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I ran across this today and thought it was a good read. It is quite ironic that so many Black Americans would follow the religion that enslaved them
Subject: A litle history lesson
What Thomas Jefferson learned
from the Muslim book of jihad
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.
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