{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Founding Encounters","title":"Jefferson's Quran | Founding Encounters","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":972,"description":"How a founder’s encounter with Islam’s holiest book shaped the future America’s commitment to religious liberties.\nOn an October day in 1765, a young law student entered the printing office of the Virginia Gazette on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, Virginia.\nPrinting offices were the nerve centers of any major colonial city in those days: part newsroom, part post office, part bookstore. The air inside them was thick with the smell of ink, hot wax, and bookbinding glue. On any given afternoon, merchants, lawyers, and burgesses – the colonial lawmakers of the time – moved through its narrow space collecting letters, buying pamphlets, and debating current events. In printing offices, Virginians met the wider world.\nThe law student had been here before — many times, in fact. The  records kept by the shop’s account book show he had visited at least 30 times in two years – picking up stationery, settling accounts, or buying books. \nTall and lean with a shock of red hair, he was a voracious reader. Reading, for him, was a passion and a necessity – a tool to make sense of the crises around. America was burning. His fellow colonists teetered on the edge of rage. The British had levied the Stamp Act – new taxes on paper, legal documents, pamphlets: almost everything that passed through a printing office. On this particular visit, he paid 26 shillings to purchase a leather-bound set of books which had recently arrived from London. The gold-embossed title on their spine read: The Quran. This was an unusual purchase for a Virginian, or any colonial American. But the purchaser was unusual, too. He was Thomas Jefferson.\nAt this time, most colonial Americans feared Islam – or Mahometans, as they called Muslims. In their minds, Muslim meant the Ottoman Turks, or the Barbary pirates – people leading dangerous lives in a dangerous world beyond the Atlantic. \nThe Quran Jefferson bought that afternoon would travel with him through revolution, through the presidency,...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/uYqyXRmnSeQRkANUUqVkIxQ2DwwU3mdXhKYEp1T4BMw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lNjhk/YWNkODZiZjU4Nzc0/ODRmZTYzYmVhNjZj/OTVmOS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}