Thomas Jefferson & Radical Islam’s War on the West

Frontpagemag.com ^ | May 21,2015 | David L. Hunter

[Biggirl]

Those that assume that radical Islam is a modern phenomenon that became prominent during Bill Clinton’s tenure as president in the 1990s merely scratch the historical surface of America’s complicated political entanglement with the Middle East’s supposed “religion of peace.” In truth, the tentacles of radical Islam go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

[Travis McGee]

[mountainlion]

In truth, the tentacles of radical Islam go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

Taken out of context this statement is not true and that is all the farther I got with the article. Charmane's grandfather Charles Martel AKS Charles “the Hammer” is credited with saving Europe form Islam. The tentacles of islam go back over 1400 years.

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, good read.

[Sherman Logan]

Some comments.

I thought it odd that the author seems to imply this problem started with Jefferson. There were Muslim pirates in the Med for over a thousand years before Jefferson, varying the extent of their depredations by the ratio between their own strength and that of the Christians.

For most of this period there were Christian pirates that preyed on Muslim shipping and made longshore raids on Muslim settlements just like the Muslim pirates did. Both sides enslaved and sold captives, held them for ransom,or used them as galley slaves. Most of the Christian “piracy,” at least from western Europe, had died down by the time we’re discussing. Greeks still engaged in it extensively.

It is inaccurate, or at least incomplete, to say that the Barbary pirates were just local Muslims fighting for their faith. Most, at least of the captains, were renegade Europeans who were probably often not devout converts. They were at heart pirates who used the flag of Islam to justify their crimes. Being a freelance pirate had become too difficult as the RN and other navies cracked down.

The British, French and other countries with large navies paid “tribute” because it was cheaper than a punitive expedition. The pirates were generally smart enough to calibrate the amount of their tribute so that it didn’t reach a point where it became more cost effective to send the Navy instead. They felt no obligation to be reasonable with the new USA because it didn’t HAVE a navy.

The large countries also on some level liked the pirates playing havoc among their smaller competitors for trade: some of the Italian states, Baltic nations, etc. These countries, like the new US, didn’t have large navies, so a military response wasn’t really possible.

For some reason the author does not mention Jefferson’s extended diplomatic effort to put together an alliance of these smaller Christian powers to fight the pirates. Probably failed largely because the British frowned on it, for the obvious reasons. The existing situation was in many ways in the British interest.

[Pollster1]

It goes way back before Thomas Jefferson.

In 1078, the Seljuk Turks kidnapped the Patriarch of Jerusalem and held him for ransom - one of many contributors to the First Crusade, and not the first such crime.

In 2013, bishops Mar Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch were kidnapped while delivering humanitarian aid.

Not much has changed in a thousand years, except how we respond to pure evil.

[Sam Gamgee]

Credit goes to Jefferson and also Lord Nelson, who finally told the Barbaries enough was enough. Other European powers (including the UK for a time) and much of the state department class in the US insisted on diplomacy. Funny that we never hear much of the slave trade whereby the Muslims raided southern Europe and took Europeans into slavery. They did it as an extension of Jihad.

[DariusBane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto

[Pride in the USA]

Here are some more details about Thomas Jefferson and radical Islam.