Muslim Congressman Takes Oath On Quran
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Keith Ellison made history in the nation's capitol Thursday, becoming the first Muslim member of Congress and punctuating the occasion by using a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson during his ceremonial swearing-in.
"Look at that. That's something else," said Ellison, D-Minn., said as officials from the Library of Congress showed him the Quran, which was published in London in 1764. "Oh my God. This is great."
A few minutes later, Ellison took the ceremonial oath on the two-volume Quran with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at his side. So many of Ellison's family members came for the occasion that the ceremony was done in two takes.
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John Quincy Adams writes about Islam:
"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one ominipotent G_D; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE....Between these two religions; thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will twoards men."
"The P.I.G. to Islam and the Crusades"
by Robert Spencerpage 83
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Paying the Jizya as early as 1784:
After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.
Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully "endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation." Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. "Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association," Jefferson remembered, but there were "apprehensions" that England and France would follow their own paths, "and so it fell through."
Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."
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When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."
In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
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The Barbary Wars
The first attack took place on August 3. As the American gunboats engaged the Tripolitan gunboat fleet, the bomb ketches were to shell the city while the Constitution attacked the shore batteries. The Tripolitans had eleven gunboats available to meet the American attack. Already outnumbered, the American force was cut in half as shifting winds allowed only three of the attacking gunboats to enter the harbor. For two and a half hours the battle raged as the Americans approached, fired on, and then boarded six of the enemy vessels. Three enemy gunboats were captured, and three more were sunk. The Constitution's guns silenced the shore batteries and then turned their force on the pasha's castle. In the entire day's action there were only fourteen American casualties. During the month of August, four more attacks were executed and the city was shelled for two nights, terrifying the inhabitants. After each assault Preble sent a message to Karamanli suggesting negotiations and offering payments of $40,000 and then $50,000 in exchange for the American prisoners from the Philadelphia. Karamanli remained adamant, and Preble continued his attacks.
In September, Preble conceived of another plan to run a raiding party into Tripoli Harbor. This time the Intrepid, loaded with a hundred barrels of gunpowder, would sail into the harbor with a volunteer crew.
Primitive view of Stephen Decatur and his crew engaged in battle at Tripoli Harbor.After situating herself amid the Tripolitan fleet, she was to be abandoned and exploded, possibly destroying a good number of corsair ships. Commanded by Master Commandant Richard Somers and manned by twelve volunteers, the Intrepid entered the harbor on September 4, 1804. Only moments after she approached the enemy ships, the pirates spotted the Americans, and cannon fire broke out from the Tripolitan citadel. Seconds later, the Intrepid exploded. Apparently, a direct hit had ignited the Intrepid's gunpowder, obliterating the ship and her crew.
That same month, Commodore Samuel Barron arrived off Tripoli with reinforcements. Because he was senior in rank to Preble, Barron would assume command of the squadron, though Secretary of the Navy Smith had hoped that Preble would continue to serve under Barron. Stung by what he saw as a demotion, Preble chose to return to the United States. A hero and national celebrity, Preble received thanks from Congress for his conduct of the Tripolitan campaign.
Commodore Barron continued the blockade of Tripoli, but stopped the attacks and developed a new approach to peace by undermining the authority of the pasha. The American consul in Tunis, William Eaton, suggested that they replace Yusuf Karamanli with his older brother Hamet, who was in exile in Egypt. Eaton assembled an army of mercenaries in Egypt, supported by a detachment of marines from the American ship Argus. After traveling five hundred miles, Eaton and Hamet reached the city of Derna in April. With the help of the Argus, the Hornet, and the Nautilus, Derna was captured and the back door to Tripoli was opened. Fearing that his overthrow was near at hand, Yusuf Karamanli agreed to negotiate a peace. On June 4, 1805, he accepted the last American offer of $60,000 for the release of the American prisoners and approved a new treaty that did not require tribute payments. Once the American objective had been accomplished, Hamet was left without support to continue the attempt to overthrow Yusuf Karamanli.
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John Quincy Adams on the War We Are In
"Old Man Eloquent" saw the Islamist threat coming.
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After reflecting upon the conflict, Adams grew concerned that it was serious and feared that almost none of his contemporaries understood it. He thought the matter was of such importance that he wrote a lengthy essay on the subject shortly after he left the presidency in 1829. In this essay, which has become so obscure that even many Adams specialists don't know about it, Adams set the conflict between the Greeks and the Ottoman masters in the context of the larger course of history. He described the origins of the conflict between Islam and the West, and discussed what was at stake in the conflict.
According to Adams, the key element of the renewed conflict between Islam and the West was that liberalism, the dominant idea in the West, did not even exist in Islamic lands. The reason why the new conflict between Europeans and Muslims was different than previous conflicts was that the modern West's liberty brought with it the technological and social capabilities that made global communication and commerce possible. Modern Western man, Adams declared in an essay he wrote in 1822, "stimulated by all the wants, and aided by all the energies of civilization, proceeds from art to science, and heaps invention upon discovery, till [ships] . . . bear the productions of every habitable spot upon the globe to every other." Technological progress shrank the world, making the isolation of Islam from the West impossible to maintain.
Modern technology put Western Europe in a position to dominate Islamic lands. Whereas Christians and Muslims had once been closely matched on the field of battle, it had ceased to be a fair fight. "In the brutal and foul contest of arms, the man of Mahomet was no longer a match for the Christian man." Adams noted that, with the help of modern weaponry, "a company of London merchants, under the patronage, though with little aid, of their government, [has] subdued in the far more distant regions of Hindustan…millions of the disciples of Mahomet." Moreover, the desire for increased trade meant that the West could not stand aside. It would penetrate Islamic lands; the only question was what would the effects be, and what could the West do to make them as peaceful as possible.
Europe's indifference to the fate of the Greeks shocked Adams, just as Europe's moral obtuseness in the Middle East shocks many of us today. Adams criticized "the more than stoical apathy with which they regard the cause, for which the Greeks are contending; the more than epicurean indifference with which they witness the martyrdom of a whole people, perishing in the recovery of their religion and liberty." Adams complained that Metternich and other European leaders thought too narrowly about the war, "seeing in the Greeks only revolted subjects against a lawful sovereign." Much more was at stake, Adams claimed. Europe's statesmen misunderstood the conflict between Greece and the Ottomans because they thought that Islam was a religion like all the others they knew: they expected Muslims to compromise their beliefs in the interest of peace.
Adams feared that Western statesmen failed to appreciate the Christian roots and context of liberalism. In America and increasingly in Europe, religious freedom had found fertile soil in the Christian notion that religion is primarily about belief and only secondarily about action. Hence, people could be left free to think whatever they wanted so long as they submitted peacefully to the laws. Islam is different; it is fundamentally about law, not about belief. The wish of Islam is that the whole world follow the Law of the Koran. Finding a genuine idea of toleration in a religion that is about law and wants to be universal would not be easy, Adams argued.
The Ottomans understood the fundamental nature of their conflict with the West better than did the statesmen in London and Paris. Adams quoted the Sultan as saying: "this is not like former contests, a political war for provinces and frontiers. …This war must be considered purely a religious war and a national war." The Sultan called for all Muslims to fight the infidels wherever they found them because the West and Islam had squared off in a battle for domination and survival. Adams feared the Sultan was correct. "In comparison with these considerations [about the great conflict between Islam and the West]," he wrote, "the question of the operation of these events upon the balance of power in Europe is but the dust of that balance."
In the event Russia came to the Greeks' aid; and fearing Russian success in 1827, France and Great Britain joined the czar in helping to defeat the Turks. Eventually the great powers recognized a small, independent Greek state.
In Adams's day, unlike our own, the U.S. had little power to influence events so far from home. While he was Secretary of State in the early 1820s, Adams had campaigned against even token American support for the Greeks. Adams was the architect of the Monroe Doctrine, warning Europe to stay out of the Americas, and indicating in return that the U.S. would stay out of Europe. In light of that policy, America could hardly take an active role in a European conflict. But Adams did not think the same rules would apply forever.
Pat Buchanan and other present-day isolationists are fond of quoting Adams's July 4, 1821, oration. Regarding the Greek independence movement, Adams said that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." That was not his last word on the subject, however. In the mid-1820s, President Adams wanted to help the nascent South American republics.
Though Adams thought America in his day should stay out of international struggles beyond the Western Hemisphere, he didn't think that would always be the case. President Washington had said that Americans should have "as little political connection as possible" with Europe. As his diplomatic dispatches from Europe in the 1790s make clear, Adams agreed. Yet President Adams argued in 1826 that Washington gave counsel for his day, not for eternity: "I cannot overlook the reflection that the counsel of Washington in that instance, like all the counsels of wisdom, was founded upon the circumstances in which our country and the world around us were situated at the time when it was given…. [But] compare our situation and the circumstances of that time with those of the present day, and what, from the very words of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen now?" As the nation grew politically, economically, and geographically, its role in the world would necessarily change.
As the liberal West squared off against the Islamic East, Adams realized that the key question was not whether the modern West would fundamentally alter Islamic civilization, but how it would do so. A century and three quarters later, the question still stands. Liberalism rose in the West on a Christian foundation. But the situation may not be hopeless. Perhaps Islam and the West may find common ground in the idea that all the Abrahamic faiths share, that God created all of us in his image, and for that reason no man is born a slave. On that foundation, perhaps, we can find a principled ground for accommodation and peace between the liberal West and the House of Islam. Adams, who ended his career trying to remind his own countrymen of the importance of those great principles, hoped that would be the case.
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America’s Earliest Terrorists
Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror.
By Joshua E. London
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The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.
Although there is much in the history of America’s wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current “war on terror,” one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.
Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.
These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, 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 who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Sound familiar?
The candor of that Tripolitan ambassador is admirable in its way, but it certainly foreshadows the equally forthright declarations of, say, the Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s and the Sunni Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, not to mention the many pronouncements of their various minions, admirers, and followers. Note that America’s Barbary experience took place well before colonialism entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging the U.S. into the fray, and long before the founding of the state of Israel.
America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to “radical” or “fundamentalist” Muslims.
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Lying for Allah is okay, according to the eminent Islamic scholar Imam Ghazali, who wrote:
" When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible "
(Ref: Ahmad Ibn Naqib al-Misri, The Reliance of the Traveller, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller , Amana publications, 1997, section r8.2, page 745).
Imam Ghazali does not say this without knowledge.
He is basing his fatwa on the words and examples of the Prophet himself.
In one hadith we read that the prophet calls upon his followers to assassinate Ka’b ibn Ashraf, the chief of a Jewish tribe who was wary of Muhammad and tells them it is okay to tell a lie to deceive him. Bukhari, Volume 5, #369
The fact is that Muslims feel no pang of conscience to lie if that lie is said for Allah’s sake and his religion. If the lie is said for a good cause it is okay.
(...) Muhammad said: "Lying is wrong, *except in three things: the lie of a man to his wife to make her content with him; a lie to an enemy, for **war is deception; or a lie to settle trouble between people" (Ahmad, 6.459. H).
(...) *Islam is the only religion that implies in it's scriptures that it's ever permissible to lie.
(...) **any non Muslim land is considered Dar ul Harb a land of war
Pertinent Links:
1) Muslim Congressman Takes Oath On Quran
2) The Founding Fathers, the Barbary Pirates (moslems), 18th century jihad against America
3) Moslems, lying and Ghazali
4) The Thomas Jefferson papers concerning the earliest jihad
5) The Barbary Wars
6) John Quincy Adams on the War We Are In
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