Ellison, The Koran & Our Founding Fathers

WASHINGTON -- Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, a Detroit native and the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Quran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at today's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. The new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

"He wanted to use a Quran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.

Jefferson's copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson's collection.

Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other new members in the House chamber, then use the Quran in his individual oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself," Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert said.

My first thought is that Jefferson's Koran is interesting, but not nearly so much as Saddam Hussein's. Now Saddam's copy was written in his own blood. How cool is that? It's really too bad Ellison couldn't get that one, but I guess there wasn't time. Plus it might not be considered so politically "savvy."

In point of fact, using Jefferson's Koran is not as savvy as one might think. Since dhimmedia will not be asking why in the world Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Koran in the first place, it's up to the blogosphere to explore. While supposed "reporters" would leave us to our own devices, no doubt to assume that Jefferson was so prescient that he envisioned political correctness hundreds of years beforehand, there are those of us who seek a bigger (and more accurate) picture.

When you're actually curious, it's not that hard to find dots that connect. If you wonder what Thomas Jefferson was doing with a Koran, consider this, from Joshua E. London in the National Review - "America's Earliest Terrorists":

.... Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.

These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress,

“that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

[Emphases are my own.]

So, the joke's on Ellison: by using Jefferson's Koran, he's pointing out exactly why he shouldn't. The problem is, no one will ever know.

Comments

[Shahed]

The Barbary Pirates were just that - pirates. They didn't represent the whole Muslim world, or even all of North Africa. In response to Barbary raids on their shipping, the United States (represented by Thomas Jefferson) signed a treaty in 1786 with Islamic Morocco (the first country to recognize the United States upon independence, BTW) to protect shipping lines and assert the friendship between the US and Morocco. It remains, to this day, the oldest unbroken treaty ever signed by the US. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1786t.htm

[Lynn B.]

Shahed -- nowhere in this post does Anne suggest that the Barbary Pirates represented the whole Muslim world. And the treaty to which you refer was one of those being negotiated in the very series of meetings she describes. But the response of the Tripolitan ambassador makes it clear that elements in the Barbary states, treaty or not, were in fact hostile toward America, and that the roots of that hostility emanated from their understanding of the Koran. Thus has it ever been. So to pretend that there's anything "unassailably all-American" about that book is disingenuous at best.

[Shahed]

Yes, but this post is making it look like all Muslims were like those Barbary pirates, when in fact the US had Muslim friends in the area that helped defend US shipping from pirates.

[Yael]

Shahed, I could do a whole series of posts about how most 18th century Muslims were NOT Barbary pirates, and most 21st century Muslims are NOT jihadists. But ... so what? If I fall and break my leg and go to the hospital, it doesn't help me at all if the doctor tells me that the OTHER one isn't broken. That's good, that's nice, that's normal... but it's not what is important. Not every German was a Nazi, either, and perhaps not every individual Nazi was a bad person, but there were enough bad Nazis that they came very close to killing all the Jews in Europe. So from my perspective, any "good Germans" are pretty much irrelevant. I'm sure there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who read and study the Koran and don't want to blow themselves up in order to kill a crowd of innocent people. But the fact is, they don't concern me and are even irrelevant to what does concern me. How many Iranians does it take to wipe Israel off the map? It may take only one. If that's the case, that one is my concern. The rest are like a non-broken leg.

[Vox]

Jefferson bought his copy of the Koran when he was a law student studying with George Wythe. He read it long before the conflict with the Barbary Pirates. He considered it a law book, and was greatly interested in the development of law in different cultures. He did not see all Muslims through the prism of the Barbary Pirates, a theme that seems to be developing at a number of sites on the Internet. There may not be anything "unassailably All-American" about the book, but it is unassailably Jeffersonian to be wide ranging and curious about the world at large... and also to be respectful of differences in religions. He entertained Muslims at the White House when he was president, and when he talked about the need for religious plurality, he included "Mohametans" with Christians, Hindus and Jews. Ellison was right on point in looking to TJ to remind us of this important aspect of American values.

[Paul]

If the Congressman wants to take his oath on the Koran then let him. We can only hope that he will keep the oath !

[noapology]

"So, the joke's on Ellison: by using Jefferson's Koran, he's pointing out exactly why he shouldn't. The problem is, no one will ever know." Well, don't be so sure of that. There are some of us who will see to it that Ellison's every move is amplified. There are quite of few who know of the irony.