While liberals just can't put on the political burqa fast enough, Robert Spencer had this to say,
This is allegedly a political masterstroke by Ellison, but it really just begs the question. Thomas Jefferson, obviously, was not a Muslim. In his famous statement on religious freedom he wrote about whether one's neighbor believed in one god or twelve "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." But what no one is willing to discuss here is whether the Qur'an and Islam really fit into that framework. When I have mentioned that it sanctions lying to unbelievers (3:28 and 16:106, in the mainstream understanding of those verses by Islamic theologians and schools of jurisprudence; cf. Ibn Kathir and many others), people have responded that the Bible is full of nasty stuff as well. But people aren't swearing on the Bible because it is full of nasty stuff, or endorsing any of it that might actually be there. The idea of swearing on the Bible arises from Christian belief and is buttressed by Christian theology -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant -- that requires honesty and eschews all dishonesty as coming from the "Father of Lies." The permissions to be dishonest in the Qur'an are not mitigated by Islamic belief, tradition, and theology, but are in fact reinforced -- by Muhammad's statements that "war is deceit" and that lying is permissible in wartime, and more.
In short, to swear on the Bible is to affirm, among other things,
that one is part of a tradition, and to swear on the Qur'an does not
amount to an affirmation of the same tradition, no matter how much
Glenn Beck or Ed Koch or anyone wishes it does or assumes it does.
Islamic teachers daily use the Qur'an to establish principles that
differ radically from those of Judeo-Christian tradition. These
questions need to be discussed in a forthright and honest manner by
Ellison and by the mainstream media, instead of being swept under the
rug or condemned as bigotry
What do Muslims think about Thomas Jefferson?
Many Americans don't realize that Thomas Jefferson was the first President to confront jihad. It was Jefferson who invaded the "shores of Tripoli" in response to Islamic pirates raiding of American mercahnt ships. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprized that Ellison would choose Jefferson, for his publicity stunt.It was the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Manila that was bombed in 1970, and again on July 4th, 1987.
And that version of the Qur'an that Jefferson possessed, and that Ellison presumes to appropriate for his own religio-political purposes? Its author, George Sales, translated the Qur'an in 1734 so that his Protestant readership, in learning more about its contents, could "attack the Koran with success" and Sales maintained that it would be Protestants to whom, within Christianity, would fall the task of checking Islam: "for them [the Protestants]...Providence has reserved the glory of its overthrow."
Oh, and among the books in Jefferon's library was another -- Humphrey Prideaux's 1697 work on Muhammad, "The True Nature of the Imposture Displayed."
Indeed.
Jefferson had long experience trying to free American ships, beginning with the "Betsy" seized by Muslim pirates operating out of Morocco, a task entrusted to him, Franklin, and Adams as early as 1786, and then later tried free American seamen enslaved by the Dey of Algiers. He detested those whom he had first to try to negotiate with, recognizing their malevolence and their meretriciousness, and he sought ways to force Congress to strengthen the U.S. Navy so that, through force, the only thing that in his dealings with Muslims he thought they would understand, he could at long last deal with them.
And deal with them he did.
