Alber

The first aggression against the US in the early years of the Republic came from Islamic countries which had corsairs that captured American merchant ships and subjected their crew to slavery. This Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs
commonly called Barbary pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber inhabitants.

In March 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy, ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied: "It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once." Jefferson tried to make sense of what he was hearing. He was familiar with the Muslim holy book. He had purchased a copy of the Koran during his days of reading law in Williamsburg twenty years before but found its values so foreign that he shelved the volume with books devoted to the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. This conversation left him even more perplexed. The man who had written that all people were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” was horrified at Abdrahaman’s religious justification for greed and cruelty. So, having the book he had not read it and he did not know the evil it contained.

Dashing Adams’s high hopes, Abdrahaman refused to play the role of “benevolent and wise man.” Despite the Americans’ horror, he wasn’t apologizing in any way. He showed no remorse or regret. He believed the actions of his fellow Muslims fully justified.

When the meeting ended, the two American ministers, disheartened and outraged, left empty-handed. They had found no solution, no peaceful answer to protecting American shipping or freeing their countrymen enslaved in North Africa. They agreed that the status quo was not workable, but that’s where their agreement ended. Adams believed America should pay for peace, but Jefferson expressed another view. He did not wish to “buy a peace,” as he put it. He preferred “the obtaining of it by war.”

According to his holy book, the Koran, as Abdrahaman explained, the Islam is at war with all non islamic countries, although no country has declared war against the Islam. This was more than 200 years ago and it has not changed.

Although he despaired of an easy solution, Adams wasn’t ready to stop talking. He could understand financial concerns, and he was already beginning to realize what O’Brien would later say of the pirates: “Money is their God and Mahomet their Prophet.” Yet greed alone couldn’t explain the madness and cruelty of the demands. Unsatisfied, the famously blunt Adams wanted a better answer.

But war was too risky at that point, especially against such a powerful threat, and Jefferson was not yet in a position to push the country toward a military conflict. Years passed and continued attempts at negotiation with the Barbary states proved futile, to the detriment of America’s economy and dignity. But when Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, he finally got the chance to move beyond diplomacy. He sent the recently re-formed U.S. Navy and Marines to blockade Tripoli, launching the Barbary Wars, which ultimately ended in victory for the United States.

"Immediately prior to Jefferson's inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that 'shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.' … In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to 'protect our commerce and chastise their insolence — by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and vessels wherever you shall find them.'" On Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (or Bashaw) of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 from the new administration. (In 1800, Federal revenues totaled a little over $10 million.) Putting his long-held beliefs into practice, Jefferson refused the demand. Consequently, on May 10, 1801, the Pasha declared war on the U.S., not through any formal written documents but in the customary Barbary manner of cutting down the flagstaff in front of the U.S. Consulate. Algiers and Tunis did not follow their ally in Tripoli.

In response, "Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was 'unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.'" He told Congress: "I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight." Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli "and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.

"On December 9, 1805, Thomas Jefferson hosted the first Muslim ambassador to the United States. Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, an envoy from the Beylik of Tunis, arrived during Ramadan and Jefferson invited him to the White House for dinner at the usual time of 3:30 PM. Having knowledge of Islam from his personal two-volume English translation of the Koran, Jefferson changed the meal to sunset to allow the envoy time to observe his religious tradition. Many such as President Obama and the Houston Chronicle call this incident "the first Iftar dinner held at the White House" but it isn't likely Jefferson had any intentions of holding an official Iftar dinner or officially recognizing a Muslim religious tradition. It is more likely he just changed the time of the dinner to be a good host.
Furthermore, there are no official proclamations or recorded evidence that Jefferson was officially recognizing the Iftar tradition.

The primacy of paying tribute to the religion of Islam belongs to Ms.Hillary Clinton who being the First Lady, on February 20, 1996 welcomed Muslims in a reception dinner at the Old Executive Office Building. Clinton described it as an historic event, saying that:

Eid Mubarak. I want to welcome you all to the White House as you and Muslims all over the world celebrate the end of Ramadan. I am honored so many of you could take the time to share part of this holy month with us. This is a historic occasion–the first Eid Celebration ever at the White House. It is only fitting that, just as children and families of other faiths come here to celebrate some of their holy days, so you, too, are all here to mark this important Islamic tradition.

President Bill Clinton continued the tradition as did his successor President George W. Bush who hosted an iftar dinner at the White House in 2001. He subsequently continued the dinners every year of his two terms. President Barack Obama continued the dinners as had been done by his predecesors.

Thomas Jefferson surely always remembered the detriment of America dignity and the outrage that underwent the country by the Mohammedan pirates, following the instructions of the Koran. The founding fathers were not in any way close to the Islam, all of them were christians and masons who had the Bible as their holy book but respected the liberty of religión that the Koran does not grant. Benjamin Franklin, parodying a North African pirate addressing a colonial audience in the 17th century asked his audience, "Is it worse to follow Mahomet than the Devil?" He had read the Koran.

reconreb Loc: America / Inglis Fla.

Welcome Alber , good history lesson .. This current admin. like others have forgotten that to try and appease Islamist is to invite a culture that's goal is to dominate or destroy all others ..