What Thomas Jefferson learned from the Muslim book of jihad
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
January 2007
Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United
States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the
Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the
United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.
Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity
drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the
U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of
Minnesota.
The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of
America's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare
Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500
Jefferson books archived in the library.
Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in
college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed
that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be
gleaned from many sources.
There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing
wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time
Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything
possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.
Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a
subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but,
which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who
over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of
thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic
"Barbary" states.
Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the
African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and
seizing slaves.
The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal
villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim
raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and
women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women
and children could be collected.
Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as
concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the
sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many
as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their
fortunes allow.
Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to
create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets
of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch
stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary
surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small
number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the
surgery.
When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776,
American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no
American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and
their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under
the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling
Algeria.
Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being
destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784
to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress
appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas
Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.
Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the
Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the
Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to
retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved
sailors.
Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to
get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again.
Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the
demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the
medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force
an end to Muslim piracy.
In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and
Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London
with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador
to Britain.
The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on
Congress' vote to appease.
During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador
why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with
which they had no previous contacts.
In a later meeting with the American Congress, 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."
For the following 15 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 20 percent of United States government
annual revenues in 1800.
Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he
dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in
the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.
Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense
but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by
deploying American Marines and many of America's best warships to
the Muslim Barbary Coast.
The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS
Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.
In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt
into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the
freeing of all American slaves.
During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States,
crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and
on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon
slavery and piracy.
Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine
Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores
of Tripoli, we will fight our country's battles on the land as on
the sea."
It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the
total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.
Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to
put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about
Jefferson. He was a "visionary" wise enough to read and learn
about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.
Ryan
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