The Islamic Terrorists of the Founding Era

Posted by LibertyCavalier on February 24, 2011

For those who believe that Islamic terrorists have just recently decided to wage war against America and other free nations, get ready to be blown away. This short history lesson will show how this battle has been waged since before America’s founding.

Enter the Barbary Powers Conflict, which began during the Revolutionary War, and resulted because four Islamic nations, Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, and Tripoli regularly pirated unarmed civilian and merchant ships of the United States and other countries who they claimed were “Christian” (meaning it was the state established religion) nations. This placed the young United States in a precarious situation since they still had no warships. Prior to the Revolutionary War, U.S. ships were protected by the British Navy and during the war they found safety on the seas courtesy of the French. With the Revolutionary War over and no naval force, the Barbary Powers would capture U.S. civilians and seamen, selling the men into slavery and looting their merchandise. [1]

As a result of these incessant senseless attacks, and due to the fact that the U.S. has no Navy or standing Army, the Congress, in 1784, commissioned John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson to speak with the Islamic terrorists. [2] Adams and Jefferson questioned the Ambassador from Tripoli and asked him why they were maliciously attacking the United States. They recorded:

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet [Mohammed] – that it was written in their Koran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that is 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. [3]

A successful treaty was established with Morocco in 1786, but the other three nations continued pirating due to the admitted religious incentive to create war. [4] The U.S. followed a strategy of appeasement, and despite negotiating many treaties, as well as paying up to twenty percent of the federal budget in of tribute (official extortion) [5], the terrorism continued. When Thomas Jefferson became President he rejected the failed policy of appeasement and stopped making extortion payments. This prompted Tripoli to officially declare war on the U.S. in 1801, the first official war for the fledgling nation. [6] Congress authorized President Jefferson to send armed vessels and a battle ensued until 1805, after which a peace treaty ended the First Barbary War.

However, by 1807, Algiers was pirating once again, and because Jefferson and the nation was focused on the preliminaries to the War of 1812, the U.S. couldn’t respond until 1815. After the war with Britain, President Madison sent warships and the military against Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. The American fleet defeated Algiers, but while a peace treaty was ratified in July 1815, Algiers revoked the treaty once the U.S. fleet left for Tunis. Only after the warships of Great Britain and the Netherlands descended upon Algiers did they sign a new peace treaty. [7] Finally, after thirty-two years of conflict America’s First War on Terror was over.

There are significant lessons to be learned from the Founding Fathers, even on the subject of terrorism. From the very beginning of its inception, Islam has flourished at the hand of the sword. That trend continued during the founding, and still exists today. As a result of this, with the Muslims who believe in the jihad of Islam, appeasement does not work. Jefferson was right, force will be necessary to repel the forces which intend to enslave and subvert. He wrote, “I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war.” [8]

As Christians, we should continue to pray for those who subscribe to the Islamic ideology. A powerful example of this in action is how Francis Scott Key befriended John Randolph of Virginia. Randolph testified that he was pulled “in favor of Mahomedianism [Islam].” Key gently shared the Gospel with Randolph, and he came to accept Christ [9], despite his prior “natural repugnance to Christianity.” [10] Incidentally, Randolph went on to be a stalwart advocate for his faith. [11] Force will be necessary to fend off the attacks from Islamic radicals, but as far as seeing to a change in their ideology and worldview, we must pray that their eyes will open to the truth.

As Noah Webster said, “Let us reject the spirit of making proselytes to particular creeds by any other means than persuasion.” [12]

References

[1] A General View of the Rise, Progress, and Brilliant Achievements of the American Navy, Down to the Present Time (Brooklyn, 1828), pp. 70-71

[2] Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Ellery Bergh, editors (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), Vol. V, p. 195, to William Carmichael, November 4, 1785.

[3] Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd, editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), Vol. 9, p. 358, Report of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to John Jay, March 28, 1786.

[4] Avalon Project, Treaty with Morocco June 28 and July 15, 1786, (Yale Law School) (at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1786t.asp).

[5] Wikipedia, “First Barbary War” (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War).

[6] “Treaty Between the United States and Tripoli” (at http://www.usconstitution.net/tripoli.html).

[7] British State Papers (London: James Ridgway and Sons, London, 1977), Vol. 3, p. 516, “Declaration of the Dey of Algiers, relative to the Abolition of Christian Slavery,” August 28, 1816.

[8] Jefferson, Writings, Vol. V, p. 364, to John Adams, July 11, 1786.

[9] Garland, Life of John Randolph, Vol. II, pp. 87-88, in a letter from Francis Scott Key, May-June 1816; pp. 99-100, Randolph’s letter to Francis Scott Key, September 7, 1818; pp. 103-104, Key’s letter to Randolph; 106-107, Key’s reply to Randolph’s letter of May 3, 1819; and pp. 108-109, Key’s reply to Randolph’s letter of August 8, 1819.

[10] Garland, Life of John Randolph, Vol. II, p. 100, to Dr. Brockenbrough, September 25, 1818.

[11] Garland, Life of John Randolph, Vol. II, pp. 99-100, from a letter to Francis Scott Key, September 7, 1818; pp. 100-102, from a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, September 25, 1818; p. 106, from a letter to Francis Scott Key, May 3, 1819; pp. 107-109, from a letter to Francis Scott Key, August 22, 1819; pp. 373-374.

[12] Noah Webster, An Oration Pronounced Before The Citizens of New-Haven On The Anniversary Of The Independence Of The United States, July 4, 1798 (New-Haven: T. and S. Green, 1798), p. 13.

Posted on 24 Feb 11 by Liberty Cavalier blog

It has come to America!! The enemy is here!

Hizb ut-Tahrir: Islam Has Replaced Communism as Top U.S. Enemy

.…uuhhhhh….didn’t we tell you? These people are not afraid anymore. They are telling us to our faces right out in the open. America is at the stage the UK was  6 or 7 years ago. We are in for a world of hurt if our leaders ignore this. Spread this around. Tell everyone you know.

IPT News
July 11, 2011

A radical Islamist group which claims a presence in nearly 50 countries is so confident it can help establish a global Muslim government – or caliphate – that it distributed a draft constitution during a recent conference outside of Chicago.

It calls for the death penalty for apostates and for creating a government department dedicated to jihad.

The latest Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) gathering drew more than 300 people to a DoubleTree Hotel ballroom June 26.

(HT) is an international movement to establish a global Islamic state, or caliphate (Khilafah). Although it is officially committed to nonviolence, HT preaches a virulent brand of hatred for the United States, and for Western democracy in general. Its alumni include such violent Islamists as Khaiid Sheikh Mohammad, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and the late Iraqi jihadist Abu Musab Zarqawi. Hizb ut-Tahrir has been described as a “conveyor belt” of terror.

At the conference, activists portrayed Islam as the only real force in the world standing up to the United States and the West. With Soviet communism gone, the West is now confronted with the threat posed by Islam, said a speaker identified as Reza Imam. He has served as a spokesman for the organization. (So they are threatening the United States. That is sedition. Time to act)

“And they see the return of Islam,” he warned. “And this, brothers and sisters, is the shaking [of] the thrones.” Islam’s foes “see the coming revival of Islam, and they know what that means and they know what it means for their policies,” Imam said.

At the conference, HT activists distributed a brochure detailing how the Muslim state would be governed. The document is “to be studied by Muslims while they are working to establish the Islamic State that will carry the Islamic da’wah (proselytizing) to the world,” it says. The document would govern “the Islamic State in the Islamic world” and does not target individual countries.

The pamphlet, entitled “Khilafah State Structure: Introduction to the Constitution,” contains charts illustrating how a caliphate government would function along with a draft constitution.

“Those that are guilty of apostasy (murtad) from Islam are to be executed according to the rule of apostasy, provided they have themselves renounced Islam,” says Article 7. Moreover, “if they are born as non-Muslims, i. e., if they are the sons of apostates, then they are treated as non-Muslims according to their status as being either polytheists (mushriks) or People of the Book.”

The caliphate government would establish an “Internal Affairs Department” which would include a division of “Apostasy.”

Waging jihad would be a top priority for the government. The caliphate cabinet includes a senior-level “Private Secretary” for jihad. The “Military Department” – which appears to be a cabinet-level agency –would be headed by a “Field Marshall,” who appoints a “Director of Jihad,” his second in command. Included within the Treasury department would be something called a “Department of Jihad.”

The Treasury would be divided into two divisions: one handling revenue, which includes a “War booties Agency,” and the other covering expenditures, which includes both a “Dept. of Jihad” and a “Director of Jihad Office” on its organizational chart.

Articles 51 through 55 of the draft constitution would establish an “Amir (military leader) of Jihad” who would supervise holy war-related activities in government agencies.

The group believes that this year’s revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria and other states offer Muslims an opportunity to throw off the shackles of Western colonialism.

“No longer are the Muslims afraid of these regimes who have oppressed the masses,” reads a flyer for the conference that appears on the HT website. “Will the Muslim world rid itself of Western colonial interference? Will these events lead to the application of Islam and the re-establishment of the Khilafah (caliphate) State?”

Arab rulers are pretending to be legitimate leaders just as Soviet Communist Party leaders used to do, Imam told the conference.

For the West, the “front line” in the struggle against Islam is ensuring that the “tyrants” in the Muslim world remain in power, Imam said. Speakers cited Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Pakistan Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as examples of Muslim leaders who must be replaced.

The Pakistani Army announced last month that it arrested Brigadier Ali Khan and four majors in an investigation of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s infiltration of the military there. Khan, assigned to Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, is the most senior Pakistani military officer known to have been arrested for alleged involvement with radical groups since 9/11.

While Hizb ut-Tahrir has struggled to win followers in the United States, its name has come up in connection with several recent terror-related arrests.

Farooque Ahmed, 34, was arrested last October and charged with plotting to blow up Washington, D.C. metro stops and a D.C. hotel frequented by members of the military. Authorities found Hizb ut-Tahrir literature when they searched Ahmed’s suburban Virginia home. In April, he pled guilty to terror-related charges and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Antonio Martinez, a 21-year-old Muslim convert who also goes by the name of Muhammad Hussain, was arrested in December and charged with plotting to blow up an Army recruiting center near Baltimore. He reportedly followed the teachings of Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Muslim Brotherhood member who founded HT in England.

At Hizb ut-Tahrir America‘s June 26 conference, speakers attacked President Obama as an enemy of Muslims. “Obama visits the Middle East and our [Muslim] public rulers rush to shake his bloody hands. They send up their armies to dance for him,” one speaker said. “They roll out red carpets to welcome the butcher of Iraq.”

Under the caliphate, Muslims would not be forced to live “under what ‘Sheikh Obama’ or Assad or Erdogan believed” but under the rule of Islam, a speaker identified as Abu Atallah declared.

Middle Eastern leaders “and their masters in the West” have been “shaken to the core,” said Reza Imam, who pointed to statements by former President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld warning of the dangers posed by the establishment of a caliphate.

“They see their hard work being undone,” he said. “It’s like a dreaded, fearful occurrence for them – that Muslims want to unite and live under Islam.”

“It’s criminal to them,” Imam continued. “And this is why their thrones are shaken. They’re terrorized by this – simply that Muslims want to obey Allah.”

HT seeks to re-establish the caliphate that had existed during the Ottoman Empire, abolished by Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk in 1924. Once it is in place, “our problems would disappear and the forces of Satan would be pushed back,” Abu Atallah said. Once the caliphate is established, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem “would be taken back from the Crusaders (Israel),” Atallah said. Asked whether Sunni/Shiite animosity would be an obstacle to establishing a caliphate, another speaker dismissed the intra-Muslim rivalry dating back more than 13 centuries as “something the West has instilled in us.”

Audience members responded enthusiastically to the attacks on the United States and quoted writings from columnist Patrick Buchanan portraying Islam as ascendant and the West in decline, interrupting speakers time and again with shouts of “Takbir” and “Allahu Akbar.” The speakers responded by joining the chants themselves.

Because of today’s revolutions in the Arab world, the West “is trembling with fear – as it should be,” one speaker said. “Bullets were no match for the ummah’s (Muslim nation’s) power.”

Wake up people!! Time is running out!!

Posted in:  The Infidel Task Force