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May

28

Islamists vs. the West — History Repeats, ad infinitum

Posted By: 'Okie' | 9:34 am — 5/28/2008 | 1 Comment See comments below:

In a missive from the representative of an Islamic state to a U.S. foreign minister the following was said:

“It was… written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon wheoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

One could be forgiven for thinking this is a modern day statement from the likes of Osama bin Ladin or some other current radical Islamic cleric or leader. Instead it was the response given by the pasha of Tripoli, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar, to then Minister to England, John Adams way back in 1785 — Adams was trying to obtain the release of hostages taken by Muslim pirates off the coast of Algiers and to negotiate some form of settlement to stop the piracy against the newly formed U.S. Republic’s merchant shipping in the area.

This and more can be discovered in today’s When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists, the Michael Weiss article in Pajama’s Media [h/t: the Anchoress] wherein Weiss reminds us that we have been at odds with the more militant Islamists since the founding of our nation when our shipping fell out of the “protection” supplied by the British via their paying the tribute demanded by the Islamic states. He goes on to show that talk, talk, talk and appeasement didn’t work then, just like it won’t work now — no matter how much the Obamessiah thinks otherwise.

Keep in mind that in 1785 those words were not those of homicidal religious-fanatic maniacs, but of the Islamic Ottoman Empire itself which controlled all of the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, the Greek peninsula, the Balkins, current day Iraq and more. Here is a great animated map showing the rise and fall of the Ottomans, (1300 — 1923).

I bring this to your attention as some additional perspective for the next time you hear about the “Change” that Obama wants to bring to our foreign policy efforts which is to stop doing what works and try again something that was a miserable failure in the past. As Weiss says late in the article:

Santayana got it backwards, in fact: even those who remember history are still doomed to repeat it.

Whether we want to, or not!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 9:34 am and is filed under A Post 9/11 World, Radical Islam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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