Jihadi Du Jour: Why Thomas Jefferson had a Koran

Crossposted from The HILL Chronicles

I previously wrote on an issue involving Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, and the Koran. I had said in my article, "Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress, after Ellison announced he plans to have his oath of office photo taken with the Koran, not the Christian Bible, as is tradition." Ellison was sworn in last month to serve in the House of Representatives as a United States Congressman after being elected last November from the 5th district of Minnesota.

He demanded use of and received permission from the Library of Congress to use Thomas Jefferson’s own personal copy of the Koran on which to swear his oath of allegiance to the Constitution at the inauguration ceremony.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson’s Koran because it showed that “a visionary like Jefferson” believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

The Library of Congress loaned out Jefferson’s rare copy of the first English language translation of the Koran ever made directly from the Arabic text. It was published in London as a two-volume set in 1764. There were many individuals that had complained about Ellison’s choice and quite an uproar was raised over the whole ordeal. Has anybody happened to ask why it was that Jefferson felt the need to own and read a copy of the Koran?

As the third president of the United States, Jefferson had no CIA to feed intelligence data to him and to his national security advisor. As a matter of fact, Jefferson had no national security officer. Times then were quite different of course.

Jefferson needed that copy of the Koran because he was desperate to learn something about Islam from that religion’s written de facto standard of all things Muslim. And you ask why? Because the United States was going to war in the early 1800s against conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims. Something obviously Rep. Ellison did not know or conveniently chose to ignore.

During the early years of the United States when our foundation was being laid, our forefathers fought an international group of terrorists who, like today’s conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims, made no distinction between geopolitical nation states. They were called the Barbary Pirates. They were from the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Allusion to the affair can be found in the words “…to the shores of Tripoli” mentioned in the Marine Corps Hymn.

Jefferson also deduced that the best way to learn about the political, military, social, economic, and religious agendas of America’s enemies was to read the best textbook on all things Muslim. So he read the Koran in what for his day was a state-of-the-art translation into English directly from the Arabic. Jefferson’s copy of the Koran equipped him with everything he needed to know on how to respond to threats from the caliphates of the early 1800s.

In response to a declaration of war on the United States of America by the Barbary Coast caliphates, Thomas Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to the Mediterranean in 1803. The fighting during those days saw so many acts of heroism that established the U.S. Navy as a force to be reckoned with.

In 1805, the Constitution supported the landing of Marines “on the shores of Tripoli” in an action that later was immortalized in the Marine Corps Hymn. The Americans and their allies destroyed the harbor citadel at Derna that served as the headquarters for the pirates.

The first blue-water ocean-going war machine of the new United States Navy turned the Tripoli harbor from state-of-the-art fortifications (state-of-the-art for 18th century Muslims, that is) back to 7th century piles of rubble. The United States Navy literally freed the Mediterranean and the world from domination by militant Islam for nearly 200 years.

The crew of the USS Constitution beat the tar out of those international terrorists. That led to a peace treaty that lasted for almost two hundred years until September 11th, 2001, when conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Islam killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Jefferson’s resolve to fight had its beginings in his reading the Koran as the best source of the time that was all things Muslim. Jefferson knew that 18th century Americans were in danger from what we call today conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Islam.

Mr. Ellison, you will keep all of this in mind as you serve as the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives, won’t you?

Labels: Islam in America