It Is About Islam INTRODUCTION Jefferson''s Quran One block from the U.S. Capitol sits the Library of Congress. Housing more than 160 million books, manuscripts, photographs, recordings, and maps, it''s the largest library in the world. If you put its bookshelves together in a single line, they would extend 838 miles. The current collection owes its start to one of America''s greatest Founding Fathers. After the Library of Congress was burned to the ground by the British during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson, then in retirement at Monticello, offered once more to be of service to his young nation. Jefferson, who owned the nation''s largest private collection of books--6,500 at the time--offered the entire lot to the newly rebuilt library "for whatever price found appropriate.

" Jefferson was a voracious reader and a distinguished intellect. Along with hundreds of books that matched his varied interests was a well-worn two-volume set that he believed offered his nation a warning. Jefferson had bought these volumes, bound in leather and filled with yellowed pages that crackled when you turned them, forty years earlier when he''d been a young red-haired law student in Williamsburg. By then he''d already developed a reputation as a passionate debater in the service of justice--even if it meant challenging the laws of the Crown. In 1765, the young rabble-rouser had become known for his strident opposition to Parliament''s passage of the Stamp Act, the latest in a series of unjust taxes imposed by the British on the colonies without representation. As a student of the law, Jefferson was curious about laws of many kinds, including those that had a voice in exotic lands or claimed to carry the word of God. That is why, when he wandered into the offices of the Virginia Gazette, the local newspaper that doubled as a bookstore, one day in October 1765, Jefferson found the two-volume set so tantalizing. Printed in London by a British lawyer named George Sale, the books were one of the first English translations of the Quran.

After paying sixteen shillings, Thomas Jefferson held in his hands the holy book of Islam. He kept them among his possessions for the following four decades. When I first heard that one of our nation''s Founding Fathers owned one of America''s earliest copies of the Quran, I endeavored to do some research on it. I was curious as to why Jefferson, a man famously curious and cosmopolitan, but also skeptical of organized religion, had it in his possession. We don''t know exactly how closely Thomas Jefferson read the Quran he owned. We do know that he is the only Founding Father to have a basic understanding of Arabic. We do know that he promoted and championed the creation of an Oriental languages department at his alma mater, the College of William & Mary. And we do know that he would be the first American president to go to war with Islamic radicals.

It is clear, however, that Jefferson was, to put it mildly, suspicious of Islam. He compared the faith with Catholicism, and believed that neither had undergone a reformation. Both religions, he felt, suppressed rational thought and persecuted skeptics. When combined with the power of the state, religion would corrupt and stifle individual rights. Islam, to Jefferson''s mind, provided a cautionary tale of what happened when a faith insisted on combining religious and political power into one. As a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Jefferson cited Islam as an example for why Virginia should not have an official religion. A state religion, he argued, would quash "free enquiry," as he recorded in his notes at the time. He knew Islam held little tolerance for other faiths.

But Jefferson was neither a bigot nor an Islamophobe. The irony of Jefferson''s observations about Islam is that they were made in service of an argument that would ensure that Muslims--along with Jews, Christians, atheists, and adherents of every other faith--would have full citizenship as Virginians, and ultimately, as Americans. The landmark legislation Jefferson championed, "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," which served as a model for the United States Constitution a decade later, ensured that there was no official religion of state. Between 1776 and 1779, Jefferson drafted more than one hundred pieces of legislation, but he was most proud of number 82, which is referenced on his gravestone as "the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom." The fiercely controversial bill disestablished Christianity as the official religion of his state. Jefferson''s legislation was nothing short of revolutionary, a first in the history of the world: absolute freedom of religious conscience and permanent separation of church and state. And as evidenced by his copious notes, Jefferson''s knowledge of the Quran and Islam had shaped his views of the importance of protecting religious liberty. Jefferson believed that everyone should have the right to worship, or not to worship, as they choose.

It was, unfortunately, not a view shared by the Muslims he eventually encountered. In March 1786, after America had won its independence, Jefferson was serving as minister to France, shuttling between European capitals to secure commercial agreements. One of the thorniest challenges he had to confront was the growing power of the Barbary States, four North African territories that sponsored marauding pirates who were increasingly confiscating thousands of dollars in American shipping and enslaving hundreds of U.S. citizens in prisons across the Mediterranean. In London, Jefferson and his fellow diplomat John Adams met with the ambassador from the pasha of Tripoli, a man named Abdul Rahman, to resolve the growing dispute. The war that existed between his nation and America, the ambassador explained, "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet." The capture of U.

S. ships and people was a just and holy war, sanctioned by the Quran. Jefferson and Adams took meticulous notes of the meeting. "It was written in their Koran," the two Americans noted, "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 [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise." Jefferson needed only reference his own two-volume translation of the Quran to understand that everything in the ambassador''s explanation of the Barbary States'' "holy war" against America was accurate and faithful to Islam''s holy book. The Quran''s Sura (or chapter) 9, verse 29, explains the Islamic duty to make war upon non-Muslims: Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e., Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

* Sura 47, verse 4 sanctions the taking of captives as spoils of war: So, when you meet (in fight Jihad in Allah''s Cause), those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e., take them as captives). Thereafter (is the time) either for generosity (i.e., free them without ransom), or ransom (according to what benefits Islam), until the war lays down its burden. Thus [you are ordered by Allah to continue in carrying out Jihad against the disbelievers till they embrace Islam (i.e.

, are saved from the punishment in the Hell-fire) or at least come under your protection], but if it had been Allah''s Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (He lets you fight), in order to test you, some with others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost. And Sura 2, verse 154, clearly outlines that Allah will reward holy warriors who fight on his behalf: And say not of those who are killed in the Way of Allah, "They are dead." Nay, they are living, but you perceive (it) not. What the ambassador of Tripoli was explaining to the future second and third presidents of the United States was the concept of jihad--God''s lawful war against nonbelievers. To drive the point home, the ambassador left Jefferson and Adams with a final image of what American sailors would face on the high seas. The two American diplomats recounted what the Barbary ambassador had told them: It was a law that the first who boarded an enemy''s vessel should have one slave, more than his share with the rest, which operated as an incentive to the most desperate valour and enterprise, that it was the practice of their corsairs to bear down upon a ship, for each sailor to take a dagger in each hand and another in his mouth, and leap on board, which so terrified their enemies that very few ever stood against them, that he verily believed the Devil assisted his countrymen, for