I ran across this today and thought it was a good read. It is quite ironic that so many Black Americans would follow the religion that enslaved them

Subject: A litle history lesson

What Thomas Jefferson learned

from the Muslim book of jihad

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 dessert 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 will fight our country's battles on the land as on the 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.