In 1786, Thomas Jefferson sat across from an envoy from Tripoli in London and asked a simple question…why are you attacking our ships, we’ve done nothing to you.
The answer he got became one of the most important, and most ignored diplomatic records in American history.
The envoy told him it was written in the Quran. Any nation who hadn’t acknowledged their authority were sinners and it was their right and duty to make war on them wherever they found them. And they could enslave any prisoners they took.
Jefferson wrote it down and sent it to Congress. He spent the next fifteen years trying to get somebody to take it seriously.
That conversation in London didn’t just start the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded moment an American official came face to face with the argument that would later drive the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and al-Qaeda.
The ideology didn’t change. The battlefield sure did.
This history goes from that London drawing room in 1786 all the way to a conservative dry town in Colorado in 1949 where the man who became the intellectual architect of modern jihadist movements spent two years studying at an American teachers college and came home ready to burn the whole Western world down.
I think this one is worth your time. Link in the comments.
The answer he got became one of the most important, and most ignored diplomatic records in American history.
The envoy told him it was written in the Quran. Any nation who hadn’t acknowledged their authority were sinners and it was their right and duty to make war on them wherever they found them. And they could enslave any prisoners they took.
Jefferson wrote it down and sent it to Congress. He spent the next fifteen years trying to get somebody to take it seriously.
That conversation in London didn’t just start the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded moment an American official came face to face with the argument that would later drive the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and al-Qaeda.
The ideology didn’t change. The battlefield sure did.
This history goes from that London drawing room in 1786 all the way to a conservative dry town in Colorado in 1949 where the man who became the intellectual architect of modern jihadist movements spent two years studying at an American teachers college and came home ready to burn the whole Western world down.
I think this one is worth your time. Link in the comments.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson sat across from an envoy from Tripoli in London and asked a simple question…why are you attacking our ships, we’ve done nothing to you.
The answer he got became one of the most important, and most ignored diplomatic records in American history.
The envoy told him it was written in the Quran. Any nation who hadn’t acknowledged their authority were sinners and it was their right and duty to make war on them wherever they found them. And they could enslave any prisoners they took.
Jefferson wrote it down and sent it to Congress. He spent the next fifteen years trying to get somebody to take it seriously.
That conversation in London didn’t just start the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded moment an American official came face to face with the argument that would later drive the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and al-Qaeda.
The ideology didn’t change. The battlefield sure did.
This history goes from that London drawing room in 1786 all the way to a conservative dry town in Colorado in 1949 where the man who became the intellectual architect of modern jihadist movements spent two years studying at an American teachers college and came home ready to burn the whole Western world down.
I think this one is worth your time. Link in the comments.
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