> 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 Revolution ary 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 vehement ly 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 the m 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 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 it 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
> for get. 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
> 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, and 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.
> Happy Remembering!
> *Footnote from: National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 139, No. 6, June 1971,
> article title “Morocco Land of the Farthest West,” P. 842:*
>
> “It was the Arab conquest, early in the eighth century, that
> crystallized Moroccan character. The original Berber inhabitants had held
> the Phoenicians and Romans to coastal areas. Yet the Berbers *submitted
> to
> the armies of Islam, **subdued not by the sword but by the word*.”
> Can you see that same type of Islamic conquest slowly taking place right
> now in Europe and the United States?