A Voice from the Mountains
26th March 2019, 22:21
In 1785, American sailors first encountered Islamic jihadi pirates on the Mediterranean, and American politicians first had to address the problem of Islamic jihad.
America’s 233-Year-Old Shock at Jihad
By Raymond Ibrahim
Exactly 233 years ago this week, two of America’s founding fathers documented their first exposure to Islamic jihad in a letter to Congress; like many Americans today, they too were shocked at what they learned.
Context: in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams -- then ambassadors to France and England respectively -- met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity to American vessels in a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786:
["]We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, 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 who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise[."]
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors -- who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” -- thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/americas_233yearold_shock_at_jihad.html
Though the pirates demanded exorbitant ransoms to cease their holy war, Jefferson and Washington both thought that it would be more appropriate to use the money to create a navy to destroy them:
Some American congressmen agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them” -- including General George Washington: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary?” he wrote to a friend. “Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”
John Adams, on the other hand, recognized that fighting the fundamentalists would not cease so long as they continued to be radicalized by their religion, and preferred to just pay them off instead, as the Europeans had been doing. Congress agreed on this course of action, and began paying off the Islamic pirates.
When Thomas Jefferson became president, however, a new jihad was declared on the United States, and Jefferson was now in the position, as Commander in Chief, to declare war on the Barbary pirates. The infant US Navy was eventually victorious, after conquering a coastal Islamic town and using it as leverage to conclude a peace treaty.
When Muslim pirates from Algiers captured eleven more American merchant vessels in 1794, the Naval Act was passed and a permanent U.S. naval force established. [B]But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments -- which took up 16 percent of the federal budget -- began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, over 100 American sailors were released -- how many died or disappeared is unclear -- and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. American payments and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened Muslim pirates to respond with increasingly capricious demands.
[...]
Denied jizya from the infidels, Tripoli proclaimed jihad on the United States on May 10, 1801. But by now, America had six war vessels, which Jefferson deployed to the Barbary Coast. For the next five years, the U.S. Navy warred with the Muslim pirates, making little headway and suffering some setbacks -- the most humiliating being when the Philadelphia and its crew were captured in 1803.
Desperate measures were needed: enter William Eaton. As U.S. consul to Tunis (1797–1803), he had lived among and understood the region’s Muslims well. He knew that “the more you give the more the Turks will ask for,” and despised that old sense of Islamic superiority: “It grates me mortally,” he wrote, “when I see a lazy Turk [generic for Muslim] reclining at his ease upon an embroidered sofa, with one Christian slave to hold his pipe, another to hold his coffee, and a third to fan away the flies.” Seeing that the newborn American navy was making little headway against the seasoned pirates, he devised a daring plan: to sponsor the claim of Mustafa’s brother, exiled in Alexandria; and then to march the latter’s supporters and mercenaries through five hundred miles of desert, from Alexandria onto Tripoli.
The trek was arduous -- not least because of the Muslim mercenaries themselves. Eaton had repeatedly tried to win them over: “I touched upon the affinity of principle between the Islam and Americans [sic] religion.” But despite these all too familiar ecumenical overtures, “We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us,” he lamented in his diary, “or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Mussulmen. We have a difficult undertaking!” (For all his experience with Muslims, Eaton was apparently unaware of the finer points of their (Sharia) law, namely, al-wala’ wa’l bara’, or “loyalty and enmity.”)
Eaton eventually managed to reach and conquer Tripoli’s coastal town of Derne on April 27, 1805. Less than two months later, on June 10, a peace treaty was signed between the U.S. and Tripoli, formally ending hostilities.
Thus and despite the (rather ignorant) question that became popular after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” -- a question that was answered to Jefferson and Adams 233 years ago today -- the United States’ first war and victory as a nation was against Muslims, and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale Muslims had used to initiate hostilities against non-Muslims for the preceding 1,200 years.
Insofar as our founding fathers are still held in high esteem in the United States, and politicians of both parties try to justify their positions by the political philosophies of the founders and framers of the Constitution, it is interesting to reflect on these early interactions with foreign ideologies and how the founders chose to deal with them. It is pretty clear that they were not exactly inviting them to migrate en masse, as too many seem eager to do today.
Washington and Jefferson, representing two different sides of the political spectrum at that time (a nationalist and an anti-nationalist, respectively) both agreed that military action would ultimately be necessary to protect American lives and trade interests, and that the Islamic pirates' actions could not be tolerated. The policy of appeasing them with bribes and tributes was not sustainable, and ultimately only encouraged additional aggression.
What would they have thought about congresswoman Ilhan Omar and CAIR promoting Islamic values in United States today? Probably nothing very flattering.
https://fournews-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2016/11/4ON_OMAR_PAB_1811_Thumbnail1280x720.jpg
Some additional thoughts from Britain, where Islamization is much further advanced than it is in the United States:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haKTGwBoD1A
America’s 233-Year-Old Shock at Jihad
By Raymond Ibrahim
Exactly 233 years ago this week, two of America’s founding fathers documented their first exposure to Islamic jihad in a letter to Congress; like many Americans today, they too were shocked at what they learned.
Context: in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams -- then ambassadors to France and England respectively -- met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity to American vessels in a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786:
["]We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, 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 who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise[."]
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors -- who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” -- thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/americas_233yearold_shock_at_jihad.html
Though the pirates demanded exorbitant ransoms to cease their holy war, Jefferson and Washington both thought that it would be more appropriate to use the money to create a navy to destroy them:
Some American congressmen agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them” -- including General George Washington: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary?” he wrote to a friend. “Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”
John Adams, on the other hand, recognized that fighting the fundamentalists would not cease so long as they continued to be radicalized by their religion, and preferred to just pay them off instead, as the Europeans had been doing. Congress agreed on this course of action, and began paying off the Islamic pirates.
When Thomas Jefferson became president, however, a new jihad was declared on the United States, and Jefferson was now in the position, as Commander in Chief, to declare war on the Barbary pirates. The infant US Navy was eventually victorious, after conquering a coastal Islamic town and using it as leverage to conclude a peace treaty.
When Muslim pirates from Algiers captured eleven more American merchant vessels in 1794, the Naval Act was passed and a permanent U.S. naval force established. [B]But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments -- which took up 16 percent of the federal budget -- began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, over 100 American sailors were released -- how many died or disappeared is unclear -- and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. American payments and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened Muslim pirates to respond with increasingly capricious demands.
[...]
Denied jizya from the infidels, Tripoli proclaimed jihad on the United States on May 10, 1801. But by now, America had six war vessels, which Jefferson deployed to the Barbary Coast. For the next five years, the U.S. Navy warred with the Muslim pirates, making little headway and suffering some setbacks -- the most humiliating being when the Philadelphia and its crew were captured in 1803.
Desperate measures were needed: enter William Eaton. As U.S. consul to Tunis (1797–1803), he had lived among and understood the region’s Muslims well. He knew that “the more you give the more the Turks will ask for,” and despised that old sense of Islamic superiority: “It grates me mortally,” he wrote, “when I see a lazy Turk [generic for Muslim] reclining at his ease upon an embroidered sofa, with one Christian slave to hold his pipe, another to hold his coffee, and a third to fan away the flies.” Seeing that the newborn American navy was making little headway against the seasoned pirates, he devised a daring plan: to sponsor the claim of Mustafa’s brother, exiled in Alexandria; and then to march the latter’s supporters and mercenaries through five hundred miles of desert, from Alexandria onto Tripoli.
The trek was arduous -- not least because of the Muslim mercenaries themselves. Eaton had repeatedly tried to win them over: “I touched upon the affinity of principle between the Islam and Americans [sic] religion.” But despite these all too familiar ecumenical overtures, “We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us,” he lamented in his diary, “or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Mussulmen. We have a difficult undertaking!” (For all his experience with Muslims, Eaton was apparently unaware of the finer points of their (Sharia) law, namely, al-wala’ wa’l bara’, or “loyalty and enmity.”)
Eaton eventually managed to reach and conquer Tripoli’s coastal town of Derne on April 27, 1805. Less than two months later, on June 10, a peace treaty was signed between the U.S. and Tripoli, formally ending hostilities.
Thus and despite the (rather ignorant) question that became popular after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” -- a question that was answered to Jefferson and Adams 233 years ago today -- the United States’ first war and victory as a nation was against Muslims, and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale Muslims had used to initiate hostilities against non-Muslims for the preceding 1,200 years.
Insofar as our founding fathers are still held in high esteem in the United States, and politicians of both parties try to justify their positions by the political philosophies of the founders and framers of the Constitution, it is interesting to reflect on these early interactions with foreign ideologies and how the founders chose to deal with them. It is pretty clear that they were not exactly inviting them to migrate en masse, as too many seem eager to do today.
Washington and Jefferson, representing two different sides of the political spectrum at that time (a nationalist and an anti-nationalist, respectively) both agreed that military action would ultimately be necessary to protect American lives and trade interests, and that the Islamic pirates' actions could not be tolerated. The policy of appeasing them with bribes and tributes was not sustainable, and ultimately only encouraged additional aggression.
What would they have thought about congresswoman Ilhan Omar and CAIR promoting Islamic values in United States today? Probably nothing very flattering.
https://fournews-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2016/11/4ON_OMAR_PAB_1811_Thumbnail1280x720.jpg
Some additional thoughts from Britain, where Islamization is much further advanced than it is in the United States:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haKTGwBoD1A