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Book Review: Jihad in the Days of Jefferson
(Jerusalem Post) Erik Schechter - In 1783, Muslim pirates - sea-faring terrorists - began attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. In May 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to London, who told them the raids were a jihad against infidels. Muslim privateers felt "it was their duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could as prisoners, and that every Mussleman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise." In Victory in Tripoli, Joshua London gives a fascinating account of how the U.S. took on the pirate states of North Africa.