Interesting Look Back At First American War Against Islam



By Joseph R. Carducci
October 11, 2014

This is a little piece of history that I’m betting not many will remember. In most US History classes or discussions today, this is given very little time or consideration. Even when it is discussed or studied at all, this war is mostly glossed over or classified as a simple trade or economic dispute. However, as I looked more closely into these events, it was rather astounding to see exactly what was going on.

The Barbary Wars were the first declared conflict the young American nation had on foreign soil, beginning in 1801. Thomas Jefferson was the American President who led the charge.

You should remember that during the 18th century Muslim pirates basically controlled the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic (at least a large part of the shipping lanes). They attacked every ship they could be find and held crews for huge ransoms. Hostages were subjected to torture and other barbaric treatment; we have accounts and letters many wrote back home urging their families and governments to pay whatever ransom their Islamic captors wanted.

The Muslim nations in question were Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers. Collectively, they were referred to as the Barbary Coast. They were a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American nation, which was no longer under the protection of Great Britain (as they had been before the Revolutionary War) or France (as they were during the War). Starting in about 1784, the US Congress decided to follow the same path taken by most of Europe—simply pay up the ransoms as their ships and crews were captured and pillaged.

Eventually, Jefferson (first as the Minister to France, later as President) became appalled by the payment of these ransoms to the Muslim barbarians. He even proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations aimed at forcing the Islamic states into suing for peace.

In 1786, Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain. They asked this ‘diplomat’ by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved her citizens and why the Muslims held such hostility toward this new nation, with which neither Tripoli nor any of the other Barbary Coast nations had any previous contact. The answer was quite revealing. Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja (the ambassador) replied that Islam:

“Was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an, 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.”

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