What Thomas Jefferson Might Have to Say About Congressman Keith Ellison Swearing in on His Quran

Congressman Keith Ellison, recently elected in Minnesota in the United States House of Representatives, just swore into office on Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran. Many are heralding this as a win for religious freedom in the United States. I find it downright scary.

In a press conference on Friday, Keith Ellison, who is the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress in the United States, attempted to re-write our American history by claiming that the founding fathers were influenced by the Quran.

In his statement to The Free Press, Detroit native Ellison said Jefferson's Quran "shows that from the earliest times of this republic, the Quran was in the consciousness of people who brought about democracy." Ellison explained to reporters that he used the Quran to be sworn into his office in the United States House of Representatives because the Islamic holy book helped influence the founding fathers of America.

The founding fathers must be turning over in their graves.

Ellison's use of Thomas Jefferson's Quran is a cheap political trick, all smoke and mirrors, on a public who has yet to inform themselves about what's inside of the Islamic holy book and to ask themselves if the contents of this book are compatible with democracy and a free society. Most of the American public, who have never cracked open the Quran and who know little or nothing about Islam, have been lulled by Ellison and the media into believing Thomas Jefferson's ownership of a copy of the Quran is his beyond-the-grave endorsement of Islam in this post-911 world.

What's scarier is that most Americans and the press have neither the intellectual interest nor the energy to look beyond Ellison's statements to see for themselves what Jefferson or any of the other founding fathers might have thought about the subject. They're probably too busy watching the latest reality show on TV.