In the early days of December 1805, a handful of prominent politicians received formal invitations to join President Thomas Jefferson for a White House dinner.
Such entreaties were not uncommon: Jefferson frequently hosted lawmakers for political working dinners at the White House, almost always commencing them about 3:30 in the afternoon, shortly after the House or Senate had adjourned for the day.
But this gathering, scheduled for Dec. 9, would be slightly different.
âdinner will be on the table precisely at sun-set â â the invitations read. âThe favour of an answer is asked.â
The occasion was the presence of a Tunisian envoy to the United States, Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, who had arrived in the country just the week before, in the midst of Americaâs ongoing conflict with what were then known as the Barbary States.
And the reason for the dinnerâs later-than-usual start was Mellimelliâs observance of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims in which observers fast between dawn and dusk. Only after sunset do Muslims break their fast with a meal, referred to as an iftar.
Jeffersonâs decision to change the time of the meal to accommodate Mellimelliâs observance of Ramadan has been seized on by both sides in the 21st-century debate over Islam more than 200 years later. Historians have cited the meal as the first time an iftar took place in the White House â and it has been referenced in recent White House celebrations of Ramadan as an embodiment of the Founding Fatherâs respect for religious freedom. Meanwhile, critics on the far right have taken issue with the characterization of Jeffersonâs Dec. 9, 1805, dinner as an iftar.
Whatever Jefferson could have foreseen for the young countryâs future, it appears the modern-day White House tradition of marking Ramadan with an iftar dinner or Eid celebration has come to an end.
Ramadan, which falls on the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, started on May 27 this year and ends at sundown Saturday. Muslims around the world will mark the end of the holy month by celebrating the holiday Eid al-Fitr, the âfeast of breaking of the fast.â
For the first time in nearly two decades, Ramadan has come and gone without the White House recognizing it with an iftar or Eid celebration, as had taken place each year under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. In recent weeks, several former White House staff members told The Post they would usually begin planning an iftar âmonths in advanceâ and didnât anticipate the Trump White House could pull something off before the end of Ramadan.
White House officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In late May, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly said the State Department would break with recent tradition and not host a Ramadan reception, as it had done nearly annually for two decades. On Saturday, Tillerson released a brief statement sending âbest wishes to all Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr.â
âThis holiday marks the culmination of Ramadan, a month in which many experience meaning and inspiration in acts of fasting, prayer, and charity,â Tillerson said in the statement. âThis day offers an opportunity to reflect on our shared commitment to building peaceful and prosperous communities. Eid Mubarak.â
Tillersonâs brief remarks â and Trumpâs silence as Eid approached â was in stark contrast to Obama, who released a lengthy statement for the holiday last year.
If there were any questions about whether Jefferson was aware of Mellimelliâs religious practices, the memoirs of John Quincy Adams â later compiled and published by his son â put those to rest, according to the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University.
âI dined at the Presidentâs, in company with the Tunisian Ambassador and his two secretaries,â Adams, at the time a senator from Massachusetts, wrote in his diary on Dec. 9, 1805. âBy the invitation, dinner was to have been on the table precisely at sunset â it being in the midst of Ramadan, during which the Turks fast while the sun is above the horizon. Did not arrive until half an hour after sunset, and, immediately after greeting the President and the company, proposed to retire and smoke his pipe.â
In his diary, the future president described Mellimelli with an air of fascination, noting everything from how the envoy smelled (of rose-scented snuff) to how his appearance differed from that of the other âTurksâ (Mellimelli wore his beard long, while the two secretaries who had accompanied him only had whiskers).
Adams, the son of President John Adams, captured few details about what was served for dinner itself, only that Mellimelli âfreely partook of the dishes on the table without inquiring into the cookeryâ and that, soon after eating, he left for the drawing room to smoke his pipe again.
âHis manners are courteous, but we were all unable to converse with him, except through the medium of an interpreter,â Adams wrote.
Compared with other, more thoroughly documented events that have taken place at the White House over the centuries, the details from the dinner are scarce. But what Jefferson couldnât have known is that changing the time of the meal to accommodate Mellimelliâs observance of Ramadan would turn that dinner into a point of contention in Americaâs culture wars more than 200 years later.
It wasnât until 1996 that the modern-day White House tradition of celebrating Ramadan with a reception or meal started. That February, first lady Hillary Clinton hosted about 150 people for a reception for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month.
The person Clinton credited for teaching her about Islam? Teenage daughter Chelsea, who had the year before studied Islamic history in school, according to reports that year cited by Muslim Voices.
Clinton described the reception as a âhistoric and overdue occasion,â a precedent for Muslim religious celebrations at the White House, the Associated Press reported then. (Itâs unclear if she knew about the Jefferson dinner.)
âA greater understanding of the tenets of Islam in our national consciousness will help us build strength and resilience as a nation,â Clinton told guests, according to the Associated Press. âThe values that lie at the heart of Ramadan â faith, family, community and responsibility to the less fortunate â resonate with all the peoples of this earth.â
The tradition continued under President George W. Bush, who hosted an iftar dinner every year of his two terms in office â including shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when anger toward Muslim Americans was spiking. At the 2001 dinner, in mid-November, Bush emphasized that America was fighting against terrorism, not Islam, according to The Washington Postâs coverage then:
âAll the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements,â Bush said. âRamadan and the upcoming holiday season are a good time for people of different faiths to learn more about each other. And the more we learn, the more we find that many commitments are broadly shared.â
After a White House Rose Garden ceremony, Bush had said his message for the dinner would be, âWeâre a nation of many faiths.â Asked if the sentiment was symbolic, he immediately replied, âNo â itâs real.â
More than 15 years later, Charlotte Beers, who served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy under Bush, can still remember how effective the iftar had been diplomatically, in being able to show that the United States respected all religions.
âWe all agreed that we had to reach out to moderate Muslims and acknowledge that they had as much concern as we did about the circumstances,â Beers told The Post in a recent interview. âThat dinner was extremely important and heard around the world. ⌠My personal opinion was, this speaks to that whole underpinning of what makes the United States tick â freedom of religion. It was extremely timely, we felt.â
But it was under President Barack Obama that the annual White House iftar dinner began to cause a bigger stir â in part because the president resurrected the story of Jeffersonâs 1805 dinner with Mellimelli.
âRamadan is a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America,â Obama said in his remarks at the 2010 White House iftar. âThe first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan â making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.â
Obama mentioned this historical dinner again in his 2012 White House iftar remarks; that year, organizers also had set up a special display of Jeffersonâs copy of the Koran, on loan from the Library of Congress.
âAnd thatâs a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam â like so many faiths â is part of our national story,â Obama said.
Terence Szuplat, a speechwriter for Obama, told The Post he couldnât pinpoint who had brought up the Jefferson dinner first.
âI remember thinking, that would be a very interesting and fascinating and powerful story, but we canât have the president say it until we know that itâs 100 percent accurate,â Szuplat said. He does remember consulting with historians at Monticello; historian Gaye Wilson, who wrote a 2003 essay about Jeffersonâs dealings with Mellimelli, also remembers working with the White House to confirm details about the dinner.
As Szuplat expected, far-right blogs seized upon Obamaâs comments, insisting that Jefferson had not hosted an iftar, but rather had simply moved the time back as a courtesy. âHe didnât change the menu, he didnât change anything else,â one blog declared, before calling Obama âdisgustingâ and accusing him of rewriting history to cast Islam in a favorable light.
One of the biggest problems with those arguments, historians say, is that they ignore Jeffersonâs reputation as someone who was a staunch defender of religious freedom, whatever his opinions were of the religion in question.
Nearly 30 years before the 1805 dinner, Jefferson had drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he considered among his lifeâs finest works. Jefferson described initial resistance to the proposed bill, as well as the significance of its passage in 1786, in his autobiography:
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally past; and a singular proposition proved that itâs protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word âJesus Christ,â so that it should read âdeparture from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religionâ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of itâs protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
That Jefferson would push back the time of a dinner by several hours is an indication for his respect for religious freedom, even though Jefferson was widely criticized in his time for his accommodation of the Tunisian envoy, said Scott Harrop, a professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and cultures at the University of Virginia.
Those who insist Jefferson didnât host an iftar â even if he intended to, in the spirit of religious freedom â are also missing the very simple definition of what an iftar is, historians and former White House staff members say. Much as one doesnât need a roasted turkey or eggnog to celebrate Christmas, there does not need to be a certain menu in place to make an iftar dinner.
âAll iftar is is people breaking their fast. If they broke their fast in the White House, then that was iftar,â said Zaki Barzinji, a former senior associate director at the Obama White House who helped plan the administrationâs last Ramadan celebration. âIf Iâm with a group of friends who are not Muslim, and we go and eat super late, and I break my fast while Iâm with them, technically there was an iftar at that dinner.â
John Ragosta, a historian and author of âReligious Freedom: Jeffersonâs Legacy, Americaâs Creed,â agreed, saying that people trying to claim Jeffersonâs 1805 dinner was not an iftar were playing a ârather childish semantic game.â
âHere is an ambassador, an honored guest. The dinner is specifically scheduled after sundown to accommodate him,â Ragosta said. âYeah, it sounds to me like an iftar dinner. Youâre breaking the fast during Ramadan with someone who is a Muslim.â
Rumana Ahmed, who helped plan several White House iftar dinners and one Eid celebration during the Obama administration, said it was unfortunate the tradition could end with Trump. For all of the events she helped coordinate, the focus changed slightly each year: from honoring Muslim American youth to recognizing the economic contributions of the community, for example. But the overarching message of each White House Ramadan event was always one of inclusion and respect, Ahmed said.
âIf you look at when it started and how itâs evolved, in a way itâs kind of been in response to conversations happening on a national level and in our society,â Ahmed said.
Source: Washington Post