Use of Jefferson’s Quran During Swearing-in Ceremony Invites Historical Inquiry 

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

KINSTON, NORTH CAROLINA (ANS) – When Ted Sampley watched Rep. Keith Ellison place his hand on a rare copy of the Quran from the library of Thomas Jefferson during Ellison’s recent swearing-in ceremony for the House of Representatives, something triggered Sampley’s curiosity for long-forgotten historical detail.

When Ted Sampley watched Rep. Keith Ellison place his hand on a rare copy of the Quran from the library of Thomas Jefferson during Ellison’s recent swearing-in ceremony for the House of Representatives, something triggered Sampley’s curiosity for long-forgotten historical detail.“There had to be a reason Jefferson had that Quran,” says Sampley, editor of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch (www.usvetdsp.com).  At the ceremony, Ellison said that Jefferson’s ownership of the Quran showed “a visionary like Jefferson” believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources. Was Jefferson—a self-described deist, open to a wide variety of spiritual pathways which included Islam?

Sampley, a former Green Beret awarded four Bronze Stars in Vietnam, doubted Jefferson’s possession of the book evidenced partiality toward the Muslim holy book. In fact, a bit of historical spadework by Sampley produced a compelling alternative theory: Jefferson owned the book because he was about to advocate war against America’s first Islamic foe.

For centuries, Muslim slave traders captured millions of Africans for servitude in the Islamic “Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli. Sometimes Europeans and Americans were caught in their raids and taken prisoner as well.

“When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection,” Sampley writes in an article posted to his website. “With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers”–an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.”

With American commerce at risk, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to oversee the negotiations.
Lacking the ability to protect its ships, the new American government tried to appease the pirate slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors, Sampley notes.

“Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed.” Jefferson believed there would be no end to the demands for money and wanted matters settled “through the medium of war.”

In 1786, Jefferson and Adams met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the “Dey of Algiers” ambassador to Britain. “The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to appease,” Sampley notes.

“During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Algerian ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.”

In a later meeting with Congress, the two future presidents reported the ambassador said Islam “was 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 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.”

For the following 15 years, the American government paid millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800, according to Sampley’s research.

Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean. He declared that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” and deployed the USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, and other warships along the Barbary Coast.

“In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves,” he notes.
During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States finally agreed to abandon their practices of slavery and piracy.

“Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, ‘From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.’”

“It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates,” Sampley says.

Reactions to Sampley’s historical research continue to pour in from around the world, causing him surprise. “This is a part of history that seems to have been forgotten,” he laments.

Sampley believes the use of the Quran is inappropriate for a congressional swearing-in ceremony. “It’s an insult to all the founding fathers,” he maintains. “This is not what they envisioned.”