Journalism

-By Warner Todd Huston

The media is upset this weekend that President Donald Trump canceled the “White House Muslim Iftar Dinner tradition started by Thomas Jefferson.” But the media is wrong in every respect. Thomas Jefferson never held any Iftar dinner and only three out of 45 presidents ever hosted one, so there is no such “tradition” to cancel.

Amy B. Wang of the Washington Post led the pack with this nonsense that Thomas Jefferson held the “first Iftar dinner” with a June 24 piece entitled, “Trump just ended a long tradition of celebrating Ramadan at the White House.” (If you can’t see the article at the Washington Post, it can be seen at the Greensboro News & Record.)

Once again the claim that Thomas Jefferson held the first Iftar dinner at the White House was trotted out by the Post’s Wang. She recounted the time when the diplomatic envoy from the Bey of Tunis, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, visited Washington during Ramadan in 1805.

Jefferson invited the envoy to the White House for dinner at 3:30 PM — the time most Washingtonians had dinner in those days. But after he sent the invitation he was told that Melli Melli could not partake of a meal until after sunset because of Ramadan. Thomas Jefferson was faced with two choices: cancel the dinner entirely or simply have the meal later in the evening at a time when his guest could attend. Being a good host and a decent person, Jefferson chose the latter.

But in fact, all Jefferson did was change the time of his meal. He had no intention of honoring Islam. Jefferson simply was not honoring the religion of “the Musselmen” — as he termed Muslims at the time — when he changed the time of the meal. Also, there is no evidence that Jefferson asked Melli Melli what sort of food a “Musselman” would eat, so no special food was prepared to suit a Muslim’s religious needs. Jefferson neither inquired about religious accommodations nor was any made. All he did was move the time of the meal as a courtesy.

Further, Jefferson sent no letters containing proclamations about the meal being an Iftar dinner nor mentioning Islam, he never mentioned such honors in his private papers, and there is no record that he spoke to anyone about his intentions to honor the Muslim practice of an Iftar dinner.

But to the Post’s Wang, that Jefferson had a dinner at all was somehow proof positive that he invented a “tradition” of some sort. And what was the “proof” she presented that it was in Iftar dinner? She quoted the words of liberal historian John Ragosta who gave the scintillating argument, “Yeah, it sounds to me like an Iftar dinner.”

Wang went on to insist there has been a “modern tradition” of having an Iftar dinner at the White House. But in truth, only three presidents in all of American history ever held an Iftar dinner.

Bill Clinton held the first one. His dinner was politically motivated because at the time the growing Muslim-American community was leaning toward becoming a Republican constituency and Clinton was looking to peel Muslim voters away from the GOP.

George W. Bush followed Clinton’s practice of holding Iftar dinners because he wanted to prove that the U.S. wasn’t looking to go to war with all of Islam in the wake of the attacks on 9/11/2001 and the subsequent implementation of the war on terror. His celebration of Iftar was a diplomatic effort.

And, naturally, Barack Obama held them because he had a personal connection to Islam through his childhood growing up in Indonesia and being raised during that time as a Muslim.

But three presidents out of 45 does not make a “tradition.”
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No, Fake News Media, Thomas Jefferson is NOT the ‘First President to Have a Muslim Iftar Dinner’”