Category Archives: Founding Fathers

UPDATED: Founding Fathers Thought Islam Was Foul (Article VI)

Constitution, Founding Fathers, History, Islam, Judaism & Jews

The Constitution is worded carelessly—enough for contemporary Americans to wonder what it was that its framers meant by barring, in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, any religious test for office.

No longer permitted, a reasonable historical interpretation would nevertheless suggest the Founders were not hoping to protect the Republic’s Islamic faithful. (Where? When?) Contrary to modern myth-making, Muslims, unlike Jews—think Mordecai Sheftall of the Colonial forces and Colonel Abraham Charles Myers of the Confederacy—were not enmeshed in early America from its inception.

In “No, Professor Ahmed, the Founders Were Not So Fond of Islam,” Laura Rubenfeld of PJ Media rounds up what the Founders truly thought of Islam, in a reply to a liar for the faith (a practice known in Islam as taqiyya):

“Akbar Ahmed [1], the chair of Islamic studies at American University, has advised many government officials, including General Petraeus, Richard Holbrooke, and George W. Bush. He speaks regularly on BBC and CNN, and has appeared on many U.S. shows, including Oprah and Nightline.

To oppose the ‘burn the Quran’ event planned by Pastor Terry Jones, Ahmed wrote an editorial [2] for CNN in which he stated”:

Not only are the actions of Jones contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, but they are also against the ideals of the American Founding Fathers. …
The Founding Fathers read and honored the same Quran that Jones is now seeking to burn. …
[John Adams, America’s second president] showed the utmost respect for Islam, naming the Prophet Mohammed as one of the greatest truth seekers in history.

“These statements are utterly opposed by the facts.

John Adams said absolutely nothing of the kind. Correspondence [3] from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on July 16, 1814, reveals John Adams’ true feelings about Islam: Adams states that Mohammed is ‘a military fanatic’ who ‘denies that laws were made for him; he arrogates everything to himself by force of arms.

John Adams did indeed own a Quran [4] — the copy he owned contained the following in the preface:

This book is a long conference of God, the angels, and Mahomet, which that false prophet very grossly invented; sometimes he introduceth God, who speaketh to him, and teacheth him his law, then an angel, among the prophets, and frequently maketh God to speak in the plural. … Thou wilt wonder that such absurdities have infected the best part of the world, and wilt avouch, that the knowledge of what is contained in this book, will render that law contemptible …

Perhaps Akbar Ahmed misspoke, and was referring to John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams? The sixth president, not the second?

No. Here is what John Quincy Adams wrote about the Islamic prophet Mohammed:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE. [emphasis in the original]

John Quincy Adams also described the Quran [5] in one of his essays as follows:

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

Ahmed also claims in his editorial that ‘Benjamin Franklin called the Prophet Mohammed a model of compassion.’ Ahmed made similar claims [6] on The Daily Show:

I quote the Founding Fathers. … John Adams on the Prophet of Islam: He called him one of the greatest truth seekers in history. (Ben) Franklin called him a model of compassion. And Jefferson had the first Iftaar … and owned a copy of the Quran. … Those Americans who are attacking Islam simply as a terrorist religion or a religion of evil, really need to go back to their own Founding Fathers.

In a March 23, 1790, letter to the editor of the Federal Gazette [7], Ben Franklin wrote:

Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.

Thomas Jefferson? Like John Adams, he did own a Quran, one translated by George Sale [8]. Here are some of Sale’s comments [9] on the Quran, included by Sale in his introduction:

It is certainly one of the most convincing proofs that Mohammedism was no other than human invention, that it owed its progress and establishment almost entirely to the sword.

In his editorial, Akbar Ahmed claims:

Thomas Jefferson kept the … Quran in his personal collection and it informed his decision to host the first presidential iftaar during Ramadan.

President Obama repeated this claim — that Jefferson hosted the first presidential iftaar — at the most recent White House Ramadan dinner.

Let’s review the facts.

During the Barbary Wars, in 1805, the bey (i.e., monarch) of Tunis threatened war with the United States after the U.S. had been successful in capturing some Tunisian pirate ships. The bey sent an envoy to the United States to negotiate for the return of the ships. This envoy stayed in Washington for six months, during which the month of Ramadan passed.

One of Thomas Jefferson’s many invitations extended to this envoy to meet with him at the White House was during the month of Ramadan. To accommodate the envoy’s religious obligation, Jefferson changed the time of dinner [10] from the usual ‘half after three’ to ‘precisely at sunset.’

Jefferson was being polite — not celebrating the first White House iftaar, as Akbar Ahmed suggests.

The first Ramadan iftaar was not actually held at the White House until 1996 [11].

Indeed, in a letter dated June 26, 1822 [12], Jefferson had this to say about Islam in a passage regarding Calvinism:

Verily I say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet.

For good measure, Akbar Ahmed also mentioned John Locke:

The Founding Fathers were also inspired by Christian thinkers like John Locke, who declared that the true Christian’s duty was to “practice charity, meekness, and good-will in general toward all mankind, even to those that are not Christians.”

Akbar Ahmed is currently Ibn Khaldoun chair and professor of Islamic studies at American University. Ibn Khaldoun was a 14th century Islamic philosopher and scholar, a man about whom Akbar Ahmed has written [13]. Ibn Khaldoun advocated for violence against non-Muslims as a religious duty, in order to achieve the larger goal of dismantling non-Muslim civilization and imposing an Islamic caliphate.

Ibn Khaldoun makes it clear that holy war is the duty of every Muslim. From his most famous work, Muqaddimah:

In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.

Akbar Ahmed is, as previously noted, an advisor to General Petraeus. One wonders if General Petraeuss has been influenced by the false teachings of this professor.”

[SNIP]

With appreciation to PJ Media’s Laura Rubenfeld.

UPDATE (9/22): Lawyer for liberty Jim Ostrowski clarifies Article VI:

Shame on ivy league lawyers Cruz and Hillary for thinking that art VI of the Constitution binds Ben Carson re Muslims running for president.

Private individuals are legally free to base their votes on anything they please.

Dem candidates say that religion is irrelevant as they scurry from black church to synagogue in search of votes.

‘Purging America’s Heroes’

America, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, South-Africa

My book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot,” warned that just as Saint Mandela’s ANC purged South Africa’s founders (Boers and Britons) from public life—so, too, would America’s Founding Fathers be consigned by similar forces to the dustbin of history.

To wit, an excerpt from “Tot Siens (Farewell) To The Taal (The Language),” Chapter 2 of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot”:

“He who controls the past controls the future.” So wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ANC now commands past, present and future. … It may be a trifling issue to deracinated sophisticates, but landmarks in the country’s founding history are slowly being erased, as demonstrated by the ANC’s decision to give an African name to Potchefstroom, a town founded in 1838 by the Voortrekkers. Pretoria is now officially called Tshwane. Nelspruit, founded by the Nel Family (they were not Xhosa), and once the seat of the South African Republic’s government during the Boer War, has been renamed Mbombela. Polokwane was formerly Pietersburg. Durban’s Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna, fought in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars) is Che Guevara Road; Kensington Drive, Fidel Castro Drive. Perhaps the ultimate in tastelessly hip nomenclature is Yasser Arafat Highway, down which the motorist can careen on the way to the Durban airport. …

Patrick J. Buchanan, who just gets better with age, on “Purging America’s Heroes”:

… All were white males. All achieved greatly. All believed that the people whence they came were superior and possessed of a superior faith, Christianity, and hence fit to rule what Rudyard Kipling called the “lesser breeds without the Law.”

Acting on a belief in their racial, religious and cultural superiority, they created the greatest nation on earth. And people who got in their way were shoved aside, subjugated, repressed and ruled.

As for the Confederates of the Lost Cause, they yielded to superior force only after four years of fighting, but their battle flag has ever after been seen as a banner of rebellion, bravery and defiance.

And those tearing down the battle flags, and dumping over the monuments and statues, and sandblasting the names off buildings and schools, what have they ever accomplished?

They inherited the America these men built, but are ashamed at how it was built. And now they watch paralyzed as the peoples of the Third World, whom their grandfathers ruled, come to dispossess them of the patrimony for which they feel so guilty.

The new barbarians will make short work of them.

[SNIP]

I depart from Pat on the matter of William Tecumseh Sherman. What’s his claim to greatness? Waging Total War on the South and on the Plains Indians? Corralling what remained of them onto reservations?

Take down any graven image of Gen. William Sherman. I’m fine with that.

Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes

Ann Coulter, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, States' Rights, War

“Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes,” now on WND, offers a brief history lesson about the Confederate Battle Flag. An excerpt:

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.

It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter is indeed lovely:

Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled by” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call “for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.”

And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—known as “Lee’s Army”—is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.

The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.

Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were—still are—13 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.

Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The South was protesting not only against the North’s interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the growth of government generally.”

Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness. …

… Read the rest. “Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes” is now on WND

Barack Obama — All American Boy

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Liberty

By Myron Robert Pauli

In scientific research and on Jeopardy, it is essential to ask the right question. However the American media consistently ask the dumbest questions. Hence, we are treated to discussions of, “Are the 9/11 hijacker-murderers ‘brave’ or ‘cowards’”? Another idiotic debate is: “Are the millions of Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Sufis, Salafis, and Wahabbis who hate our guts ‘real Moslems’”? Alternatively, “Is Barack Obama a Christian?” (Should I care?).

Now, the latest stupidity of the week, thanks to Rudi Giuliani, is “Is Barack Obama Anti-American”? Well, let’s look which American Presidents received over 51% of the popular vote in TWO Presidential elections – in order of popularity (envelope please): Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Andy Jackson, Ulysses Grant, and rounding up the top 5 is Barack Obama! Are American voters “Anti-American”?

How about our government – all the civilian employees and contractors working for TSA, BATF, INS, Education, Agriculture, State, Commerce, Labor, Post Office, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Reserve, HUD, EPA, IRS, GSA, GAO … – they work for him and carry out his executive orders. Are they “Anti-American”? How about the taxpayers who support the government – “Anti-American”?

How about “the troops”? Don’t they wipe out 13 year old foreigners and 16 year old Americans on the say-so of prosecutor, judge, jury, and Chief Executioner Obama? Don’t they drop bombs on Syria, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, etc. on his say so without a declaration of war? Don’t they snap their heels and salute when HE walks into the room? Are the troops “Anti-American”?

Of course, Giuliani and McCain think that Obama is “Anti-American” because he hasn’t bombed, sent troops, and messed around in enough countries – Iran, China, Russia, and Ukraine – maybe one day Liechtenstein? Presumably, George Washington who said “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” would be American-hater number.”

Now one might ask instead whether Obama is Anti-Liberty? After all, America was founded in 1776 “to secure our rights” and it is difficult to point out how our liberties have improved under Obama. As Franklin noted in 1787, the Constitution “ .. can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” As for presidential powers, Washington noted: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

Dead white Protestant slaveowners don’t count.

Well, folks, the solar system has traveled 2 light-months around the galaxy since 1776 – that is a long distance. In 2015, Americans who advocate for the 2nd Amendment or the 10th Amendment are put on watch lists. Fight with the TSA over the agency’s “right” to “touch [your] junk”, and you’ll land in jail. Expose NSA spying on Americans and you are Edward Snowden, traitor exiled in Russia.

And what of the “Tea Party Patriots” who wave their flags, support the troops, and denounce Obama? They (correctly in my opinion) denounce “unelected judges” who want to impose gay marriage but then insist on a “Balanced Budget America” which would remove budgetary authority from the (corrupt Republican) Congress and hand it over to Sonia Sotomayor! If the police SWAT team force an Orthodox Rabbi to perform a transgendered wedding and a sniper shoots a Catholic nun who refuses to perform an abortion, will the Tea Party Patriots applaud the SWAT team and the sniper? If there is a disconnect between America 1776 and America 2015, you’d better make up your mind! It is as if Sam Adams paraded around with a King George T-Shirt, waving the British flag, and shouting “Support the Redcoats”! You cannot serve both G-d and Mammon, folks!

In 2012, 99% of Americans chose Gruber-inspired-Romneycare or Gruber-inspired-Obamacare, Leave No Child Behind, bailouts, Patriot Act, student loans, etc. Only 1% voted Libertarian. Barry Goldwater talked about making Social Security optional and he was considered an “extremist nutcase”. The Senators who opposed the (phony) Gulf of Tonkin resolution were promptly defeated. Dissent is allowed but the voters will ignore or denounce you. A Grover Cleveland stating that “The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.” would flop in 2015.

America loves its Welfare-Welfare State and in 2015, Obama is the quintessential American.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.