ABSTRACT
This essay argues that there was a strong correlation between the Dutch Republic’s promotion of religious toleration on the one side and improved relations with Jews and Muslims on the other. Contemporary polemicists complained that the sixteenth-century Dutch Anabaptist David Joris had “turned Turke” and became an atheist. Yet the Dutch toleration of Mennonites and their more liberal, spiritualistic coreligionists, the Doopsgezinden – who like Joris emphasized inner religious spirituality over doctrine – meant that such attitudes to religious alterity could shape the discourse on Judaism and Islam. Some Doopsgezinden, such as Jan Theunisz, worked with local Jews to assist the Dutch government negotiate with Muslim principalities. This essay explores Islam in the perspective of such nonconformists, including Joris, Theunisz, the Mennonite Pieter Jansz Twisck, the spiritualistic mathematicians Robbert Robbertsz le Canu and Jan Hendrick Jarichs van der Ley, and English nonconformists Leonard Busher and Henry Finch. It reveals that the willingness of Christian nonconformists to adjust their theology allowed them greater latitude when thinking about both Jews and Muslims.
