Barbary Pirates

Barbary Pirates used to pillage and plunder in the Mediterranean for centuries with the approval of their Islammic governments. The Koran allows Muslims to enslave non-Muslims so the Muslim governments didn’t mind if Christian seafarer were enslaved and held to ransom. European governments even paid tribute to Muslim governments so the Muslims would leave their sailors alone. At first the United States paid tribute as well but Thomas Jefferson didn’t like this as he rightly guessed paying tribute would just lead to bigger and bigger demands.

At first Jefferson reluctantly paid ransom as he could not get together a force large enough to defeat the pirates but later when the pirate demands became too large he succeeded in waging war against them. After that the pirates left Americans alone but European nations gradually cleaned up the remaining mess.

Liberals shouldn’t be Pacifist]]s.

References and External links

 * Slavery and the Infidel in Islam
 * America and the Barbary Pirates
 * Barbary Pirates, [an article from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
 * Barbary Pirates a cool seafarers’ song on video