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.
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.
In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then
the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with…the "Dey of Algiers"
ambassador to Britain.
The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to
appease.
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.
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."
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.
For more background on the Barbary Wars see Answers.Com, or Columbia Encyclopedia.
13 comments:
"Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put and
end to the Muslim problem."
Dennis, I think it's things like this that allow people to see your blog as being ultra-reactionary and hateful towards all Muslims. I know you don't hate Muslims (hopefully), but putting something like this up on your site? "An end to the Muslim problem?" That sounds far too close to "final solution" for any of us to be comfortable with wording like that.
Nathaniel jonet said:
Dennis, I think it's things like this that allow people to see your blog as being ultra-reactionary and hateful towards all Muslims.
While I am sure Dennis can very easily articulate an answer for himself, I would like to comment that this appears to me to be an over reaction. In TJ's time the solution of war was more acceptable than it is today. We should not judge behavior of that time by our standards of today. I feel that Dennis was looking at this from a legitimate historical perspective, and his information should be treated as such.
Nathaniel, Ed is right. In the context of this article "the Muslim problem" was specifically the problem of Muslim raiders enslaving European and American sailors.
I would add that to rip that phrase out of its context as if it was in any way analogous to the Holocaust is...well, it looks like someone desperately grasping at straws for excuses either to be offended or to sidestep the point of the article.
I think the author’s point was that Jefferson recognized that negotiation was simply not going to work—unless we wanted to continue to give up 20% of our national revenue for appeasement! Too many people seem to think that war is never the answer. No one likes war but this position is dangerously naive.
Hitler was not going to be dissuaded from his expansionism through negotiation, unless it was negotiation on his terms of surrender!
Negotiation with the Japanese in World War II was also futile.
We tried for ten stinken years to negotiate with Saddam Hussein, all the while he conspired with the United Nations to make himself even more filthy rich and powerful at the expense of his own people who apparently suffered for lack of food and medicine!
The endless attempts by several of our presidents—particularly Jimmy Carter—to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians have resulted in nothing but years and yeas of deaths of innocent Jews and Palestinians.
Clinton’s negotiation with North Korea eventually resulted in them getting nuclear weapons (just wait until that have a missile that can hit Seattle!)
Negotiating with Hezbollah led to nothing but Hezbollah’s military buildup and to war last summer!
The result of that negotiated settlement is now leading to further Hezbollah buildup in preparation for more war and bloodshed!
Negotiating with Ahmadinejad is buying him time to develop nuclear weapons—exactly as he plans.
Many promoters of negotiation and appeasement think they are on the side of peace when in fact they just allow tyrants to become stronger, and stronger, leading to more and more bloodshed.
I believe in negotiation, but as with police negotiations, sometimes negotiation will only work when backed up with a massive and credible threat of force.
Dennis, do you really see nothing wrong with a quote like this one, taken from the article you linked to?
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.
Also, as an aside, when you link a website that has articles like this one, it undermines your credibility and theirs.
John,
I hope you noticed that the quote you cited was not one of the ones I chose for my excerpts.
I linked to the article because I thought it provided good historical background and because I agreed with the point as stated in my last response above.
I also hope you don't think that just because someone cites an article or recommends a book, that the person making the recommendation therefore necesarily agrees with everything in the article or the book. I find very little of anything that anyone writes that I agree with completely.
Finally, the idea that I can't link to an article on a website unless I have read and agree with all the other articles on that website is thoroughly rediculous.
I did notice that quote wasn't cited by you. But, when you link a specific article, I assume you are implicitly endorsing the entire thing unless otherwise stated. If that's not the case it might be helpful to know up front - if I had known that I wouldn't have been so harsh, or even had to raise the issue.
As for the other article I cited, if we were talking about run-of-the-mill political opinions, I would perfectly agree with you. But when both articles exhibit such blatant bigotry, it leaves the reader wondering what can and can't be believed in anything written on that site. I'm not saying you agree with those remarks, it just makes a reader wonder about that site.
One of the most perplexing (to me, at least) political developments over the last few months is the treatment of Obama by some on the right as if he might be some kind of closet terrorist. For anyone interested in a debunking of one "fact" used to this end (by no less than Fox News, The New York Post, and a magazine owned by the Washington Times), see this article.
John, I guess the beauty of freedom of the press (and freedom of the blogs :-) is that reports can be debunked like CNN did to the news outlets that spread the Hillary propoganda about Obama uncritically. I take comfort in knowing that profesional journalists don't always get it right either :-)
I linked to the article because I thought it provided good historical background and made a valid point (I still do). But I think you make a valid point about the nature of that website and provide a caution to readers not to take everything in the article as gospel truth before checking on the facts.
I think true education often comes from considering ideas from various viewpoints, which is why a enable comments on this blog (it would be so much less work for me just to turn them off :-)
This blog wants to foment hatred against Muslims without taking any responsibility for its actions. It's a hate site that that doesn't even have the courage of its own bigoted convictions, which it presents with a smiley face :)
Dear "godislove":
Judging by your single "contribution" to this discussion, your nomenclature is, at best, an ozymoron.
I've been pondering how best to respond to several of the posts on this topic. I'll give my take on the article and then will address the poor responses here and in general.
My view of the article
I believe the article was poorly written. Its constant use of of the term "Muslim" to describe the pirates and use of terms like "Muslim book of Jihad", although true statements, were inflammatory and tended to distract from the point. In the case of "Muslim" the term is accurate, the pirates were Muslims but Sampley doesn't demonstrate that all Muslims would behave like the pirates and although he does make a claim that their actions were inline with their beliefs, he doesn't provide enough justification there to prove the point. The common person would ask, "well isn't it possible that these people misunderstood their teachings or were motivated by things other than their teachings." Sampley leaves that question open and therefore distracts from the point. In the case of the "Muslim book of Jihad" I believe that is a true statement, that the Qur'an is about Jihad, but the issue is how that term Jihad is actually physically implemented. He doesn't argue on any of those points and by choosing such an inflammatory and loaded word distracts from the point. My complaints are stylistic.
His point, that Jefferson had the Qur'an in order to better understand his enemy, is fair. He provided at least as much evidence as those who would make Jefferson out to be of their own multiculturalistic ideals.
The point that war is sometimes required was also clear.
If Sampley was trying to make any other points he failed. A simple reader could be easily swayed by his use of rhetoric and hypothetically could believe that all Muslims are evil pirates that must be fought... which leads to my next point...
The pathetic state of rebuttals
The rebuttals to this post and to the posts on this blog in general tend to be extremely weak. The comments were about the feelings words connote, about the style and word choice of the original article, about the links and general content of the original site, and then name calling about "hate" and "bigotry". The attacks are all about style over substance.
Do as I did, critique the article including its style but don't fail to address the facts. Don't be lazy and use name calling and negative labels as the only means of arguing the point. If an accurate point is made, but a simple reader may be misled due to over generalizations or word choice then clarify the point and let everyone benefit from you additional knowledge. If there is other factual evidence left out of an article include that evidence.
Weak responses, responses better suited for copyeditors instead of reasoning men and women do little good to anyone.
No offense Kevin, but you come across much of the time as feeling you're superior. It makes it hard to have rational dicussions at times.
As for your comments that relate to me.... I didn't necessarily have a problem with the article's historical summary of the Barbary Wars (since I'm no expert on that particular war I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). But to dismiss criticism of comments such as "Muslim book of Jihad" simply because they evoke emotion is faulty. And I don't believe my other link is as irrelevant as you say. My point was, if a site is so obviously biased against Islam, it may lead the reader to question its interpretation of the facts. I think that's a reasonable assertion, and Dennis even agreed with me. As for my use of the term "bigotry", that's not always "name calling". In this case it appears to be an accurate description of the mindset of that particular site. And to say one can't challenge bigotry because that's style over substance is absurd. Should one never call out such attitudes when they are seen? (And no, I'm not defending the name calling against Dennis - I'm speaking of the article/website here.)
As for your statement that the "Muslim book of Jihad" comment is true.... Well, you're right in the sense, but unfortunately I have the feeling that you're thinking of our more current use of the word (as it is hijacked by extremists). For an interesting background on the use of the word and what it means, see this.
John, nope I know that jihad is used to mean both physical and/or spiritual war. That's why I noted that the term is loaded... most folks don't understand the debate and simply see it as a physical war, so for Sampley to use the term with his tone it was at a minimum distracting and at the most tipped his hand toward his bias.
As for my superiority... the easiest cure for superiority, particularly intellectual superiority, is good information and a well reasoned argument.
My response, was mostly a stylistic critique... but I stated exactly what I was critiquing and still addressed the actual points that were being made. Even bigots and racists and homophobes can be right... their beliefs only come into play when you can't validate their logic or facts. I wouldn't hold this article up as an example of anything, the information about the Barbary Wars was interesting, but I checked out the facts before I even responded... everyone should do the same and discern truth from error and comment on it.
My response, was mostly a stylistic critique... but I stated exactly what I was critiquing and still addressed the actual points that were being made. Even bigots and racists and homophobes can be right... their beliefs only come into play when you can't validate their logic or facts.
As stated before, I didn't see a need to challenge the facts of the article. I took exception with the attitudes of the author, and that website in general. You can accuse me of being somewhat off-topic if you want, but you seem to be assuming I was arguing something I wasn't.
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