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Here’s a pretty important bit of history
from our Nation’s early years,
and it’s directly applicable to what is happening
to us - TODAY!
Americans are unaware of the fact
that over two hundred years ago,
the United States had declared war on Islam,
and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!
At the height of the eighteenth century,
Muslim pirates were the terror of the
Mediterranean and a large area of the
North Atlantic.
They attacked every ship in sight,
and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms.
Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment
and wrote heart breaking letters home, begging
their government and family members to pay whatever
their Mohammedan captors demanded.
These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic
nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers –
collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast –
and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat
to the new American Republic.
Before the Revolutionary War, U.S.merchant ships
had been under the protection of Great Britain.
When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war,
the ships of the United States were protected by France.
However, once the war was won, America had to protect its
own fleets.
Thus, the birth of the U.S.Navy.Beginning in 1784,
seventeen years before he would become president,
Thomas Jefferson became America’s Minister to France.
That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its
Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European
nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States,
rather than engaging them in war.
In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships,
and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard ransom of $60,000. It was a plain
and simple case of extortion,
and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further
payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied
nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested
Congress decided to pay the ransom.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s
ambassador to Great Britain to ask bywhat right his nation
attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens,
and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America,
a nation with which they had no previouscontacts.
The two future presidents reported that
Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered
that Islam"was founded on the Laws of their Prophet,
that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should
not have acknowledged 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
Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to
Paradise."
Despite of this stunning admission of premeditated violence
on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of many notable
American leaders, including George Washington,
who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only
further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years,
the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars
for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American
hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of
the United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in
as the third President of the United States in 1801,
the Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding
the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every
year forthcoming. That changed everything.
Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms,
what he could do with his demand. The Pasha
responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate
and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers
immediately followed suit. Jefferson, until now,
had been against America raising a naval force
for anything beyond coastal defense, but having watched his nation
be cowed by Islamic thugery for long enough,
decided that is was finally time to meet force with force.
He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean
and taught the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson
he hoped they would never forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to
empower U.S.ships to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to “cause to
be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war would
justify.”
When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American
cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both
the will and the might to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance
to Tripoli.
The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years,
and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps
in these wars led to the line
“to the shores of Tripoli”
in the Marine Hymn, and they would forever be known as “leathernecks” for the leather
collars of their uniforms,
designed to prevent their heads from being cut off
by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.
Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing
in the name of their prophet and their god,
disturbed Jefferson quite deeply. America had a tradition of
religious tolerance, the fact that Jefferson, himself,
had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,
but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion
the world had ever seen. A religion based on supremacism,
whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against
unbelievers was unacceptable
to him. His greatest fear was that someday
this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the United
States.
This should bother every American. That Muslims have brought about
women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and
public pools; that Christians,Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on
juries where Muslim
defendants are being judged, Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue
dispensers have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist
sensibilities. Ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King
locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic
script for Allah, public schools are pulling pork
from their menus, on and on in the newspapers….
It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to
it, and most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day
across America. By not fighting back,
by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening,
and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture,
the United States is cutting its own throat with a
politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda.
Sadly, it appears that today’s America would rather be politically
correct than victorious.
Any doubts,
just Google: Thomas Jefferson
vs the Muslim World
I don't know who wrote this piece, but I found it to be very
interesting. Not much has
changed, has it?
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