Thomas Jefferson and the Musselmen [Muslims]

Our first encounter as a nation with Muslims was when we were very weak. Appeasement and paying ransom for our sailors.  What's the excuse now?

"In March 1785, when Jefferson was Ambassador to France and John Adams was Ambassador to Great Britain, the two met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Ambassador to Britain from Tripoli.  The Barbary Pirates had captured American merchant ships and had imprisoned their passengers and crew.  Not yet having a strong navy, the Congress wanted to negotiate a fair tribute as a way to appease the pirates.

Jefferson and Adams were eager to know how the Barbary States could claim the right of piracy against peaceful American merchant vessels.   Jefferson wrote that, in the ambassador’s view, according to the Koran, “all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” . . .By 1800, the annual payments to piratic Muslim states were almost one million dollars a year, one fifth of the federal budget."

 http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2014/08/thomas-jefferson-mussulmen-muslim.html