America & Islam: A Brief History

 

 

 

 

 

America & Islam: A Brief History

By Guido Volante

 

The following is a little history lesson most Americans do not know. The enemy

we face today is the same enemy we've faced before. We were at war with the Islamists

once before, and it was Thomas Jefferson who defeated them when he became

President. Where are the Thomas Jefferson's of today? He would be turning over in his

grave if he knew that they now have a foothold on our shores. Please read and share

with others.

 

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!!! Here

is a little history. Including how the term ‘Leatherneck’ came to be.

 

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 in1784, 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 Islams have brought about womenonly

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.