"As I’ve noted before, Thomas Jefferson once held a sunset dinner here with an envoy from Tunisia -- perhaps the first Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago. And some of you, as you arrived tonight, may have seen our special display, courtesy of our friends at the Library of Congress -- the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. And that's a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam -- like so many faiths -- is part of our national story." - Barack Hussein Obama
Thomas Jefferson was a Christian materialist who followed the moral teachings of Jesus while rejecting any spiritual existence whatsoever. In a private letter to Benjamin Rush, Jefferson refers to himself as "Christian" (1803): "To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence..." In a letter to his close friend William Short, Jefferson clarified, "it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it." (here)
Jefferson even wrote his own version of the Bible, redacting all but the natural references to morality.
As for Islam and Jefferson's ownership of the Q'uran, he was engaged in a war, a war against the Barbary Muslim states of Africa who were demanding tribute; pirates with whom Jefferson needed to learn about and later deal with. He possessed a copy of the Q'uran to learn about why the tribute existed (Dhimmi tax) and then dispatched the US Navy to put an end to it. It really is a simple as that.
So the facts omitted by Obama in his Iftar speech are that the "part of our national story" regarding Islam are not good... not good at all.
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