History Lesson for Today....
Most 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 Dey of Algiers demanded an
unheard-of 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 by what 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 previous
contacts.
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 thuggery 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. 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 the Islamists 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 news papers.
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.
If there’s any doubt, just
Google “Thomas Jefferson vs the Muslim World.”
HISTORY LESSON AS ACCOUNTED
BY: Braswell Deen, Jr.
Decorated WWII U.S. Marine Veteran
Entrepreneur, Lawyer, Legislature, Jurist,
Retired Chief Justice of Georgia Appellate
Court
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