Do You Know Why
the Marine Hymn Contains the Verse "To the Shores of Tripoli'
Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the
United States had declared war on Islam and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!
At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean
and a large area of the North Atlantic.
They attacked every ship in sight,
and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric
treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their government and
family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.
These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers – collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast – and presented a dangerous and
unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.
Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection
of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered
into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.
Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy. Beginning in 1784, seventeen years before he
would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America’s Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought
to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European
nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than engaging them in war.
In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Dye of
Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple
case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further
payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of
allied nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace. A
disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his nation attacked
American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much
hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous
contacts.
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 would 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."
Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations,
as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including George
Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further
embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen 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 over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being
sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pasha of
Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus
$25,000 a year for every year forthcoming. That changed everything. Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain
terms, what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by cutting down
the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit. Jefferson,
until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond
coastal defense, but, having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thugery for
long enough, decided that is was finally time to meet force with force.
He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never
forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of
the Pasha of Tripoli and to “cause to be done all other acts of precaution or
hostility as the state of war would justify”.
When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American
cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will and the right to strike
back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to Tripoli. The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up
again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps in these wars led to the
line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Hymn, and they would forever be
known as “leathernecks” for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to
prevent their heads from being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding
enemy ships.
Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their
prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply.
America had a tradition of religious tolerance,
the fact that Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for
Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the
world had ever seen. A religion based on supremacism, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated
violence against unbelievers, was unacceptable to him. His greatest fear was
that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat
to the United States.
This should bother every American. That Muslims have brought about women only
classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools;
that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where
Muslim defendants are being judged; Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers
have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities;
ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the
picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah; public schools are pulling pork from their
menus; on and on and on and on….
It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most
Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups
to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists
adapt to our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a
politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda. Sadly,
it appears that today’s America's leaders would rather be politically
correct than victorious!
