Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an by Sebastian R. Prange

Facing the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. stands the Jefferson Building, the main building of the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library, with holdings of more than 140 million books and other printed items. The stately building, with its neoclassical exterior, copper-plated dome and marble halls, is named after Thomas Jefferson, one of the “founding fathers” of the United States, principal author of the 1776 Declaration of Independence and, from 1801 to 1809, the third president of the young republic. But the name also recognizes Jefferson’s role as a founder of the Library itself. As president, he enshrined the institution in law and, in 1814, after a fire set by British troops during the Anglo-American War destroyed the Library’s 3000-volume collection, he offered all or part of his own wide-ranging book collection as a replacement for the losses, commenting that “there is in fact no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”

Among the nearly 6500 books Jefferson sold to the Library was a two-volume English translation of the Qur’an, the book Muslims recite, study and revere as the revealed word of God. (See “Translation or ‘Interpretation’?,”) The presence of this Qur’an, first in Jefferson’s private library and later in the Library of Congress, prompts the questions why Jefferson purchased this book, what use he made of it, and why he included it in his young nation’s repository of knowledge.

These questions are all the more pertinent in light of assertions by some present-day commentators that Jefferson purchased his Qur’an in the 1780’s in response to conflict between the US and the “Barbary states” of North Africa – today Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. That was a conflict Jefferson followed closely – indeed, in 1786, he helped negotiate a treaty with Morocco, the United States’ first treaty with a foreign power. Then, it was relations with Algeria that were the most nettlesome, as its ruler demanded the payment of tribute in return for ending semi-official piracy of American merchant shipping. Jefferson staunchly opposed tribute payment. In this context, such popular accounts claim, Jefferson was studying the Qur’an to better understand these adversaries, in keeping with the adage “know thy enemy.” However, when we look more closely at the place of this copy of the Qur’an in Jefferson’s library – and in his thinking – and when we examine the context of this particular translation, we see a different story.

From his youth, Thomas Jefferson read and collected a great number of books, and a wide variety of them: The collection he eventually sold to the Library of Congress comprised 6487 volumes, ranging in subject from classical philosophy to cooking. Like many collectors of the time, Jefferson not only catalogued his books but also marked them. It is his singular way of marking his books that makes it possible to establish that, among the millions of volumes in today’s Library of Congress, this one specific Qur’an did indeed belong to him.

In the 18^th century, the production of books was still an essentially manual process. By means of a hand press, large sheets of paper were printed on both sides with multiple pages before being folded. They were folded once to produce to produce four pages for the folio size, twice to produce eight pages for the quarto or four times to produce the 16-page octavo. These folded sheets known as “gatherings,” were then sewn together along their inner edges before being attached to the binding. To ensure that the bookbinders would stitch the gatherings together in the correct sequence, each was marked with a different letter of the alphabet on what, after folding, would become that gatherings first page.

Thus, in an octavo volume like Jefferson’s Qur’an, there is a small printed letter in the bottom right-hand corner of every 16^th page. It was Jefferson’s habit to take advantage of these pre-existing marks to discreetly inscribe each of his books. On each book’s Ioth gathering, in front of the printer’s mark J he wrote a letter T, and on the 20^th gathering, to the printed T he added a J, thereby in each case producing his initials. This subtle yet unmistakable signature appears clearly on the two leather-bound volumes in the Library of Congress.

Jefferson’s system of cataloguing his library sheds light on the place the Qur’an held in his thinking. Jefferson’s 44-category classification scheme was much informed by the work of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose professional trajectory from lawyer to statesman to philosopher roughly prefigures Jefferson’s own career. According to Bacon, the human mind comprises three faculties: memory, reason and imagination. This trinity is reflected in Jefferson’s library, which he organized into history, philosophy and fine arts. Each of these contained subcategories: philosophy, for instance, was divided into moral and mathematical; continuing along the former branch leads to the subdivision of ethics and jurisprudence, which itself was further segmented into the categories of  religious, municipal and “oeconomical.”

Jefferson’s system for organizing his library has often been described as a blue-print of his own mind.” Jefferson kept his Qur’an in the section on religion, located between a book on the myths and gods of antiquity and a copy of the Old Testament. It is illuminating to note that Jefferson did not class religious works with books on history or ethics – as  might perhaps be expected-but that he regarded their proper place to be within jurisprudence.

The story of Jefferson’s purchase of the Qur’an helps to explain this classification. Sifting through the records of the Virginia Gazette, through which Jefferson ordered many of his books, the scholar Frank Dewey discovered that Jefferson bought this copy of the Qur’an around 1765, when he was still a student of law at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. This quickly refutes the notion that Jefferson’s interest in Islam came in response to the Barbary threat to shipping. Instead, it situates his interest in the Qur’an in the context of his legal studies – a conclusion that is consistent with his shelving of it in the section on jurisprudence.

Jefferson’s legal interest in the Qur’an was not without precedent. There is of course the entire Islamic juridical tradition of religious law (Shari’ah) based on Qur’anic exegesis, but Jefferson had an example at hand that was closer to his own tradition: The standard work on comparative law during his time was Of the Law of Nature and Nations, written by the German scholar Samuel von Pufendorf and first published in 1672. As Dewey shows, Jefferson studied Pufendorf’s treatise intensively and, in his own legal writings, cited it more frequently than any other text. Pufendorf’s book contains numerous references to Islam and to the Qur’an. Although many of these were disparaging – typical for European works of the period – on other occasions Pufendorf cited Qur’anic legal precedents approvingly, including the Qur’an’s emphasis on promoting moral behaviour, its proscription of games of chance and its admonition to make peace between warring countries. As Kevin Hayes, another eminent Jefferson scholar writes: “wanting to broaden his legal studies as much as possible, Jefferson found the Qur’an well worth his attention.”

In his reading of the Qur’an as a law book, Jefferson was aided by a relatively new English translation that was not only technically superior to earlier attempts, but also produced with a sensitivity that was not unlike Jefferson’s own emerging attitudes. Entitled The Koran; commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, it was prepared by the Englishman George Sale and published in 1734 in London. A second edition was printed in 1764, and it was this edition that Jefferson bought. Like Jefferson, Sale was a lawyer, although his heart lay in Oriental scholarship. In the preface to his translation, he lamented that the work “was carried on at leisure time only, and amidst the necessary avocations of a troublesome profession.” This preface also informed the reader of Sale’s motives: “If the religious and civil Institutions of foreign nations are worth our knowledge, those of Mohammed, 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.” Like Pufendorf, Sale stressed

This is not to say that Sale’s translation is free of the kind of prejudices against Muslims that characterize most European works on Islam of this period. However, Sale did not stoop to the kinds of affronts that tend to fill the pages of earlier such attempts at translation. To the contrary, Sale felt himself obliged to treat “with common decency, and even to approve such particulars as seemed to me to deserve approbation.” In keeping with this commitment, Sale described the Prophet of Islam as “richly furnished with personal endowments, beautiful in person, of a subtle wit, agreeable behaviour, shewing liberality to the poor, courtesy to every one, fortitude against his enemies, and, above all, a high reverence for the name of God.” This portrayal is markedly different from those of earlier translators, whose primary motive was to assert superiority of Christianity.

“Translation” or “Interpretation”?

It is thus not so surprising that Sale turned from translating the holy text of Christians into Arabic to rendering the holy text of Muslims into his native English. Noting the absence of a reliable English translation, he aimed to provide a “more genuine idea of the original.” Lest his readers be unduly daunted, he justified his choice of fidelity to the original by stating that “we must not expect to read a version of so extraordinary a book with the same ease and pleasure as a modern composition.” Indeed, even though Sale’s English may appear overwrought today, there is no denying that he strove to convey some of the beauty and poetry of the original Arabic.

Sale’s aspiration to provide an accurate rendition of the Qur’an was matched by his desire also to provide his readers with a more honest introduction to Islam. This “Preliminary Discourse”, as he entitled it, runs to more than 200 pages in the edition Jefferson purchased. Fairly presented and conscientiously documented, it contains a section on Islamic civil law that repeatedly points out parallels to Jewish legal precepts in regard to marriage, divorce, inheritance, lawful retaliation and the rules of warfare. In this substantial discussion, Sale displays the same quality of dispassionate interest in comparative law that later moved to Jefferson.

But did reading the Qur’an influence Thomas Jefferson? That question is difficult to answer, because the few scattered references he made to it in his writings do not reveal his views. Though it may have sparked in him a desire to learn the Arabic language (during the 1770’s Jefferson purchased a number of Arabic grammars), it is far more significant that it may have reinforced his commitment to religious freedom. Two examples support this idea.

In 1777, the year after he drafted the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was tasked with excising colonial legacies from Virginia’s legal code. As part of this undertaking, he drafted a bill for the establishment of religious freedom, which was enacted in 1786. In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted his strong desire that the bill not only should extend to Christians of all denominations but should also include “within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

This all-encompassing attitude to religious pluralism was by no means universally shared by Jefferson’s contemporaries. As the historian Robert Allison documents, many American writers and statesmen in the late 18th century made reference to Islam for less salutary aims. Armed with tendentious translations and often grossly distorted accounts, they portrayed Islam as embodying the very dangers of tyranny and despotism that the young republic had just overcome. Allison argues that many American politicians who used “the Muslim world as a reference point for their own society were not concerned with historical truth or with an accurate description of Islam, but rather with this description’s political convenience.”

These attitudes again came into conflict with Jefferson’s vision in 1788, when the states voted to ratify the United States Constitution. One of the matters at issue was the provision—now Article vi, Section 3—that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some Anti-Federalists singled out and opposed this ban on religious discrimination by painting a hypothetical scenario in which a Muslim could become president. On the other side of the argument, despite their frequent opposition to Jefferson on other matters, the Federalists praised and drew on Jefferson’s vision of religious tolerance in supporting uncircumscribed rights both to faith and to elected office for all citizens. As the historian Denise Spellberg shows in her examination of this dispute among delegates in North Carolina, in the course of these constitutional debates “Muslims became symbolically embroiled in the definition of what it meant to be American citizens.”

It is intriguing to think that Jefferson’s study of the Qur’an may have inoculated him—to a degree that today we can only surmise— ainst such popular prejudices about Islam, and it may have informed his conviction that Muslims, no less and no more than any other religious group, were entitled to all the legal rights his new nation could offer. And although Jefferson was an early and vocal proponent of going to war against the Barbary states over their attacks on us shipping, he never framed his arguments for doing so in religious terms, sticking firmly to a position of political principle. Far from reading the Qur’an to better understand the mindset of his adversaries, it is likely that his earlier knowledge of it confirmed his analysis that the roots of the Barbary conflict were economic, not religious.

Sale’s Koran remained the best available English version of the Qur’an for another 150 years. Today, along with the original copy of Jefferson’s Qur’an, the Library of Congress holds nearly one million printed items relating to Islam—a vast collection of knowledge for every new generation of lawmakers and citizens, with its roots in the law student’s leather-bound volumes.

Find the original article @ http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201104/thomas.jefferson.s.qur.an.htm

Starting Monday April 1, 2012 from 5:45 to 8pm this program will motivate and encourage 10 to 14 year olds to learn in Halaqa and engage in sports activities.

The program will continue alternate Mondays at:

• St. Wilfred JR public school’s Gymnasium
  2360 Southcott Pickering, ON L1X 2S9

Keep your kids connected and well informed in a healthy and an Islamic environment so fundamental to building a strong moral character.

Drop off point: West side doors between 5:15 and 6:15pm.
Caution: The school promptly locks their doors after that time.

Friends Indeed, a Durham based Muslim social group engaged in community development work organized a fundraising event for the new MRI machine installed at the Rouge Valley Ajax Pickering Hospital. The event was arranged in partnership with the Pickering Islamic Centre and the Forrest Brook Community Church in Ajax.

A major milestone was reached by Rouge Valley Health System Foundation’s ‘Image is Everything’ campaign to raise $5 million dollars to bring MRI to this hospital.

Rouge Valley Ajax Pickering is the first community hospital in Ontario and the second hospital in all of Canada to be equipped with the MRI machine. This machine allows many examinations to improve the experience for claustrophobic patients and to help them reduce and minimize stress levels.

Support for the campaign has come from many donors, including individuals and families, community groups, several businesses as well as local municipalities. Our contribution even though may be modest in monetary sense but meaningful in real terms.

The fundraising event was held at the Forrest Brook Community Church in Ajax with over 300 people in attendance from various faith and cultural background, mostly Muslims of all stripes gathered to help raise funds for the much needed MRI machine hailed as the state of the art technology among health care professionals.

Chris Alexander MP, Mayor and councillor of Ajax and officials from Pickering Ajax Hospital spoke and lauded this joint effort and emphasized that such efforts must grow in number as they bring the community together and help in understanding each other more. 680 news anchor Mubin Qureshi emceed the event.

A cheque of $10,500 was presented to the officials of the hospital. Acknowledged as the highest amount donated by any group for the MRI— “Image is Everything” campaign. The Muslim community in Pickering /Ajax is pro-active in working closely with all citizens with a track record of raising funds for disaster relief to poverty alleviation programs at home and overseas.

When it comes to bringing hope and making a difference in the lives of people in need, this community never lags behind. When we fundraise for a cause as good as this MRI machine for the hospital, we are giving in more than one way. We are not only raising money, we are raising the awareness of everyone who hears about this event.

It is a tribute to this tiny community in this area, always willing to open their hearts for such laudable causes to improve the lives of people in distress. The contribution to the MRI is their latest effort in touching the lives of people they don’t even know.

Vaqar Raees, president of Friends Indeed a corporate senior manager and his team of committed individuals were instrumental in rallying the community.
The cheque was presented to the Hospital officials by Vaqar Raees, flanked by Mohammed Ehtesham Rahim president of the Pickering Islamic Centre, Pastor Don Palmer of Forrest Brook Church and FI members.

The event will take place on Saturday February 25, 2012 from 11 am to 6.00 pm in the Pickering Town Centre (Centre Court).

Pickering Islamic Centre will be setting up a booth with displays reflecting some Islamic art work and other exhibits that would be of interest to the visitors. Our volunteer corps would be at the booth welcoming visitors and responding to their curiosity.

Our participation in this event along with a diverse group of people showcasing their respective cultural and ethnic
background offers an opening for us to meet, chat and tell people about the richness of our own heritage and the splendoursof our culture closely tied with what we believe in — our faith.

As citizens, it is our civic responsibility to participate in such events that strengthen our bonds with other communities and provide others an opportunity to understand the significance of being a Canadian Muslim in this great country of ours.

For details contact:
Br. Vaqar Raees, Coordinator, Outreach Services
at 416-819-6411

This email is a reminder that we will be having our monthly Student Night for brothers and sisters 15 and up this coming Saturday, February 11 at 5:15pm.

As requested by the attendees of our last session, the topic this week will be “Pre-marital Relations”. There will be an interactive discussion full of student related questions and answers along with light food and drinks. Join our growing number of students benefiting from this program. Please pass on the message to all those who may benefit from this program.

Thank you,
PIC Management

This will generate a sense of belonging among children towards the Masjid and get them connected with the Centre

• a place to be!
• There is no fee / cost to parents
• It will be in the basement

Parents are encouraged to bring their children to enjoy this fun filled educational program.

Please be on time to pick up your children as there will not be any babysitting after the end of the program.

If anyone wishes to sponsor snacks, they are more than welcome.

Contact: Sr. Zaynab – inquire2012@gmail.com

Organized by the Durham Multi-faith World Religion Day committee, representing 8 diverse faith groups with their followers gathered at the Town’s arena to listen to the speeches followed by Q & A period. This year’s format was engaging and connected the audience directly with the speakers on a one to one basis. Each speaker was allowed a 4 minute presentation followed by questions from the audience of equal time. For many, it was a learning experience.

Pickering Islamic Centre was well represented by Sr. Mahjabeen Fatima who spoke with clarity and conviction on the theme giving the Islamic perspective of Social Justice. She said that ‘the topic was relevant and timely in wake of Occupy Wall Street Movement which gripped North America, Europe and other parts of the world as a result of the Arab Spring which became the catalyst of this entire revolutionary uproar.’ She added; ‘they all point to the social and economic inequities in our societies despite the phenomenal progress in science and technology.’

‘In Islam’ she stated, ‘social justice is one of the pillars of a civilized society where the weak are protected, the poor are provided with a level playing field and every individual is treated with dignity and compassion to promote and maintain social order and harmony.’

‘This Qur’anic concept was introduced by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and was in full force till the end of thirteenth century, a period covering almost five centuries before the onslaught of Mongol hordes.’

Fatima drew rapt attention from the audience who showed interest in her speech which was evident from the questions she received from the audience. One listener
asked, if this is truly the Islamic understanding of social justice, then why the Muslim countries are in the present state of disorder?
She accepted that there is a deficit in practice when it comes to the application of the Islamic teachings and the Arab Spring is a hopeful sign for improvement. But she added that such deficiency is not restricted to Muslims alone as it cuts right across all faith groups and cultures. She smiled back when the audience nodded in agreement. Noticing her hijab, one young lady asked about her take on it. Fatima’s response was from her heart as it reflected her passion towards her belief.

Eid- ul Fitr is scheduled on August 19, 2012
Eid-ul- Adha is scheduled on October 26, 2012

But the actual date of Eid is subject to the sighting of moon announced
at that time by the Hilal committee of Toronto.