"In 1765 Jefferson was studying for his bar exam to qualify as a lawyer.

 To acquaint himself with what various traditions had to offer about the law, he purchased the most recent and accurate translation of the Qur'an available, a work by George Sale called The Koran: Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed, which had been translated from the original Arabic in 1734. [15] Jefferson's personal copy of the Qur'an eventually became part of the holdings of the Library of Congress, and it recently gained a great deal of attention when it was used in the swearing-in ceremony of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim American elected to the U.S. Congress. Many modern-day bigots and alarmists, viewing the choice of the Qur'an (instead of the more common Bible) as yet another slippery slope that would lead to the implosion of American identity, called Ellison unpatriotic and a threat to American values. Ellison was making a deft point through his use of the Qur'an as the scripture on which to be sworn into Congress: if Thomas Jefferson owned and studied the Qur'an, if he saw no contradiction between being American and being Muslim, why should we?

-Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters by Omid Safi, pg. 11 - I'm feeling the introduction to this book as you can tell ma sha Allah! :)