Mustafa Umar – How & Why Thomas Jefferson Read the Quran
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AI: Transcript ©
So we're just ensure it's ready? Okay. Good.
We got him. Alright.
Welcome to,
our
Friday night program.
This today's program is cosponsored
with California Islamic University,
which means
that it's going to be slightly different than
the programs we normally do on Fridays.
So this is gonna be maybe a little
bit more academic in nature. So if you're
used to,
kind of like the more,
sermon type programs,
this is not gonna be one of those
so much. So just be prepared for that,
and I apologize in advance if that's what
your understanding was, Insha'Allah.
So,
the program tonight is called how
and why Thomas Jefferson read the Quran.
So, we're going to start with the video
clip,
and then I'm gonna ask a few questions.
Okay?
There's nothing really to do here, so I'll
just go ahead and give you a commentary.
This is a congressman being sworn into office.
Does anyone know who this is?
This is congressman Keith Mason. Does anyone know
what year this is?
Forget the year. Does anyone know who all
these people are?
That they're panning the camera over.
That's
his large family.
So it was so large that they actually
had to do 2 takes,
for the video of him being sworn in.
Okay? So I'm gonna tell you,
why this is relevant. Alright? So let's close
this window.
So Keith Ellison,
converted to Islam when he was in college.
And,
you know, he grew up in a Catholic
household. In fact, his mother is still Catholic.
And he was sworn into office in 2,007,
as the first Muslim in congress, and as
the 1st black member of congress from Minnesota.
So what happened was there's a lot of
Islamophobia
going on. So he found out
that,
there was a copy of the Quran
by Thomas Jefferson about 1 month before he
was sworn in, and he decided to go
ahead and swear in, not only on a
copy of the Quran, but on that specific
copy of the Quran. Now this incident happened
a long time ago, and in
2007, a lot of people started talking about
this incident.
But the reason why it's relevant
is it it continues to be relevant, not
only the subject of Thomas Jefferson and the
Quran,
but even the swearing in
because of this guy right here. Now this
audio is important. So this is a recent
video, and you can watch it.
Judge Moore has also said,
that he doesn't think, a Muslim
member of congress should be allowed to be
in congress.
Why?
Under what under what position you have to
swear on the bible.
When you you when you are before,
I had to do it. I'm an elected
official three terms. I had Can everyone hear
that? Yeah. Okay. Good.
To swear on a bible,
you have to swear on a bible to
be an elected official in the in the
United States of America.
He alleges that a Muslim cannot do that
ethically, swearing on the bible. You don't actually
have to swear on a Christian bible. You
can swear on anything, really. I don't know
if you knew that. You can swear on
a Jewish bible. Oh, no. I swear on
a Christian bible. I've done it 3 times.
I'm sure you have. I'm sure you've picked
a bible but the law is not that
you have to swear on a Christian bible.
That is not the law.
You you don't know that? Deer in headlights,
right?
Alright. Ted Crockett will work. I don't know.
I I know that, Donald Trump did it
when he when we made him president. Because
he's Christian, and he picked it. That's what
he wanted to that's what he wanted to
swear in on. Ted Crockett with the Moore
campaign. Good luck tonight. Thank you so much
for being here. My panel will react. Merry
Christmas, John. Thank you, sir.
So
so you can see why it's still relevant.
Even some, people in government,
they don't understand that you don't have to
square in on the bible. So these,
discussions
are still relevant to to today. So Keith,
congressman Keith Ellison's decision
was very
was very wise. It contested somewhat, but it
was very wise.
Because what he did was he realized that
there's a growing
anti Muslim, anti Islamic element
even at that time. And, of course, it's
continued until now.
So what he realized is that
people are looking
sir, some people are looking at Muslims as
being some type of other
otherizing, just like they're foreigners. They're not, well,
you know, they're not part and parcel of
this country. So what he did was he
chose
to swear in not only on a copy
of the Quran, but specifically on a copy
of the Quran that belonged to
Thomas Jefferson.
Now the question is, who is Thomas Jefferson,
and why is he so relevant? Now some
of you
who how many of you went to
high school in America?
High school in America.
Okay. So more than half of you. So
if you went to high school in America,
you studied US government. You studied the history
of America, most likely. Whether or not you
were paying attention is not relevant. You at
least came across some of these names, like
George Washington and John Jay and, you know,
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
So who is Thomas Jefferson? Just some quick
facts about him. What makes him so important?
He was?
Pardon and parcel? Pardon and parcel of? Of
the signing
of the US constitution. Yes. What else? The
second president. 2nd vice president.
And
Did he ever serve as president?
4th. 4th?
3rd. Yes. 3rd president.
Alright.
And he's one of the principal he's considered
to be one of the founding fathers of
the country.
Right? So that plays a major role in
trying to understand
what influence he's had in the past and
how Americans project back their history, and they
look at this specific group of people,
and what rate they give them. So that's
every community, every society, is that when they
establish a society, they look back upon the
pioneers
of that specific civilization. So that's one of
the reasons why we're focusing on it. There's
quite a few people in American history who've
read the Quran,
but it's very significant
on
why
and how
Thomas Jefferson
specifically read the Quran.
So
when,
when the congressman was being sworn in, he
found out 1 month later that there's a
copy
of the Quran
that was actually,
you know, belonged to Thomas Jefferson,
in his personal library.
And what happened was he requested that that
copy
be given would be taken out from the
library of congress,
and he's allowed to swear in on that
Quran. So this is what happened. What happened
was this was a copy, 2 volumes,
published in 17/64
in London.
They had, like, a multi, you know, colored
cover. It had a brown leather binding. This
is an ancient book.
So he asked for it, and usually they
don't give this to average people. They don't
just give this to normal people. Right? You
don't get access to manuscripts.
But they understood that now he's gonna be
a politician, he's gonna be someone of importance,
so they agreed.
So, the library of congress
is right across the street from the capitol
building.
So normally they could've just taken the book
and walked across,
and it would've been very easy. But instead
what they did was, they took extra precautions
for delivering the Quran
for the ceremony that we just witnessed.
So,
first,
to protect it from the outside air, this
is an ancient book, they put it in
a special rectangular box,
and they handled it with a green felt
wrapper that they were carrying it with. And
once they got instead of walking across the
street, they actually went in an underground tunnel
to deliver this copy of the Quran to
the capitol building so that he could be
sworn in on it. And when they presented
to him, he looked at it and he
said, you know, now that, you know, that's
something. Like, it's it's an ancient book, and
it's a very old translation of the Quran.
Of course they had to go through the
security system, so they had to run it
through the security,
in order to get it into the capital.
So that book itself
is
the original, or one of the original copies
of Thomas Jefferson's book, the Quran. And what
happened was, is that
when people were,
printing books at that time,
there used to be a way in which
they would determine how the binding would be.
So what they would write is sometimes they
would write the letter of every number of
pages, they would write the letter t at
the bottom of every book. And on other
pages they would write the letter j.
And that would determine it is I I
don't remember what it stands for, but it
stands for something. And that would determine how
they would cut the book. That's just the
way all books were.
So Thomas Jefferson, what he would do,
is that every single page or any page
that he wanted to mark with, he saw
a t,
he would type in his own j afterward
to make it t j for Thomas Jefferson.
And any any,
page that had a j on it and
he wanted to mark it, he put a
t beforehand.
So he realized that there's a t and
there's a j already happening in in the
book bindings of that time, so he would
add another letter, so he would mark it.
So this copy of the Quran was marked
specifically by him because you know that a
book belonged to him when he would mark
it. So, you know, people write their name
in the book. So what he would do
is he would put his initials,
knowing that there's gonna be a t or
a j there, and he would add the
other letter, and he would just kind of
type it in there, and it would be
there. So you know exactly that this book
really belonged to him.
So,
after this,
this swearing in,
you know,
congressman, you know, he's a congressman now. So
let's go back to Jefferson. Okay? Jefferson was
born in 17/43.
He died in 18/26.
He was the 3rd president of the United
States. He was a founding father of this
country, and he was the principal author of
the Declaration of Independence.
Let's remove that.
Okay.
So he studied
at a school called the College of William
and Mary, and he studied law. So he
was a lawyer.
Now in the year 17/65,
this is before America has become independent. It's
being colonized by Britain. He was 22 years
old.
He was studying for his bar exam when
he was in school.
And one of the books that was prominent
in the law school program of the College
of William and Mary was a book called,
Of the Law and Nature
of the Law and Nature and Nations,
by
Freiherr
von Puffendorf.
Alright? So this guy's book was very,
prominent in the study of law, and they
would look at the the philosophy of law
and the study of, you know, legal jurisprudence.
So now
you have to understand, Pufendorf was living around
the same time. It's it's a contemporary book.
It's not a very old book during his
time. And he's living at a time where
in Europe and in America in the west,
the
vision or the perception of Islam is not
very positive. People have a biased view of
Islam.
So you will find that even in his
book, there's a lot of prejudice against Islam.
But what's interesting and what's unique about his
book is that in his book of law,
he does some compares comparative analysis
on Islamic law and specifically quotes verses from
the Quran. Now, normally, you wouldn't find this
in the vast majority of Western universities at
the time.
So Thomas Jefferson
is there. He's only 22 years old,
and he's reading Pufendorf's
book on law.
So while he's reading, you can imagine he's
going through
dis he's going through discussions on on legal
ethics,
and he's seeing examples.
So some of the examples that he'll see,
for example,
when it talks about murder and the idea
of revenge
for murder and deciding whether what is the
punishment supposed to be when somebody murders another
person,
Pufendorf,
he cites the Quran. He has a he
has a passage from the Quran,
and then he compares the passages of Homer
and Tacitus on the same, you know, ruling,
and he discusses and he says which one
is actually better.
Which one has a better and more just
and more moral law? So there's there's comparisons
between
Greeks,
Roman law,
different law systems, and then the Quran is
put in there. So Jefferson is reading all
of this at the age of 22.
So Pufendorf talks about laws of adultery.
He talks about laws of succession, inheritance.
He talks about marriage. He talks about gambling.
He talks about wine. He talks about warfare.
All from the Quran. So he's talking about
what does the Quran say about drinking wine?
Should we implement a law that forbids or
prohibits drinking of alcohol, or should we restrict
alcohol? And he's quoting the Quran in that
book. He's talking about marriage. He's talking about
divorce. He's talking about,
when to initiate warfare and how. He talks
about what Islam says about gambling,
and says what kind of,
you know, law should be implemented, and then
what does the Quran say about gambling?
Now you have to understand why is this
so significant.
This is significant
because this is happening in 17/65.
K? When is the Declaration of Independence?
17/76.
So we're about a decade away. In the
same year as 17/65,
there was an unjust act that the British
government imposed upon the American colonies. Does anyone
know what that act was called?
The stamp act of 9 17/65.
So Jefferson is living through that,
and Americans were
pretty annoyed at, this extra, you know, tax
that was being levied on them, and that's
where that's, you know, the idea of revolution,
the idea of independence and freeing themselves from
Britain was starting to take place. So what
happens is when Jefferson is seeing that, and
as all law students were seeing that, they
they start to question English constitutional
law, thinking that, you know what? What kind
of system is this where they're gonna be
implementing these unjust things on us? Maybe we
should look at alternative law systems,
and we should think about something that is
more just because this British law or this
English law is very unjust. So So that
was the American perception at the time for
people who are thinking along that lines.
So he comes across
different statements.
Right? One of the statements that Pufendorf makes,
really interesting, about the Quran in his book
and Jefferson is studying this book.
Prufendorf says,
when talking about,
warfare, specifically about war, he says
after quoting the verses
about war in the Quran,
he says, and Christians
should all the more zealously undertake to compose
the quarrels of others.
Because even the Quran
teaches that if 2 Muslim nations and countries
engage another in war,
the rest shall make peace between them and
compel him who committed the injury to offer
satisfaction,
meaning compensation.
And when this is done,
bring them by fair and good means to
friendship.
So what is Pufendorf doing? He's hinting, despite
his prejudice against Islam,
he's saying, look at this verse from the
Quran.
We Christians,
we should use something like this because when
2 groups of people fight, the Quran says,
you make all the other people, all the
other Muslims, they should come and make peace
between them, and then one should offer compensation
to the other, and they should stop the
that's what the Quran is saying. Stop the
stop the bloodshed, stop the war, and everyone
else is responsible for that. And he's saying,
we Christians need to learn from this. We
should take something like this from the Quran.
So now this is the
some you find some statements like this kind
of peppered around different works at this time,
despite the fact that
the general culture is quite hostile to Islam
as a whole. So you find Thomas Jefferson
and other people reading,
all of these things,
at that time. He witnesses the stamp act,
and
there are writings
exactly in 19 in, 17/65
that show Thomas Jefferson
talking about his own life, that he was
questioning
religion at the time. And a specific,
issue that he had with religion was he's
trying to reconcile,
the history, like, as we know history, and
he's trying to reconcile Christian scripture. When I
say he has an issue with religion, it
means he has an issue with Christianity. K?
That's what religion is to people, you know,
in the west at the time. So he
hasn't he's starting to take an issue with
Christianity,
and he's saying the scripture doesn't seem to
add up. So one of the things that
he mentions is he says
that if
circumcision
is a practice
that was specifically a mark for the Jewish
people, as the as the scripture the Christian
scripture is is mentioning,
He's saying,
how does it make sense
that you find,
ancient Egyptians,
you find ancient Syrians, you find other civilizations
that lived way before them, how could they
be performing the same practice?
So he's trying to figure out he's like,
why how does this fit? How does this
work? And, of course, for Muslims, we don't
have this issue because it's not a Jewish
thing per se. Something that was instituted by
prophet Ibrahim going all the way back. You
know? So that's really not an issue. And
it's something that's part of what we call
the fitra, the natural disposition within people, the
idea of, you know, circumcising a a male
child. So
for the purpose of cleanliness and all of
that. So that's
around the time, 17/65,
that he's thinking, he's questioning. So think about
what is what's going on here. He's questioning
Christianity,
number 1. 2, he's questioning
the justice of
English law at the same time. And he's
a young man, and he's studying law, and
he's looking into different systems. So he finds
he has an interest
in religion, and he has an interest in
law, specifically.
So in 17/65,
he buys a copy of the Quran,
and this is 7 years before the declaration
of independence.
So the copy of the Quran that he
bought was a translation of the Quran by
George Sale, which was published if you know,
originally published in 17/34.
And this is a a picture of it
right here.
Now there's been, like, over a 100 reprints
of this translation.
Now the title of this, translation is called
the Quran,
with the k. It's Quran. The Quran
commonly called
the Al Quran of Muhammad,
and then he has, like, a long longer
thing. So commonly called the Al Quran of
Muhammad.
Of course, if you know a little bit
of Arabic, you know that's a problem because
Al means the. So it means the the
Quran of Muhammad. So and there's many other
issues
with it. But regardless of that, this was
the first English translation of the Quran
that was ever done from the original Arabic
language.
All the other English translations of the Quran
were done,
as a translation of the Latin translation. So
it's translated from, Arabic to Latin, and then
Latin to English, or,
you know, Arabic to French, and then French
back into English.
George Sale is the first one who translated
directly from the Arabic.
And
this, so this was published in 17/34.
Now
by 17/65,
they just came out with a brand new
version,
and it's printed in 2 volumes. Before, it
was very hefty and, you know, it's large.
So this is like
new technology. They had, like, 2 smaller volumes.
Thomas Jefferson goes. He buys these 2 volumes,
and he pays 16 shillings for them. Right?
Because there's no dollars yet.
This is all documented. So there's a lot
of documentation during this era. So he buys
it,
16 shillings in 17/65.
Now
George Sayles'
translation
also has,
an introduction,
and the whole first volume of the 2
volume set is the in introduction.
And pretty much what it is, it's an
overview of Islam,
and it's an overview of Islamic law.
Right? So this is what's interesting about it.
It's about 200 pages.
Now
you have to understand,
when the Quran was being translated at this
time,
obviously, the authors are not very objective because
of the world in which they're living in,
and their understanding of Islam is quite, you
know, tainted with the specific way of, you
know, looking at the world.
But sales translation
I mean, I wouldn't recommend that you read
it or average person read it. But compared
to all the other translations
by, you know, Westerners at the time, this
is probably one of the better ones. Because
what he tries to do is he tries
to refute certain misconceptions
that Westerners or Americans
and British
have about Islam.
And one of the things that he refutes
is the idea that many people held on
at this time that Islam was spread by
the sword. So in his introduction, he has
this long preface talking about
this idea that we believe that Islam was
spread by the sword. This is all fiction.
None of this is true, and then he
goes and points a bunch of historical,
you know, evidence to show that it's not
the case. So that was good. And, for
17/34,
it's it's a pretty good
point that he made there.
Also,
he encourages people to study law because George
Sale was a lawyer as well. So from
his perspective, everything is about studying law. So
he's translating the Quran. It's a good legal
document. You know, there's a lot of money
in Orientalism and translating works from this era,
from this part of the world. And, also,
he's a lawyer. So he's saying we can
study law,
the law of this group of people specifically.
So he wanted, he took a very legal,
you know, take on how the Quran should
be studied, particularly in his introduction.
So he also quotes Pufendorf at the same
time. So Pufendorf
is quoting the Quran,
and that's what led Thomas Jefferson to go
and buy a copy of the Quran. When
he buys a copy of the Quran, what
does he see? George Sale is a lawyer.
He quotes Prufendorf again. So the book that
brings him to the Quran is going back
and quoting the other book that brought him
there in the 1st place as well. So
he's reading all of this, and then George
Sale mentions a few interesting things. He says
I mean, this is the this is the
nicest thing you're gonna find, you know, during
this time about Islam. So you you take
what you can get. Right? So he says
that the prophet
gave his Arabs
the best religion he could,
as well as the best smiles,
preferable
preferable at least to those of the ancient
pagan lawgivers.
So he's like, look.
For for from sales perspective,
that Islam is something for the Arabs, and
there are still people who believe that, you
know, unfortunately, today. He said, this is an
Arab thing, but and, you know, when we
look at it, we gotta at least admire
the fact that, you know, this guy who
came 1400 years ago, you know, or in
his case, you know,
1100 years before,
this you know, you should admire this guy
rather than in just insulting him all the
time because
he gave a much better law than what
the Arabs originally had. And for him, he's,
like, he gave the best thing that he
possibly could. So that's, like, the nicest thing
that he could possibly say. And then he
says another interesting thing. So he's encouraging people
to study Islam, but he cannot say you
study Islam because it's a good religion or
something like that. You can never say something
like that. We don't know what was in
his heart. Only Allah knows. But what he
says is he says, if the religious and
civil institutions
of foreign nations are worth our knowledge,
those of Muhammad,
the lawgiver of the Arabians
and founder of an empire,
which in less than a century spread itself
over a greater part of the world than
the Romans were ever masters of,
must needs be so.
That's the way old English was. Okay? So
he's saying what is his argument? He's basically
saying, look.
Students in America
and students in other countries,
they study law. And when they study law,
they study legal precedent from other areas, from
other places. So if there's legal precedent, and
you're gonna study the legal precedent of Rome,
because in in most law schools at that
time, and probably even till today, they study
legal precedent
of what Roman law was as part of
their civil as part of Western civilization. You
know, you have to understand, Western civilization is
built on three things. It's built on
Greco, you know, Greco Roman civilization.
It's built on Christianity,
and it's built on, you know, enlightenment and,
you know, reform and all of that. There's
3 elements that go into it.
So they're studying Roman,
law specifically.
What Saul is saying is that
if the
Islamic civilization
and the Islamic empire was greater than Rome
in terms of its power and its civilization
and everything, and he's saying it's it's spread
faster
than Rome had ever achieved at its height
of power.
So he's saying this is an impressive civilization.
He's saying that if you're gonna study Roman
law, you might as well study Islamic law
as well. Right? Because there's something to be
gained and there's some benefit that's gonna come
out of that. Right? So, I mean, unfortunately,
looks like, you know, most law departments did
not really take sales advice yet. But, you
know, maybe inshallah someday.
So that's a good point that he mentioned.
So then,
so Thomas Jefferson is reading all of this.
Okay.
Is that someone's phone?
Okay. Alhamdulillah.
Thomas Jefferson
is reading all of this, and you could
see that there's definitely some influence taking place.
And,
you know, he's interested, and you can understand
what he's getting out of this book.
Now the problem is this,
is that when you have very few resources,
no matter how much you try to understand
something, no matter how much you try to
be open minded,
there's gonna be some propaganda that's heavy and
slips through. So all of these nice things
that SAIL is saying, it's great. Like I
said, it's it's the most objective thing that
you would find at this time on Islam
or translation of the Quran. But it doesn't
mean that Sayal didn't make sure to throw
in his little things to make sure that
no one takes Islam seriously, because you have
to maintain their Christian identity at the end
of the day. So in the introduction,
Sam
writes, I imagine it almost needless to either
make an apology for publishing the following translation.
And then he says, who can apprehend any
danger from so manifest a forgery?
And then he says, it's absolutely necessary to
undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair
translations with which have appeared,
have entertained
too favorable an opinion of the original
and also to enable us effectually
to expose the impostor.
Right? So what he's saying is he's saying,
look, guys. I know I'm saying some really
good stuff about Islam here, but let's make
sure
that we don't get tricked into thinking something
really, really good about Islam. I just wanna
put that preface in there. Now some people,
they say he is forced to put that
in there because otherwise he would be, you
know, persecuted.
Allah knows best what he did and and
why he did. But
we can understand that we have some,
we we have some negative influence coming in
addition to positive influence. But what happens is
whenever someone tries to
explain
Islam to another person, and that person does
not have many other resources
available
for them to understand,
what that religion is gonna be about,
they're gonna it's it's hard for them to
kind of think outside of what information they're
receiving, because they put their trust in some
of those sources. And that was probably the
case, in this time as well.
So now
we have
Thomas Jefferson.
He has his copy of the Quran. He's
reading it. He's studying it, and he's looking
at it primarily as a law book. K?
Now
we
he used to write notes in a lot
of his books
that he had later on in his library.
In the Quran, he does not have any
notes.
Now
we would have thought or assumed that he
would have left notes in his Quran. So
why didn't he leave any notes in this
book?
Well, this is what happened.
5 years after he bought this copy of
the Quran, he writes in his autobiography
that almost all of his books
and all of his papers at that time,
at this point in time of his life,
they were burned in a fire.
So he lost most or all of these
writings.
And then he specifically mentioned he says almost
all books were destroyed
and papers.
And if it had been money, I wouldn't
have thought about it. He's like, if I
lost money, it would have been better. But,
like, he's a person who really likes to
read. These were my books, and obviously with
his notes and his other papers and everything,
they were all lost.
So there's a theory
that
he must have purchased a second copy of
the Quran.
This is not the original one that he
had.
This is the second purchase that he had
because most of his books from that time
and his writings and everything were destroyed, so
he probably bought a second copy. And that's
why we don't have specific,
you know, notes, in the margins that he's
writing while he's reading.
Other people, of course, wanna say, oh, no.
He owned the Quran, but he didn't really
read it. That's a pretty poor theory because
he's reading it from Pufendorf's books, and he's
reading it from other books. So he's got
a copy of the Quran regardless.
What ends up happening is
in,
he prepares
a a manuscript library catalog in the year
1783.
This is after independence.
And he puts a specific order to his
books. So he has books on the Greeks,
and he has books on the Romans, and
then he's got religious books. He's got books
on Christianity. He's got books in different religions,
and he prepares a catalog.
And his catalog, he specifically says, I have
ordered this catalog according to a specific way
that I have intended.
Now he didn't explain what he intended.
And what he did was he sold his
entire personal library or large part of his
personal library to the US government,
and his collection
formed the basis for the Library of Congress
today.
The Library of Congress
is claimed to have the is claimed to
be the largest library in the entire world.
So he sold his entire collection. He had
6,400
volumes in his collection. So he's a book
collector. He's got a lot of books.
He got $24,000
for selling
those books, which was a lot of money
at that time.
Now why
is Jefferson
selling his books
to
the US government so that they can make
this Library of Congress?
Because there was a war in 18/12.
And what ended up happening was that British
troops came and they had burned the library.
So now they need a new collection of
books. When we talk about, you know, burning
of knowledge and things like that, we should
be careful about which countries and which people,
you know, propagate or perpetrate those type of
crimes.
So he becomes the he's again, later on
becomes the 3rd president. He sells his collection,
and he you know, that becomes the, impetus
for forming the Library of Congress.
So
that's what happened to his Quran, and that's
how congressman Keith Ellison got the copy of
the Quran, and that's how it ended up
in the Library of Congress. And then one
of the buildings of the Library of Congress
is called the Thomas Jefferson Building.
So a little bit later,
if you think about it, you know, up
until now, Jefferson has not really encountered
a Muslim in his entire life. He's reading
a little bit about Islam here and there.
He's getting some little bit good stuff, a
lot of biased sources. He's looking at the
Quran as a book of law, but he's
never encountered a Muslim. And what's interesting is
that it's estimated that 15 to 30%
of the African slaves
were Muslim.
And even during this time, they must have
kept some remnants of their religious practices. So
they say it's possible
that he may have actually owned slaves or
he may have been near someone who owned
slaves
that were actually Muslim, but he didn't know
that they're Muslim. And there's more and more
research coming out, you know, in this area.
So he's never encountered an actual Muslim
until
the year
17/86.
So in 17/86,
this is after American independence.
What ends up happening is there's a region
of the world, specifically, it's known as the
Barbary States. And the Barbary States were,
Algiers,
Tunis,
Morocco, and Tripoli. This is known as the
Barbary Coast, basically. And what's happening is American
merchant ships are going through this area,
and pirates are attacking them.
And these are Muslim pirates.
So and Muslims didn't obviously start piracy, but
this started becoming in later on. There's a
history of piracy that we can talk about
that some other day. It'd be interesting subject.
So what happens is,
Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams,
they are commissioned
by the new government of the United States
to go
and meet with Abdurrahman.
Abdurrahman
is the envoy of the sultan
of Tripoli.
And he they're gonna go and meet in
London,
and they're gonna try to convince
these people in trip from, you know, the
sultan of in Tripoli to stop,
the pirates from attacking
American merchant ships.
Now understand the context here.
This was not a problem
before America became independent.
And the reason why it wasn't a problem
is because the English government, you know, England,
they would pay
a protection fee to these people so that
they never attack their ships.
What happened was when America became independent,
they say, we're not paying anyone this this
money. We don't pay this protection money because
we don't have we don't have the extra
money or what is on principle, we're not
gonna pay this. So they kept on attacking
their ships. So they wanna go and try
to make some kind of peace treaty or
peace negotiation with them. So what ends up
happening is
they meet the envoy.
And when they meet the envoy,
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, they ask, so
why do you keep attacking us? You know,
I really haven't done anything.
Now
Thomas Jefferson records
the response of Abdul Rahman
in his
in his own, you know, notes.
Now again,
this could be exactly true or maybe it
could be an exaggeration
because he had a political motive of not
wanting to pay. We don't know, but we
can still take a lesson from it. So
what
does Jefferson
record his response
to be in this specific,
encounter,
with Abdul Rahman, first Muslim he's ever met
on from
a government?
He said that Abdul Rahman responded to him.
And he said,
the reason why the pirates are attacking you
is because
this is founded on the laws of their
prophet.
That it was written in their Quran
that all nations
who should not have acknowledged their authority were
considered sinners,
that it was their right and duty to
make war upon them wherever they could find
wherever they could be found,
and to make slaves of all they could
slaves of all they could take as prisoners,
and that every Musalman
who should be slain in battle was sure
to go to paradise.
Reminiscent of something. Right? Something in the modern
day period. So now Jefferson is writing this,
and he's saying this is what the response
that the guy gave me.
First encounter
with the Muslim
ever in his entire life.
Very bad response from the Muslim.
Definitely not representative of Islam. Now is this
is is this,
is this statement should it even be taken,
you know, as being a real statement or
a statement of threat?
Obviously, this is not the case because
they weren't doing this to the English. They
weren't doing this, you know, to the to
the British empire,
because they were paying the tribute. So this
analysis and this explanation,
we don't know how true it is, but
if this is his perception
of the one Muslim that he met, you
can have an understanding of what effect could
this possibly have on his psyche and on
himself. But we're gonna see that Jefferson was
very vocal
against,
this piracy that was taking place, and he
did not want to pay any tribute to
them at all.
But at the same
time, the arguments that he made later on
for the first attack on these pirates and
on these specific countries,
there was absolutely
no framing of religious argument
in his wanting to go and attack them.
He did not attack them
because they're Muslim.
He did not attack them and talk about,
you know, we're doing this because their Quran
says such and such. So instead, what we
find
is after his encounter with this guy,
there is an effect that this encounter has
on Jefferson. So he says, this is what
the guy told me.
Now what effect does it actually have on
him? We're gonna see 3 specific effects. Effect
number 1,
after he meets the ambassador,
he starts to become more and more interested
in this part of the world and in
the culture of this part of the world.
So he goes and he buys some more
books.
He buys Historie
de Timur Bik,
which is the history of, you know, the,
Mongols.
And then he goes and buys history of
the revolt of Alibe, which is about Egyptian
history. And then he goes he buys history
of the present state of the Ottoman Empire.
Keep in mind, the Ottoman Empire was still
there, and most Westerners, when they refer to
Muslims, they would call them Turks. They say
the Turks are doing this, and the Turkish
religion is this. Everyone was considered to be
a Turk because the Ottoman Empire was there.
So then he goes and he says, you
know what? I wanna learn Arabic.
So Thomas Jefferson goes, and he had a
friend. His name was Samuel Henley. He was
an orientalist. Or orientalist is a Western scholar
who studies the east or the orient, quote,
unquote. Usually, it means studying Muslim world. Not
like the Far East so much, but more
of like the the the Muslim world. So
this guy knew Arabic.
So he gets some advice from him. Thomas
Jefferson acquires some books. He buys one book
called,
Right? It's Latin. I'm I'm not very good
in Latin. This is a Latin book, and
this is a book which is a historical
and critical survey
of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish poetry.
So he starts to get an interest in
kind of, like, what's quote unquote called oriental,
languages and literature.
Then he goes and buys 2 basic Arabic
grammars.
1 is rudimenta
lingue Arabic,
and the other one is
simplification simplification
de langres
orientalis.
So these are 2 Arabic grammar books,
and he starts teaching himself Arabic
from these books.
Right? And
which, obviously so those who people who wanna
learn Arabic, I mean, if Thomas Jefferson could
do it on his own without a teacher,
without California Islamic University and other programs,
anyone can really do it. Alright? So he
goes and starts teaching himself Arabic, and then
he buys,
an infancy gospel
in Arabic.
So it's Arabic, Latin, side by side.
Infancy gospel is one of these other alternative,
books which talk about Jesus
and early history of Christianity.
So he buys it, and it's got Arabic
and Latin side by side. So what he
does is when he learned the basic grammar
of Arabic, and he taught himself everything,
he's going and he reads, like, a line
of Latin and then he reads it in
Arabic. He reads Arabic, goes and reads a
line of Latin. And this is one way
that a lot of people can teach themselves,
you know, to read to to get improve
in their Arabic. I mean, this is what
I did personally as well. I was, you
know, when I was learning Arabic early on,
wrong book to pick up. I picked up
a book by Ghazali called Incoherence of the
Philosophers.
Very advanced text, and it was side by
side, you know, English, Arabic. So you read
that and you read that, and just keep
going back and forth, and kind of some
of the words start to click.
Definitely pick an easier book than that book.
It's not a good idea to pick that
one.
But so Thomas Jefferson is doing the exact
same thing, and then he goes and he
buys a copy of Euclid's geometry in Arabic.
It's a very important philosophical text.
Euclid is not Arab, obviously, but the book
itself was in Arabic because the Muslims used
to study Greek philosophy in the past and
all that. So he goes and he adds
that to his library catalog and starts adding
it into his books. So he's really interested
in now studying different languages. He's picking up
Arabic. He's trying to get a better understanding
of it, and he's always been interested in
this. So previously,
he actually drafted a bill
for the university that he studied at, College
of William and Mary, and he said, we
should include oriental languages into the syllabus of
this college because it's not there. We should
make it part and parcel of the syllabus.
So he's someone who's been interested in this
for a long time. So that's one so
keep in mind, he just met this guy
who said, basically,
that our religion is telling us that we're
supposed to kill you. And what does he
do? He's like, let me go and learn
Arabic. So let me go and study on
my own. Because he was reading the Quran
prior to this on his own. So this
is effect number 1. Effect number 2,
he writes a letter
to his friend Monticello
in 18/10,
And there's one statement I mean, I'm not
gonna read the whole letter, but there's one
statement in there where he mentions the Quran
specifically.
And he says,
I have long lamented with you
the deprecation of law science.
The opinion seems to be that Blackstone
is to us what the Al Quran is
to the Mohammedans.
That everything which is necessary is in him,
and what is not in him is not
necessary.
K. So I'll explain to you what that
means. Okay? So what that means is he's
writing a letter to a friend of his
and he's saying that, look,
I don't like the way that law is
being taught in our colleges currently.
We need a reform
of law schools and the way in which
we study law.
So then he talks about he says, look,
there was a famous book at the time
that was being studied.
It was William Blackstone's
Commentaries on the Law of England. This is
one of the book that's being studied in
the curriculum, and it's a very
deep book and it's got a lot of
opinions and a lot of explanation.
So what he's saying is,
he's saying I don't like the fact
that when people study Blackstone,
this this specific book on the Commentaries of
the Law of England,
what happens is when someone reads it,
they think that they understand everything that there
is to know about law, because it's a
very comprehensive book, and then they don't go
and read anything else, and they limit themselves
only to that specifically.
And he's saying that that's to us what
the Quran is to the Muhammadans, meaning to
the Muslims.
So he's saying that
the idea
of reading the Quran
he says for the for the Muslims, his
understanding is, Muslims think that by reading the
Quran,
they're gonna understand everything there is to know
about the law of the Quran.
And you don't need any supplementary references. You
don't need any commentaries.
You don't need any sub you know, you
don't need you don't need any extra Quranic
material
for you to understand
what the law is besides the Quran on
its own.
I mean, this is a very, interesting it's
a side note that he kind of threw
in there, but it's very relevant to our
to our day, you know, to our time
as well. Because the reality is
that
to understand the Quran at its 100%
at a deep level,
you do need supplementary sources. You do need
another type of scholarship. It's not just you
just go and read it by yourself. So
this is the same thing he's criticizing. He's
criticizing law schools, and he's criticizing students in
law schools for saying, if they master this
one book, they think they understand law completely,
and they don't need to go to any
other books. And he's saying the Muslims do
the same thing. They read the Quran, and
they think that by learning the Quran,
they got everything down and they don't need
any other commentary they could figure out all
on their own because it's so vast.
And if you take that and you compare
it to the incident of what the guy
was saying to him, what the ambassador was
saying to him,
it makes sense.
That that guy was quoting the Quran and
said, well, according to our Quran, we have
to go and kill you. Right? And what
is he saying?
Just look at this. These guys think that
just by reading the Quran on your own,
you're gonna be able to understand it, or
reading Blackstone on your own, you're gonna be
able to understand everything there is to learn
about law. That's not the case. So you
can see
that his mention of the Quran and his
comparison of the Quran gave him a, you
know, a little bit different understanding
of he's basically saying Muslims don't understand the
Quran very well,
because he has some understanding of that. Right?
He had been reading it. So he doesn't
agree with what he had encountered in the
first place. Now does this mean he knew
that there was a science called Usul al
Firk and Tafsir and I mean, he knew
about tafsir because it's in Sa'il. But he
didn't know about Usul, you know, Usul al
Firk or the, you know, the the principles
of interpreting Islamic law. He probably didn't know
too much about, you know, the science of
hadith and all that, although it's somewhat here
in still as well.
But he kind of had an understanding that
something is not right, because when I read
the Quran, I'm seeing one thing, and then
the Muslims are coming with something different.
So
that was his argument. So that's number 2,
despite the fact that he encountered this Muslim.
The third thing he did was
in 17/77,
when he was drafting
a bill for the for establishing religious freedom,
he wrote in his autobiography.
Okay? This is 17th it was 1 year
after the declaration of independence.
He writes in his autobiography,
he says, when I was drafting that bill
for establishing religious freedom, an amendment was proposed.
So some people came, and they said we
want an amendment to the language that you've
put.
And they wanted to insert the word Jesus
Christ
in there.
So this is what it read. He he
was writing something. I mean, I won't go
into details, but he was writing something, and
then it says
that if we did this, it would be
a departure from the plan of
the holy author of our religion. That's all
he wrote. This would be a departure from
the plan of the author
of our holy religion.
So some people came to him and they
said, we want Jesus Christ inserted. So it
should say specifically,
a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ,
the the holy author of our religion.
Now the majority of people at the time,
they rejected the insertion of Jesus Christ at
at that time.
Now Thomas Jefferson is commenting, and he's writing.
He's saying, why was it rejected specifically?
He said, this is proof
that they meant to comprehend
within the mantle of its protection
of the of the bill for religious freedom.
They wanted to comprehend within,
the mantle of its protection,
the Jew and the gentile,
the Christian and the Mohammedan,
the Hindu
and infidel of every denomination.
So he's saying, basically, we're not going to
exclude any other type of any other religion
outside,
and he specifically mentions Muslims. He said, I
wanted to make sure that they're not gonna
get excluded either.
So you find that despite
his
interaction, his negative interaction,
it did not affect the way in which
he's gonna determine
the future course of the country
and what these bills that he's drafting, which
become defining of America later on, whether it
was practiced initially or not, it's at least
written down. It's there.
The next thing that he did was
he,
in 18
05,
he welcomed the 1st Muslim ambassador,
Fron Tunis,
to the White House.
So when he welcomed a Muslim to the
White House at that time, it was Ramadan.
So the president
had a state dinner prepared,
and the state dinner was supposed to be
at 3:30 PM.
So he says, no.
This guy is coming from a Muslim country,
and he's a Muslim and it's Ramadan,
and we know that he's fasting. So we're
gonna change the state dinner
from being at 3:30
to being exactly at sunset, so he can
break his fast and we can have dinner
at exactly the same time. This is considered
to be, you can say, the first recognition
in a sense of Ramadan
in the United States of America.
So this
is what we know. This is what we
have documented about the history of Thomas Jefferson,
his encounter with Islam, his encounter with the
Quran, and his encounter with the few Muslims
that he met in his life, and how
he did not allow certain things to influence
him,
negative
one negative,
interaction
with the Muslim to influence him,
to exclude Muslims.
Because he had a a specific
understanding of the world. He had a specific
vision in his mind.
Now people are gonna ask me, you know,
what were his personal religious beliefs?
Right? So his personal religious beliefs,
were
You can extend it. No. No. No. No.
Doing it on time. Yeah. 3 minutes. So
his personal religious beliefs
was
he he said that he was a Christian
who followed the simple teachings of Islam.
K. So now what is, sorry. Simple teachings
of Islam. Follow the simple teachings of Jesus,
which could you could say you could argue
it might be Islam. You know?
So he actually wrote another book. He compiled
a book called, about Jesus' biblical teachings.
He left out all the miraculous and supernatural
references,
and he titled the work, the life and
morals of Jesus of Nazareth. And today it's
called the Jefferson Bible.
Right? And what he did was he publicly
renounced
the conventional Christian trinity.
And he said, Jesus, I don't accept
that Jesus is the son of God, and
I don't accept that Jesus is divine.
So I don't accept the trinity.
And when he was running for president,
the federalists attacked him and said this guy
is an atheist.
So then he started, you know, responding, you
know, during this, election cycle and saying no.
No. He started praising religion and Christianity is
very good and has good morals and all
of that, and he got elected anyways.
So he was someone who was he was
very
anti,
Christian establishment.
Right? And in fact, one time he actually
supported
banning all clergy from public office.
He said no clergy who should ever be
allowed to serve in public office because of
what they have done in the past in
Christian church and all of that. So you
understand this is this is kind of his
mentality, but then he he relented and he
let that one go. And he said, no.
Everyone can serve. And his vision was that
anyone can serve in any capacity of government,
and we need to leave it absolutely open.
It can be an atheist. It can be
a Muslim. It can be a Jew. It
can be a Hindu. It doesn't have to
be a Christian.
So this is what we know about Thomas
Jefferson's Quran.
Unfortunately, the fire destroyed it. We don't have
the rest of his notes, but we see
his interaction and we learn something that could
be a lesson for all of us, inshaAllah
ta'ala. Are there any questions before we break
for prayer?
Yes.
The Quran?
The was it by Jesus? Do
Yeah. No. He well, he understand he understood
that this was a book that was given
to the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
It was revealed to him. He understood that.
He didn't believe in that in you know,
officially.
But he under he understood where it's coming
from. So he understood the history of it.
Yeah.
So yeah. So further study,
it depends if you wanna go in-depth or
not. There's a really good article,
published by University of North Carolina Press. It's
called How Thomas Jefferson Read the Quran by
Kevin Hayes.
It's in a journal called early American literature,
volume 39.
This was in 2004.
There's also some really good articles. One of
the great articles I found was on Saudi
Aramco's website. It was published as well at
the same time. You could look it up.
Aramco has very good, quality articles.
You wouldn't expect it, but they have very
good quality articles. Alhamdulillah, at least put a
lot of money into it, I guess, and
you get some really good scholars coming out.
There's also a few books on, Thomas Jefferson's
Quran that have come out since then. So
you can read those. I've not gone through
those books, but I've gone through references from
those books.
They probably don't add much more,
than most of what we've covered, but you
can check them out as well.
Any other questions? Yes.
Is there any evidence
that the doctors can extract this from the
Quran, the client that he was extracting their
culture?
So the thing is when it comes to
whether he extracted tenants from the Quran and
agreed with them or implemented them, it's hard
to make that argument because you would have
to, you know, did he get this from
Islam or did he get this from some
other source? It's hard to say. There are
1 or 2 instances where you can
you can also say the opposite, where he
disagreed with some things
which might have been from the Quran. But
was he disagreeing with them because they're from
the bible or they're from the Quran? It's
kind of hard to say when he talks
about,
punishments for theft, for example. So there's an
there's Sale specifically making arguments against certain aspects
of punishment for theft and punishment for certain
adultery crimes and things like that. So Jefferson
might it seems like he might have taken
something from Sale,
when looking at the comparison, but it could
also potentially be a refutation of the old
testament. It's hard to say.
Yeah. Any other questions?
Okay. So quick announcement then, inshaAllah. We have
2 more programs this weekend. It's a busy
weekend. Alhamdulillah.
Tomorrow we have a program for sisters only.
It's in our other building down the street.
It's from 10 AM to 2 PM, I
believe, or 1 PM, something like that.
10 AM. It's, called What Men Don't Say.
And it's basically a program about
what most men or husbands
want their wives to know, but they're either
too afraid to tell them or they can't
tell them. So this is gonna be a
really interesting program. You should come. It's gonna
be, moderating it. Sheikh Mohammed Faqih will be
there giving an Islamic site. And then Khala
Noha Shureiry, who's a licensed MFT, she will
be also presenting
in her counseling practice what she thinks women
need to know about men, but
they don't know or they don't get told
for such and such reasons. Okay? So check
that out. And then Sunday, we have a
program at 4 PM.
It's a California Islamic University program in the
in our in our building down the street.
4 PM is called the Ideal Mosque part
2. So we had a part 1. You
can watch the video online.
We talked about all the problems that people
have with
the masjid or every any masjid that they've
ever visited.
Every problem we've documented on an entire board,
probably most of the issues that you had
with any Masjid you've encountered, we've we've listed
most of them. Now what we're gonna do
in our second session is we're gonna talk
about and we talked about what are the
expectations people have and what they want their
masjid to have, or their Islamic center, or
the perfect Islamic center to actually have. On
Sunday, what we're gonna do at 4 PM
is we're gonna actually
talk about how someone
or a group of people could actually go
about establishing this model. How much money would
it take? What type of model would it
look like? What would the board look like?
How do you file the paperwork?
You know, how much do you how much
salary do you pay your administrators?
And then look at how feasible
these things are, come up with a possible
model,
and then see where people would go from
there and what role or what contribution they
have. Either they're gonna go ahead and be
super motivated and get the road map to
actually go and build the ideal Islamic Center,
and that would be awesome. I would love
to visit it. Or they'll realize this is
a huge project, and we don't have enough
people to actually dedicate themselves to this. So
we can go and take some of these
small things and implement them into our own
Islamic centers, and we can at least try
our best to implement them wherever we're allowed
to do so. So come check that program
out at 4 PM, insha'Allah. It's called Coffee
and Conversation, the Ideal Islamic the the Ideal
Islamic Center. And the coffee is free. Insha'Allah.
Yes.
Coffee and conversations recorded but not live streamed,
so you'll get the recording 1 month later.
That's incentive for people to come so they
don't have to wait a month.
And the other program is actually being, live
streamed now. So the one for the sisters
on Saturday, we just decided this morning that
it's gonna be livestreamed,
and you have to get the link somehow.
I have no idea how you get the
link, but you have to register to get
the link. Go you go on Facebook and
you find it. If you know Somer Hadrus,
she's the one who's sending the link out.
I'm not organizing these programs. I have no
idea how you get through it, inshallah.
Alright. InshaAllah. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala increase
us in knowledge, in practice and wisdom,
increase us in a beneficial understanding of history,
allow us to learn positive lessons from it
so that we can repeat good things and
learn from it, and we can avoid difficult
things and problematic things so we do not
repeat those mistakes.