Lux Lucet

Early on in its history, the fledgling United States found itself at odds with the Barbary pirates of North Africa. These raiders operated from bases in what is now Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, seizing ships and enslaving the unfortunates found on board. According to an article in Slate, more than a million Europeans and Americans were sold into slavery in this fashion.

Attempting to find a diplomatic solution to the Barbary issue, Thomas Jefferson on John Adams paid a visit to Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, Tripoli’s ambassador to London. As the Slate article goes on to note, “They [Jefferson and Adams] asked him [Abdrahaman] by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered 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 who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Alrighty then. If nothing else, the ambassador gets high marks for his honesty. It sure beats the Islam-as-religion-of-peace nonsense doled out to us by PC addled Western politicians, professors and mainstream media pundits, not the mention the aggressively globalist Pope Francis.