As long time readers know, I occasionally like to examine the more loathesome emails that appear in my mail, not only to vent my disgust at these subtle attempts to create hatred within the hearts of those vulnerable to such – that is, to divide our great nation along religious lines, much to our grief – but also to remind my readers that some of these emails that seem to cite the obvious are misleading and require a closer reading.
So what’s our specimen of the day? I think in this case we’ll take it apart bit by bit. Information about the Marines comes from Wikipedia, which I include out of respect for the Marines. Additionally, what appears to be the same letter appears on this web site, which appears to be quite the contradictory mess.
Some interesting pieces of forgotten U.S. History
When Thomas Jefferson saw there was no negotiating with Muslims, he formed what is the now the Marines (sea going soldiers). These Marines were attached to U. S. Merchant vessels.
Actually, the first version of the Marines were created and served during the Revolutionary War, officially 1775, and were known as the Continental Marines. After the war they disbanded, but reformed in 1798 in response not to Muslim aggression, but the Quasi-War with France. With this knowledge, we begin to realize that the author of this missive respects neither Muslims nor Marines – nor the reader.
When the Muslims attacked U.S. merchant vessels, they were repulsed by armed soldiers, but there is more.
The Marines followed the Muslims back to their villages and killed every man, woman, and child in the village. It didn’t take long for the Muslims to leave U.S. Merchant vessels alone. English and French merchant vessels started running up our flag when entering the Mediterranean to secure safe travel.
This is quite the war crime, if true. I did some poking around and did not find either verification nor refutation – that is, the question is never even raised. This may be because of the lack of context, or lack of diligence on my part. I should like to think U.S. Marines would not engage in barbarism, but our history with the American Indians tribes makes this at least believable.
But the real point here isn’t historical accuracy, but preparation of the reader to descend into the hell of radicalism. Islamic radicalism? No.
Our own.
By suggesting our elite troops destroyed, with the approval of President Thomas Jefferson, entire villages, killing women and children to their last member, this subliminally prepares us to accept and approve barbarous war crimes. To sink to a level unacceptable to our parents and our grandparents. Because there’s an acceptable precedent, Muslim civilians are civilians no longer, and an accepted rule of war – sparing civilians – goes out the window to satisfy the blood-hunger of the author of this missive.
At the height of the 18th 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.
Not entirely true. Muslim slavery in this case, as noted here, permitted slaves to accumulate wealth and marry, and some captured slaves climbed the social hierarchy until they could actually advise the top leaders. However, it’s also true that most of the captives were miserable.
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 in 1784, 17 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 acknowledge 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 Mussel man (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 20 percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Stunning? How so? Europe had been involved in so many wars that you needed two scorecards to keep track. The rationales for these wars? Religion – generally Catholics vs Protestants. This statement serves to falsely highlight, for the reader unaware of history, the terrible evil of Muslims – that is, to demonize a people as being out of the ordinary evil, unlike the Europeans, who all did the same things, but under the guise of Christianity,
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 supremacy, 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.
To say we had a history of religious tolerance is to stretch a square into a circle. We had, and still have, the First Amendment, prohibiting the making of any law specific to a religion; culturally speaking, however, our tolerance was, at the time, more mythic than reality. We can see this in this example here (taken from this long, long post here), or in the treatment of atheists, Jews, or Catholics.
But this serves, once again, to highlight the unacceptability of the Muslim to the author of this screed. The fact of the matter is that Christianity has walked down the exact same path, declaring war on religions other than itself. Christians have burned libraries, such as those of the inhabitants of South America when the Spaniards arrived; engaged in the Crusades; the wars against the American Indian in contravention of United States treaties; and the previously mentioned wars on each other. All in the name of religion.
And, as an aside, Jefferson had little use for any religion. He was simply a realist about them.
This should concern every American. That Muslims have brought about Islamic women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been peremptory challenged 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; several American companies have placed the Muslim symbol on their products in the name of Allah; on and on and on and on.
The accusations comes thick and fast, and I have limited time. Let me just note that women-only colleges of a Christian nature also exist; that dietary restrictions also exist for those of the Jewish faith. I have seen a report on a request for a shariah-court to settle a matter; the request was tossed out on its ear, as it should have been. Simple vigilance in following our laws suffices to the problem of an aggressive religion seeking its limits; they need to be made lawfully clear. To be sure, we should keep in mind the supremacy of the secular state – anyone is welcome to live here given they acknowledge that supremacy, and in exchange it rules as lightly as possible with regard to religion. And if an immigrant can’t deal with that, they can leave.
That’s the deal.
In the end, this is the lament of an author not resilient to change. We’ve seen this evil a dozen times, when the Italians came, the Irish came, the Germans came, the Polish – each wave brought strangers with strange customs. Shall we fight those who differ from us, just because a few who claim kinship to them exercise violence in support of their own lust for power – or even belief in theological extremism.
For such has been true of Christians, from Pope Alexander VI splitting the New World in half, to those who murder doctors who provide abortion services. From the children of Indigenous parents in North America and in Australia who were ripped from their parents in the name of Christianity, to the burning at the stake of both Protestants and Catholics, by their religious adversaries. Christianity has tried to rule supreme.
And proven a miserable failure.
If anyone wishes to point at the horror of 9/11 as something unique, I would reply this is merely the result of the superior technology of the day – tall, tall buildings that hold thousands, and vehicles which can hit them.
It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch. Sadly, it seems that most would rather be politically correct in today’s U.S.
Abandoning our ideals is the death by a thousands cuts. They have taken us this far; allowing the fear of the other to drive us into a war which will cost us lives, wealth, and most importantly our reputation – now that’s the disaster.
BTW-
If you have any doubts about the above information, Google “Thomas Jefferson
vs. the Muslim World
Keep this in mind – it’s not the presented information that’s of importance, it’s the omitted information.
If you’re looking for the latest in manic car chases and wild explosions, well, 
