Jefferson: Koran Immoral, Akin To Paganism?

Many may recall a link to a paid article I provided in The Myth of Jefferson's Koran, a post on Jefferson's having owned a Koran, the one newly elected Congressman Keith Ellison used at his private swearing in ceremony.

Somehow I doubt Congressman Elect Ellison read the full article. I've heard from a fellow blogger who has.

Revising the laws of Virginia some years later, Jefferson revealed that he had thought long and hard about the suitability of punishment to crime. As he explained the ideas underlying his well-known “Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments” to his friend and mentor George Wythe when he sent him a copy of it, “An eye for an eye, and a hand for a hand will exhibit spectacles in execution whose moral effect would be questionable” (Papers 2: 230).

It also appears that Jefferson kept his religious books, he owned many, organized in a manner which suggested an evolution from the pagan to the moral. The author, who was no enemy to Islam, concluded that Jefferson likely saw the Koran as an improvement over sheer paganism, but also viewed it as inferior to Christian belief systems underlying Western law.

The idea of progress underlies Jefferson’s organization of his religious books, and the list suggests a general progression from pagan to Christian.

…

The organization of the library catalogue implies that the Islamic belief system was an improvement over the pagan religions yet fell short of the belief system Christianity represented.

Click here to read it all.

Comments

[Phoenix]

"The organization of the library catalogue implies that the Islamic belief system was an improvement over the pagan religions yet fell short of the belief system Christianity represented. "

This assertion is total presumption. So is the whole article. Most seekers of wisdom read as much as they can in as wide a variety of texts as possible. Hitler's own library was stuffed with religious texts. I have no idea how he organized his shelves, but I doubt he organized them in order of what he felt was valid or not considering his personal beliefs would have held that all religious texts be thrown into the ovens. I doubt Jefferson did either. What a stupid assumption. Is the author implying Jefferson hadn't the ability to synthesize what he learned into forming his opinions so had to line up his books to help him remember which religion was bad?

Jefferson was an atheist. Maybe Ellison knows that and THAT is why he chose Jefferson's Koran.