by Ted Sampley, {U.S. Veteran Dispatch}
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 desert 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 fight
our country's battles in the air, on land and 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.
