Ignorance about Islam is deadly. The Founding Fathers knew what they were up against. They had no illusions.
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, it’s also approaching the 242nd year of its ‘endless war’ with Islam which began when Morocco seized an American ship and then continued into the Barbary Wars and eventually into the modern age of Islamic terrorism.
Then – as now – there was a debate and differing voices over whether we should pay ‘tribute’ to Muslim states or, as Thomas Jefferson insisted, confront them on the battlefield.
“I confess, if our states could be brought to agree, in the measure, I should be very willing to resolve upon eternal war with them,” John Adams warned, invoking the forever war argument. “We ought not to fight them unless we determine to fight them forever. This thought is, I fear, too rugged for our people to bear.”
Jefferson and Adams had both been involved in negotiations with the pirate states and both came away concluding that Islam was the underlying motive for the attacks on Americans.
Jefferson and Adams both heard directly from the Tripoli ambassador that the aggression “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.”
“The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute,” Adams wrote in a later essay. “The command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force. The natural hatred of the Mussulmen towards the infidels is in just accordance with the precepts of the Koran.” Continue reading Islam: “We ought not to fight them unless we determine to fight them forever”
