“Decatur boarding the Tripolitan”: the American Barbary wars 19c, seen as America’s first encounter with Islam

Prejudice and demonization has been the “white man’s burden” and justification for colonialism and enslavement of “colored” man throughout history. It began with the Greeks and Romans, followed by the hostility toward Jews, then Islam, until the miraculous irony of the post-Holocaust era where the newly found partnership of the “Judeo-Christian” world became the defenders of freedom against the “evil empire” of Communism and the establishment of the Western Zionist colony of Israel. That was followed by the newly created “evil du jour - Islam” in 1990 after Communism's fall in order to serve and maintain the military-industrial-media complex of America's elite.

It is no coincidence that Bernard Lewis, America's Islamophobic spokesperson, wrote his article “Roots of Muslim Rage” in 1990 immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Sept., Atlantic Monthly). Samuel Huntington, Jewish American, followed in 1993 with his infamous “The Clash of Civilizations” (Foreign Affairs), although Huntington obviously took the title from Basil Matthews' 1926 book “Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations.” Matthews, a missionary, saw a massive opportunity for Christian conversion among Muslims after the Ottoman Empire's collapse. He wrote: “They [Muslims] have discovered that the possessors of such power - the rulers over nine tenths of the habitable earth and six out of every seven Muslims on the surface - are the races of Western Christendom.”

European Christian literature is replete with derogatory and insulting characterizations of Islam and it's Prophet (pbuh). Their argument runs like this: Christianity, founded by God himself, could not tolerate or accept faiths espoused by mere mortals. Thus, superimposed on the “white man’s burden” of civilizing the world, Christianity brought a religious zeal to save the world and exterminate the obstinate “infidels.” Neither the faiths preceding it, such as Judaism, nor a faith following it denying Christ's divinity is acceptable to the white Western mind. It was Christianity, not Islam, which invented the trigger phrases of: Infidel - Holy War - Fundamentalism. And it was Israel that first introduced terrorism in the form of car bombing and airplane hijacking into the Middle East.

A combination of Holocaust guilt and sympathy, and the birth of the “strong” Western rich Jewish lobbyist, founded Israel for European immigrants via the genocide and “ethnic cleansing” of the “other, the colored, the infidel,” the invisible second victims of the Holocaust. Ironically, Israel was founded due to Christianity's “us vs. them” holocaust, and now thanks to Israel, the “them du jour” are Muslims. From its founding, Israel's leaders such as David Ben Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres identified “Islam” as the true enemy of Israel, and now by extension to Israel's colony - the United States.

With the entry of the naive, isolated, gullible U.S. government into Mideast politics after World War II, Israel cleverly formulated a strategy to win “America's money, weapons, vetoes, and blind support” through the only educational and opinion molding medium the West understands: the media, with its film power of Images and Words.

America's politics became hostage to Israel, Jewish political activism and campaign donations, and a media and Hollywood powerhouse all designed to wield the “carrot and stick.” While the rest of America was self-centered on “me”, Israel's influence around Washington D.C. became a belt encircling the power centers of government much akin to the physiologic blood brain barrier of the brain that filters harmful compounds and allows entry of only pro-Israeli messages. Hence, the creation of America's split personality and erratic foreign policy that is often embarrassing, humiliating, stupid, irrational, and dangerous, to America's long term interest in the world; America's national interest logically lies with 56 Muslim nations, a fifth of the world's market population with 60% of the world's oil reserves, YET America's cowardly, greedy, short-sighted pandering to one nation - Israel - may ultimately lead to America's definitive war and American deaths within the Muslim world.

Bernard Lewis

Given America's impotence toward Israel, as clearly articulated by Bush's silence and Powell's “Blame Arafat for Israel's 53-year murder and occupation of Palestine, for Sharon's military madness, and for forcing us to look cowardly,” what have Arab leaders done to solve the Palestinian Diaspora and regain world respect for Arabs? In a word:  NOTHING. In fact, American impotence is only superseded by Arab impotence, dishonesty, inter-Arab conflict, undemocratic and inhumane self-survival policies, wasted time, lives, money, and resources, all while living a hypocritical image of true Islam.

For 53 years the Arab and Muslim world did not, and could not, develop one single strategy to counteract Israel's hegemony of America and Europe. How shameful it is to hear U.S. officials say that Arab leaders say one thing in private while denouncing Israel in public. Islam has been shredded in the Western media as a faith of violence, terrorism, and intolerance. Yet not one leader has stood up to the American-Israeli hegemony with faith, courage, and the trust of his people.

America is a capitalistic society that responds to money and power regardless of politics. Israel has the financial and political power to wield its influence via the Congress and the Media. Both are money dependent. Recently, it was reported that thousands of Saudi Arabian princes, alone, have between $500 billion and one trillion dollars in American banks and government bonds. That's just one family. Imagine if the Arab and Muslim world would adopt a two-pronged strategy: one politico-financial, the other cultural.

Imagine if Muslim money and resources were wielded as political power via American banks and financial institutions, stocks in major companies including advertising firms, stocks in media corporations even beginning with local markets, stocks in Hollywood production companies, supporting and strengthening Arab and Muslim political action committees with a presence in every state to lobby for Arab/Muslim causes, establishing Islamic institutes and centers in universities, scholarships for Arab/Muslim students in Communication/Media/Film studies, hiring or developing professional public relations firms on behalf of Islam and the Muslim victims in Palestine, India, Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan, China, Burma, Philippines and so on. The Business of America is Business, yet Arabs act as if that’s none of their Business until they are forced to meet and whine about the “injustice” to Arabs and Muslims and how great Islam was instead of how great Islam is and will always be.

Secondly, the need to develop a strategy to reach the American people at the grassroots media and cultural level. Americans are not Islam's enemy. They are a kind, generous, open-minded people who seek to live in peace and are thirsty to for others to reach out to them and inform them of their world and culture. Currently, even American Muslims are silent, intimidated, fearful and ignorant regarding political activism. Education and training for them is needed urgently. Today, Muslim schools and mosques serve Muslims, but not Islam.

For their part, the 56 Muslim nations need to develop a unified organization for the sole purpose of informing Americans and Europeans on the truth of Islam via media, film, and cultural events in museums, colleges, and film. There is not one single entity in the U.S. that performs this function with any professionalism and effectiveness. A coordinated effort, even state-by-state, that brings Muslims together with pride, joy, and trust among themselves will alter the landscape of the West. Americans and Europeans are converting to Islam despite Muslims, not because of them.

A short-term strategy of pressuring the U.S. that its interests are in jeopardy in the Muslim world will bring the peace process back on track. America has been looking to invest its interests and energy policies beyond the Middle East such as in the Caspian Sea, so the timeframe to influence American policy is short. If Americans can learn to love the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese, and accept Russians and Chinese as strategic friends, surely Muslim lands can do the same given that the only wedge between Muslims and the Christian West is Israel.

Samuel P. Huntington

The first strategy is to make clear that no attack on Iraq is acceptable, and that the Arab League will resolve the issue of the weapons inspectors. Second, suspend the Arab League Peace Plan and recall Arab and Muslim ambassadors from the U.S. and England until Sharon withdraws immediately from all Palestinian Authority areas. Third, insist on a U.N.-sponsored International Conference on the Palestinian-Israeli issue and on defining “terrorism.” America needs the 56 Muslim nations more than Muslims need
them.

Will the Arabs ever manifest such courage and spine? It’s hard to believe. If they don't, however, then surely their political survival and U.S. interests will suffer in the long term for one simple reason: neither the U.S., nor the Arab/Muslim world, nor the United Nations have the courage to stand up to Israel and say enough is enough.

Interesting Relevant Quotes:

1. St. Petersburg Times, Florida:  March 17, 2002

“Most troubling is that the Egyptian press continues to promote hatred and violence against Israel and, frankly, America,” says Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. “As we now understand full well, the media can really create a culture of hatred and violence.”

2. -- George Kennan, US Cold War planner, 1948  (John Pilger, Hidden Agendas, (The New Press, 1998), p.59)

“We have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality… we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.”

3.The Independent: March 30, 2002 Robert Fisk: “The lies leaders tell when they want to go to war.”

“How much longer can the Americans remain so gutlessly silent in the face of a vicious conflict which is coming close to obscuring the crimes against humanity of 11 September?”

4. Now we have an Israeli officer – according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv – advising his men to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. “If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an (Israeli) officer to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else analyze and bring together the lessons of past battles, even – shocking though this might appear – to analyze how the German army operated in the Warsaw ghetto.”

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