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Ideas & Arguments · 1 of 6 · 1689

Locke's Letter and the “Mahometan” as boundary case

Last updated October 22, 2026. Not peer reviewed; see the review status.

Did John Locke argue that Muslims should keep their civil rights?

Yes. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke says neither pagan, Mahometan, nor Jew should be excluded from the commonwealth's civil rights because of religion. His toleration had limits, and Islamic-world influence on him is contested and unproven.

Why it matters. This is the earliest text in the track that separates civil rights from belief, using a Muslim as the example. Jefferson paraphrased the sentence in his 1776 notes. Reading the sentence shows how far the idea went and where Locke stopped.

The document

What does the sentence say?

Locke wrote the Letter in Latin in 1685 to 1686, during exile in the Netherlands, addressed to Philipp van Limborch. It was published anonymously at Gouda in 1689. William Popple's English translation appeared the same year without Locke's commission. “Mahometan” is the period word for a Muslim; this site uses it only in quotations.

“neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion.”
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple (London, 1689)Editions differ in spelling (Mahumetan or Mahometan) and capitalization. The sense is the same.
Interpretation

Why does a Muslim appear in a Protestant argument?

Locke's target was state coercion of Christian conformity. He pushed the argument to the people his readers saw as furthest from the church: if they keep civil rights despite belief, so does a dissenting Protestant.

Denise Spellberg reads the Muslim as a boundary case that later readers, the Founders among them, used to test a principle at its edge. That is an interpretation of how the sentence worked, not something the Letter states.

The document

Where did Locke stop?

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Britannica note two limits. Atheists were excluded because, Locke held, they cannot be bound by oaths. Religions that, in his view, refused their place in civil society were excluded too; the Encyclopedia identifies this with Catholicism.

So the sentence is evidence for civil rights independent of theology. It is not evidence of unlimited toleration, and it says nothing about Islam as a religion.

Where scholars differ

Did Ottoman or Islamic-world models shape the Letter?

Nabil Matar documents sustained early modern British contact with Muslim societies. Humberto Garcia argues Islam figured in English Enlightenment debate. The contested step is causal: that such models shaped Locke's argument or the Founders' reading of it.

This site follows the mainstream view that a direct link is not established, and labels it speculative.

The document

How does Locke reach Jefferson?

Jefferson's Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury (October to December 1776; Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:547-48) record Locke's limits on the magistrate: civil authority covers civil interests, not the care of souls, and a church is a voluntary society. They also paraphrase the “Mahometan” sentence, as quoted in a Library of Congress bulletin. That is the documented link. This site claims no line-by-line match with the Statute.

“[he] says neither Pagan nor Mahometan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.”
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury, 1776, as quoted in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin (May 2002)Quoted from the bulletin; check against the Founders Online transcription before reuse.

Scholarly conversation

  • Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013)Argues that debates over Muslims' place in the republic shaped how Jefferson, Madison, and others defined religious liberty.
  • Humberto Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)Argues Islam was a live reference in English political and religious argument.
  • Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)Documents early modern British contact with Muslims, the starting point for any influence claim.

What remains open

  • Whether Locke meant actual Muslim subjects or the farthest rhetorical case.
  • Whether any Ottoman source can be tied to the Letter's argument, beyond its general setting.
  • Whether the Founders Online transcription matches the bulletin's wording of Jefferson's paraphrase.

Further reading for specialists

  • John Locke, Epistola de Tolerantia / A Letter on Toleration, ed. Raymond Klibansky, trans. J. W. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Latin with facing English.
  • John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ed. Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010).
  • Jeremy Waldron, “Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,” in Justifying Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Sources checked

Related on this site

Cite as: Threads of Connection, “Locke's Letter and the “Mahometan” as boundary case,” usmuslim.org/ideas/locke-letter-mahometan, last updated October 22, 2026. Content licensed CC BY 4.0.

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