Thomas Jefferson and Islam

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 (the "Barbary 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 North African 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 Dye 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 would 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 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 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 right 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..  In fact 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 concern 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 and on and on....

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 America 's STUPID leaders, from both parties, would rather be politically correct than victorious!

There is no doubt that someone of Jefferson's intellect would today, conclude, that Islam is not actually a religion but a political system and one that seeks complete domination - that's why they so abhor and oppose, democracy.  And that is the essence of the battle we now face, not just in Jefferson's American homeland but in Europe, as well.  It is a battle that we cannot afford to lose.  Remember that when you select and vote for candidates for political office.  If they don't understand the existential threat, they aren't fit for office.  Islam is on the march and must be opposed and defeated.  

Note:  The larger part of this blog was sent to me, from a source that is anonymous and so I cannot properly attribute.

French lessons

I have been off 'air' for a while, moving jobs and countries.  While I have been otherwise engaged, the horrific attacks on Charlie Hebdo were perpetrated by Islamists who in turn were hunted down and killed by French police and security forces.  The temptation was to immediately rush onto the airwaves and rant and rave (again) about the evil being perpetrated in the name of Islam, etc..  However, I thought maybe a period of reflection might serve me better.  You judge.

Not for the first time, in the last 100 years, French Jews are under attack and being sacrificed at the hands of their fellow-countrymen.  In 2013 French Jews were killed by an Islamist in Toulouse and now we see again, with the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris, that Jews have been specifically targeted (also at Chalie Hebdo, so it seems).  In the 1940's it was Vichy French that handed over Jews to the Nazis, to suffer at Drancy and extermination camps in the East and today it is the French who again offer-up the Jews - this time to murderous Islamists.  Just as with the Nazis, so with the Islamists, making victims of the Jews won't ultimately save the French!

So we had the big march in Paris, showing solidarity with the victims of Charlie Hebdo.  The BBC, amongst many news organisations made much of this event.  Many words spoken about the right to free speech and expression, as was exemplified by the writers at Charlie Hebdo.  Then, later in the week, Charlie Hebdo released a latest issue of their magazine and lo and behold, it carried a cartoon on the cover that featured Mohammed and was sure to anger Ismalists.   True to form, the fine words spoken by the assembled mass media, just a few days earlier, didn't translate to many of them and their editors having the courage to display the cartoon in question.  I tip my hat though, to Britain's Guardian which did.  I usually hold this newspaper in contempt but here at least they let their actions match their words.  Bravo!

However, before the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo hit the news-stands, we we treated in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and at the Paris march, to speeches from politicians and world 'leaders'.  All spoke of the importance of the right of free speech and how this must be protected.  Then, with the ink not dry on the editorials which commented upon the speeches and the march, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel,  was telling the organizers of the now weekly Pergida marches in Dresden and other German cities, that it would be best if this week's marches were canceled.  I cannot be alone in seeing the complete contradiction in marching for free speech on Sunday and then advising against it, on Monday!  I lack a thesaurus but there has to be a words stronger than rank hypocrisy to describe such actions.

And think of the consequences of this.  Yet further reinforcement of the actions that have gotten us into this mess.  We mustn't offend, we must appease!

The biggest problem facing Europe, and increasingly America, Canada and Australia, is the failure of multi-culturalism.  Let's be very clear, Muslim immigrants in those countries are not assimilating.  No one is saying that they cannot practice their religion but they need to adopt certain of the host country's values.  Tolerance of other faiths, freedom of speech, the host country law being the only law, learning the language, etc..  Absent this, then these immigrants must be considered as a fifth column and a threat to the peace and stability of the host country and they must be expelled, just as you would do with any other threat.

The leftist policy of multi-culturalism has brought us to this and now we have to stand-up and say enough and then we need to do something about it and carry on doing something until multi-culturalism is consigned to the same dustbin of history where one would find Marxism and Communism.  Let's hope though that the victims that suffer during the ridding of multi-culturalism do not number anywhere near the 10's of millions that suffered and died under those other failed ideologies.

I have just re-read the above and wonder who will take-up the cudgels on this?  In Britain the main parties pay lip-service to a need for change.  The Conservatives just maybe might do something.  Labour spouts about the need to do something about immigration but them having been the ones that threw the immigration floodgates, wide open, they won't because of their need for its ethnic, client constituencies.  UKIP says it would but I really can't see them as a realistic electoral success story.

While Barack Hussein Obama is President of the USA, don't expect any push back.  This is the man that says that the Islamic State murderers are not Islamists!   Those people who are killing Yazidis and Christians, in the most barbaric fashion claim to represent Islam.  The people who carried out the attacks in Paris, and those caught-up in yesterday's shoot-outs in Belgium claim to represent Islam.  Yet still Obama shames America by claiming the contrary.  Perhaps he did the right thing by not attending the Paris march.  Though he wouldn't have been alone in sounding hypocritical with his words, his presence would have been an embarrassment.  Never forget, Obama wrote ' when the winds change and turn against Islam, I will stand with the Muslims'  So his loyalties are clearly known!