Thursday, January 11, 2007

What Jefferson really thought about Islam

Via Slate and one of my favorite writers, Chrisopher Hitchens, writes about the american history of Islam, religion, and Jefferson.

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered 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 Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Source: What Jefferson really thought about Islam. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Technorati tags: , ,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That hardly tells what jefferson thought, he's simply repeating what he was told.

Anonymous said...

Any interested in Hitchens may like to look over this post on Ezra Klein:

http://ezraklein.typepad.com
/blog/2006/10/christopher_hit.html

The lead entry includes a dinner table rant by Hitchens in which he throws verbal bombs as only he can do. It isn't paraphrased, so I would assume he was recorded at table.

Some of the comments on the thread are very amusing, others extremely nasty. Overall it comes off as a group hatchet job aimed at knocking the great man off his pedestal ... alcohol being one of the main talking points.