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.
