Prof suggests that Thomas Jefferson was accused of being a secret Muslim

By Robert Spencer on January 17, 2014 in Uncategorized with 24 Comments

Denise A. Spellberg is associate professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson”s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders. From the looks of this article, the book is likely to be a melange of half-truths, distortions, and inventions designed to portray Thomas Jefferson as a proto-multicultural dhimmi and resistance to jihad terror as “bigotry.” Here, she tries to create the quite false impression that Thomas Jefferson was accused of being a Muslim, or at very least an admirer of Islam. Reality was quite different, but that has never stopped Leftist mythologizing.

“Jefferson Was the First President Defamed for Mentioning Islam,” by Denise A. Spellberg for The Free Lance-Star, January 14:

[“]Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself,” wrote Thomas Jefferson the year before his death. Who did he include among his neighbors in the blueprint for the nation he loved so much?

Jefferson implicitly included Muslims in his patriotic rendering of the Golden Rule. Many may find this idea startling today, but explicit proof for it exists.

[Spencer] How ridiculous. In the first place, the Golden Rule is not “love your neighbor as yourself,” but “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Second, Denise A. Spellberg tries to defame the resistance to jihad terror by caricaturing it as a desire to deny Muslims the protection of the Golden Rule, echoing the hysterical claims of the “Islamophobia”-mongers, that foes of terror want to deny Muslims equality of rights before the law. . . .

Do read it all at the url, it’s dumbfounding in its attempt to change history. . . .

Spencer also had a video of Keith Ellison on Morning Joe in which he mentioned his book My Country Tis of Thee (which wasn’t the point of Spencer showing the video, see it here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/01/rep-keith-ellison-d-muslim-brotherhood-likens-jihad-terror-to-struggle-in-us-against-income-inequali/), which sent me into orbit (I mean, think about it: “Thee” is God, and Ellison’s playing games, making us think he’s thinking that, too, but he’s not, he means Allah), so I went for reviews on it.

Found one from Kirkus Reviews (a biggy in the review world) https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/keith-ellison/my-country-tis-of-thee/. It was a lovefest in case you don’t have time to read it.

Found 3 on Amazon (no professional reviews there so far for some reason). I liked this one (surprise, surprise): “If you’re looking to waste the cover price for the ramblings and ravings of a quarter-baked radical, go ahead. This is a man who can’t even decide what his real name is, and has in the past advocated ambushing police officers. Liar and wolf in sheep’s clothing. The best urban governance produces.” I would like to think they won’t get better. Hopeless wish, of course, there are 331 reviews on Goodreads, but I can’t seem to access them.Me, I’m not going to buy it. Surprise, surprise.