Thomas Jefferson bought a book.\u00a0 It was a rare thing and a valuable part of Jefferson\u2019s personal collection.\u00a0 When the Library of Congress was burned by the British in 1812, Jefferson sold his collection to the Federal government to help refurbish the library.\u00a0 There the book sat, largely ignored, for almost 200 years.<\/p>\n
This past fall, something interesting happened; Keith Ellison was elected to Congress.\u00a0 Amazingly, he is the first black elected from Minnesota.\u00a0 Even more amazing, he is the first Muslim to be elected from any U.S. state.\u00a0 And as the hour of his swearing in approached, Ellison asked if he could borrow Jefferson\u2019s book for the ceremony.\u00a0 The book, you see, is one of the earliest known European copies of the Koran.<\/p>\n
A firestorm erupted on Capitol Hill.\u00a0 Virgil Goode, Republican Congressman from Jefferson\u2019s own district in Virginia, said the event threatened \u201cthe values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America\u2026 there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.\u201d\u00a0 Author John Nichols, writing in THE NATION, responded, \u201cOn Thursday, it will not be Virgil Goode who pays tribute to Jefferson.\u00a0 It will be Keith Ellison.\u201d\u00a0 Critics claim Ellison is a jihadist, a terrorist sympathizer, an acolyte of Louis Farakhan.\u00a0 Others point to the separation of church and state, and the fact that numerous presidents have taken their oath without a bible.\u00a0 The political blogs started smoking and wheezing with partisan hysteria.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, amidst the hubbub, the head of the Library of Congress\u2019s rare books department personally walked the book over to the Capitol.\u00a0 For the first time in U.S. history, an elected federal official placed his hand upon the Koran and swore his oath of office. \u00a0There were so many people present that the ceremony was performed twice to let everyone see.\u00a0 Once it was done, Mr. Jefferson\u2019s book was walked back to the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Jefferson bought a book.\u00a0 It was a rare thing and a valuable part of Jefferson\u2019s personal collection.\u00a0 When the Library of Congress was burned by the British in 1812, Jefferson sold his collection to the Federal government to help refurbish the library.\u00a0 There the book sat, largely ignored, for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1241],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-thomas-jefferson-keith-ellison-koran-library-of-congress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}