Posted on 01/05/2007 9:02:03 PM PST by smoothsailing
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.
See my post above, regarding translations.
Muslims are pulling the wool over the eyes of english speaking people with these "translations".
It is hard to "know your enemy" by "reading his book" if the book has been translated to say what your enemy wants you to believe.
"...he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources."
It's obvious that Democrat Keith Ellison needs to glean a little wisdom from the history of Jefferson and his battle with Islam.
I don't care who claims to have come up with the idea of using Jefferson's copy...I would lay money down to bet it was Peter Pace and,
that he suggested john murtha hold it.
I believe that it is OUR inability to glean wisdom from hundreds of years of facts that would be our undoing. A huge portion of western civilization has an unconscious (or conscious?) deathwish. The sissyfication of our society is well down the road of completion.
Outstanding post, smoothsailing. Thank you Ted Sampley. History/Education BUMP!
Let me see, two blacks in the senate converted to islam a trend naaaaaaa couldn't be so.
Let me see, two blacks in the senate converted to islam a trend naaaaaaa couldn't be so.
Who are they?
This thread and your comment does bring up something a bit afield of the Koran-to-swear-on flap (IMHO a bit overblown).
As Tom Sowell pointed out, over the time of the African slave trade roughly 15 million Africans were kidnapped into bondage and shipped to the New World, with the same number being trekked overland to the Muslim owners. Where are the decendants of the slaves taken by Muslims? Simply put, there are virtually none. In the Arab world black slaves were either worked to death or strictly segregated by sex or castrated.
Not giving too much credit to the motivations of Western slave owners, which ranged from semi-enlightened to the economic self interest of any "livestock" owner, it still befuddles me that any significant minority of Western blacks should incline toward the religion which historically and to this day (see: Darfur) engages in systematic genocide of their race.
Geeeez JVB, I think that would be the infamous ..........
JIMMY VALENTINE'S BROTHER!!!
Why isn't this being exploited by Christian leaders???
It's a RACIST ANTI-WHITE thing masquerading under the color of religion.
Thank you for this post, Mogger.
smooth-would you want to send this to WND?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1763331/posts?page=20
FDR artifacts include items from Roosevelt's desk in the Oval Office, his signed transmission to Congress on the Lend-Lease Act, his wartime budget message to Congress, his copy of Mein Kampf, signed wartime Christmas greetings to veterans, and items from the conferences at Teheran and Yalta.
Roosevelt's copy of Mein Kampf? Would anyone suggest that Roosevelt was a follower of Adolf Hitler or even was trying to find something useful from his teachings? Or would a more valid comparison be to a doctor that has a book about cancer on his bookshelf to better understand it for its effective removal. I expect that Jefferson's copy was for the same reason - to understand it to best know how to fight it.
This is a prime example of the left abetting the oncoming invasion/infection of Islam.
The left has not taught history to our children for decades. And certainly no pride in that history.
So, not knowing history the Americans of today accept the fact that Jefferson must have had a Koran because he revered it. They don't know about the Barbary Wars and the desolute history of Islamic pirates. They don't know that Jefferson collected thousands of books and twice donated them to the government and founded the Library of Congress.
They also don't know about the march of militant Islam throughout the centuries.
All they know is that everyone is "good" - all cultures are equally wonderful.
They only thing they know about multiculturalism is that we get a variety of restaurants. They don't understand that America is the "noble experiment" and they have to fight for the republic "if they can keep it."
Is this guy a mideast style muslim or a U.S. style black muslim like all the ones in U.S. jails? Is Musselman's apple sauce a muslim company? Maybe Musselman's has a muslim connotation like P&G has that satanic connotation?
Not that many years ago some of the same guys that brought you Kwanzaa were revising history to include blacks as the original Egyptians, builders of the pyramid. And even though Islam came much later, these same revisionist historians also forgot to mention the role of Arabs in the enslavement of African blacks for slaving. Thus, for a while, and maybe still if you aren't properly read, one would think there is a natural affinity between Arabs and blacks.
Just ask Somalia and Ethiopia./s
This is a great and makes a mockery of Ellison's choice of Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran -- curses and pig fat be to Mohammed. It might even be that some of these Barbary pirates American fought brought Ellison's ancestors to America. Such irony! Lost, of course, on a lefty moonbat.
All good questions. Musselman's......I knew I had heard that name before when I was reading this article - thank you for reminding me where.
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