WaPo: Trump Ended “Long Tradition of Celebrating Ramadan” Started by Thomas Jefferson

The Washington Post has re-initiated Task Force Islam Recovery and has dispatched Amy B. Wang to spearhead the charge into the misty, hashish-smoke-filled past of the Liberal university classes of the early ’70s in a bid to turn public opinion on its head in regard to its “perception” that America was founded by Christians.

Wang operates under a bit of a disadvantage to start off, unfortunately, but makes a valiant effort nonetheless by avoiding any noxious “original source” document Leftist pitfalls from the Library of Congress (where images of letters from the Founding Fathers generally degrade the religion and their barbaric depictions of holy war upon “sinners.”  Luckily, there is a treasure trove of false, misleading, or stretched-truth websites out there with which Wang could build an arguable case for the assertion by Progressives that Muslims built this country.

Fortunately for Conservatives, we have the wise words of Barack Hussein Obama to thank for a quick, decisive and very easy retort to that claim, and that is:  “You didn’t build that!”

In the very early years of this new nation-in-the-making, Barbary Coast pirates (named for the Berber people of North Africa, generally from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (modern-day Libya) of the Ottoman Empire) were attacking European, Middle Eastern and American ships in the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic.  In 1777, Moroccan Sultan Mohammad III declared that American ships would enjoy the sultanate’s protection and would be safe in Mediterranean waters.

However, starting in the 1780s, pirate ships in that area began to attack American, as well as European ships.  Because the U.S. had no official navy, they agreed to pay the tribute being demanded by the pirates.  In 1794, the Congress voted to initiate the building of the first official navy fleet.  However, the attacks continued.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1786 felt the need to press the Tunisian representatives about their repeated attacks on our American ships passing through that area. The Arab envoys were quite succinct in their answer. Thomas Jefferson in writing to John Jay following the encounter wrote of his frustrations.

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretensions to make war upon a Nation who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our Friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their prophet, that it was written in their Koran, 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.”

Nearly 20 years later, President Thomas Jefferson ruled over a new nation still battling the Barbary Coast pirates.  In 1801, after refusing to pay tribute to the pirates, Jefferson initiated the first Barbary War by sending a U.S. Naval fleet on May 13th under Commodore Richard Dale.  The frigate, USS Essex, under William Bainbridge was attached to Dale’s squadron that included the warships Philadelphia, President and Enterprise.

The fleet set their sights upon three Barbary Coast cities in Tunisia, Libya, and Algieria from where pirates appeared to launching their attacks and laid siege to them.  After an accidental grounding of the Philadelphia, Bainbridge ordered the throwing overboard of all the ships cannons in an effort to refloat the ship, to no avail.  The crew was captured and enslaved.  The Philadelphia was bombarded and sunk in order to keep the pirates from capturing and using it.

At this time, Jefferson agreed to meet with a diplomatic envoy from the Bey of Tunis, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, in order to discuss the end of hostilities between the two nations.  As the ambassador was visiting during Ramadan (most likely to force Jefferson’s hand in ending the war through the pretense that they were there on their holy day in good faith) Jefferson respectfully invited the envoy to the White House for dinner which, in that day and age, was traditionally served at 3:30 p.m.  When the envoy explained that he could not partake until after sunset due to the holy day, Jefferson altered the dinner to a later time to accommodate the visitor.

This is the point of contention for Leftists who are attempting to perpetuate the revision of historical documents that Thomas Jefferson was the first president in 1805 to recognize and celebrate what was known as a Muslim Iftar dinner.  Wang in the Washington Post continues with this theme that many Progressives have continually thrown against the public, but that which has failed to stick, due to its preposterousness and the fact that the reading public has become so much more aware and astute when pinpointing Leftist propaganda.

In fact, all Jefferson did was change the time of his meal. He had no intention of honoring Islam. Jefferson simply was not honoring the religion of “the Musselmen”—as he termed Muslims at the time—when he changed the time of the meal. Also, there is no evidence that Jefferson asked Melli Melli what sort of food a “Musselman” would eat, so no special food was prepared to suit a Muslim’s religious needs. Jefferson neither inquired about religious accommodations nor was any made. All he did was move the time of the meal as a courtesy.

Further, Jefferson sent no letters containing proclamations about the meal being an Iftar dinner nor mentioning Islam, he never mentioned such honors in his private papers, and there is no record that he spoke to anyone about his intentions to honor the Muslim practice of an Iftar dinner.

To the Post’s Wang, that Jefferson had a dinner at all was somehow proof positive that he invented a “tradition” of some sort. As “proof” that it was an Iftar dinner, Wang quoted the words of liberal historian John Ragosta who gave the scintillating argument, “Yeah, it sounds to me like an Iftar dinner.”

The interesting part of this story about a long tradition is that, as Breitbart points out, there have been literally only 3 out of 45 presidents who have succumbed to either identity politics or political correctness, or both.  They are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama.  Three out of forty-five.  This doesn’t exactly designate a “long tradition”; in fact, it doesn’t even designate a “short tradition.”  If anything, it demonstrates how insistent the Left is in altering facts and enforcing identity politics on American leaders to gain favor, privilege and special protections in the form of entitlements that other groups less fortunate and more needy may not gain because it doesn’t fit the Progressive narrative.

In her ahistorical article, Wang also quotes John Quincy Adams who expressed “with an air of fascination” his dinner with the Tunisian envoy, but quotes Adams without also noting that the president thought Islam was a terrible and brutal creed.

What Adams thought about Islam is instructive. For instance, he described Islam as a religion of hate in a piece he wrote in the late 1820s:

The natural hatred of the Mussulmen towards the infidels is in just accordance with the precepts of the Koran. … The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies. … In the 7th century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab … spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. … He declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion. … The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust, to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.

The continued attempts to apologize for radical Islam through a hazy, stretched-out view back through the mists of time is a tactic that will ultimately fail, but one which they hope will distract those of us who pay attention to be diverted just long enough to miss some other important piece of news that’s detrimental to the Spin Cycle of the Left’s favorite enterprise of news laundering (scrutinize, sanitize, sympathize, and Socialize).  Repeat.

Source:  Breitbart / Library of Congress