XIV’s reign and at the beginning of the reign of Louis XV, persecution against religious minorities, in particular against the Protestant Huguenot « Camisards », started up again. People’s consciences were still marked by the religious wars of the XVIth century. Voltaire wrote his essay about toleration in the context of the Jean Calas case, a Protestant man unfairly accused of having assassinated his own son, allegedly because he wanted to become a Catholic. This case inspired Voltaire to write against all religious persecutions. Voltaire who has read Locke retained some of his arguments, in particular the ideas that each citizen must obey first and foremost to his own reason and may legitimately rise up against any bad government, and that toleration is a necessity in a pluralistic empire for the sake of a Nation’s peace. But, contrary to Locke who advocates a clear separation between the role and power of the churches and the role and power of civil government, Voltaire advocates the subordination of the Church to civil power as the only means to guarantee toleration (thus, he appealed to the King’s council in the Calas case).

* Nowadays, in France, the question of the way of living together in a pluri-religious state has again been raised in the debate about secularity. The word « tolérance » in French has today a more extended signification and has often lost its political meaning to take on a more moral turn. The relations between Church and State concerning religion translate into the 1905 Act of Parliament which is the heritage of Enlightenment philosophy, the French Revolution and the Dreyfus case. The 1905 Act of Parliament establishes the separation of the roles and powers of Churches and the State in society. This question of secularization was to re-emerge in a big way in public discourse in the 1980s with the demonstrations for the defence of state-funded private schools, the first « veil affair » or the Vivien report concerning sects. According to Raphael Liogier (in «Une laïcité légitime », La France et ses religions d’Etat», published in 2006), in spite of this very law, France is one of the States which get the most deeply involved in religious matters, through its imposition of regulations. In Raphaël Liogier’s purview, the particularity of this secular intervention is simultaneously to deny any intention of intervention while interceding to a very considerable degree in the religious field at the same time. The « neutrality » advocated by the State is what enables it to intercede positively in the social game and in the religious field, as an arbitrator. According to R. Liogier, and in that way he seems to concur with Locke’s views on toleration, a secular State should not declare itself « neutral », but « incompetent » on issues of religion. The State can intercede in the religious field, if the security of the state or the safety of the human being are in jeopardy, but the state should not pronounce on what a good or a bad, a true or a false belief, or what the signification of such or such a religious rule or behaviour, may be…

Locke’s « Letter concerning toleration », written in 1689, raised some important issues then, which can still help us today to question our own way of considering cohabitation in a pluri-religious setting and the role the state should play in that perspective. John Locke’s “Letter on Toleration” Written by Laure Principaud
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 18:30

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Secondary literature
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Locke Studies, appearing annually, publishes scholarly work on John Locke.

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