In an April 1 video statement — this was not an April Fools’ joke — the U.S. State Department proclaimed the month of April as Arab American Heritage Month, reflecting the Muslim’s contributions to the U.S. “are as old as America itself,” said spokesman Ned Price. 

Price stated: “The United States is home to more than 3.5 million Arab Americans representing a diverse array of cultures and traditions. Like their fellow citizens, Americans of Arab heritage are very much a part of the fabric of this nation.”

Ironically, notwithstanding this announcement, Arab American History Month is not officially recognized by the entire U.S. government. A bill sponsored by the Islamist House Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), was introduced to Congress in 2019 and is still pending. Nevertheless, to say that Muslims are “as old as America itself” or that they are “part of [its] fabric” is as pretentious as saying that Thomas Jefferson believed Islam should be a part of American society simply because he possessed a Quran in his personal library — Tlaib used it in her swearing-in ceremony.

What the Biden Administration is essentially doing is capitulating to the Islamists and their leftwing political abettors to ensure that Islam, as expressed by sharia law, has a place in American society, simultaneously indoctrinating Americans into accepting it as a peaceful religion. This is no different from what the Obama administration did when he had a cordial meet-and-greet with leaders of the terrorist-oriented Muslim Brotherhood in January 2015, or the then-State Department’s outreach efforts to the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America, both of which have links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Aside that Islam’s 1400-year-old history attests to its socio-political doctrine of violence, to allude that Muslims collectively and substantially contributed to the building of America is deceitful. In fact, the U.S. has been engaged in a conflict with Islam — that did not begin with the tragedies of September 11, 2001 — from the outset of its birth as a nation.

Historical Conflict with Islam

Thomas Jefferson did in fact own a Quran, but it was not because he appreciated Islam. Instead, it was to better understand and defeat the Islamic Barbary Pirates who were raiding U.S. merchant ships and taking the American sailors hostage off the shores of Tripoli.

In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans captured by the Islamist Barbary pirates in Libya and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — then ambassadors to France and Britain respectively — met with Tripoli’s ambassador to England, Abdul Rahman Adja.  Following this diplomatic exchange, they explained the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity in a letter to Congress:

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The amabassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman [sic] who should die in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Just before Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, the pasha — Turkish ruler — of Tripoli released the crew members of two recently captured American ships on the condition that the U.S. increase its tribute. If America refused, the Barbary States would declare war on the U.S.

As testified by the Library of Congress, Jefferson refused to pay any ransom. He sought to assemble a confederation of countries to take action against the Barbaries. He was unable to do so because it lacked consent from France and England — under the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1798), France (and later England) were to use their diplomatic powers to protect captured sailors and persuade the leaders of the Barbary nations to refrain from capturing American ships. He would have to wait until he became president to enjoy enough autonomy to take on the Barbary States. 

American forces initially suffered a setback when the U.S.S. Philadelphia ran aground and the crew was captured. Jefferson eventually crushed the Islamic threat, but within only a few years after he left office, the Barbary pirates were once again raiding American ships. 

America would eventually go to war with the same Barbary Muslims in 1815. Under President James Madison, the U.S. Navy bombarded Tunis and Algiers, captured prisoners and demanded treaties that freed the U.S. from both Barbary threat and extorted tribute.

Understanding Islam

As I explain in my book Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up, in order to comprehend how violence is inherent in the doctrine of Islam, one must not just look at the violent Quranic verses — there are at least 109 verses that speak of war with nonbelievers (non-Muslims) —but at the every example of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad, as recounted in the hadiths and his first biography Sirat Rasul Allah.

In Mecca, Muhammad, while preaching on charity, demanded that his fellow Meccans abandon their pagan gods and accept his. He was only able to draw a small band of followers. Being forced to flee Mecca to Medina in 622 — recognized as the official birth of Islam — after the city’s tribesmen discovered his plan to displace them by force, Muhammad then ceased being a private preacher and became a political and military leader. His purpose was not to rid himself of “foreign occupation but,” as Efraim Karsh says in his publication Islamic Imperialism: A History, “to strive for a new universal order in which the whole of humanity would be able to embrace Islam or live under its domination.”

Since then, we have had fourteen-hundred years of a religiously-justified global strife. Which leads one to wonder, has President Joe Biden or any non-Muslim in his staff ever read the Islamic religious texts? Have they studied Islamic history?

This is not to discredit the honest intentions of those Muslims who want to escape the wars in their ravaged lands and seek refuge in America or those in uniform, who believing what America stands for served our country. Yet to imply that Islam has been “part of the fabric of” America is not just simpleminded, but it dishonors what America stands for.

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Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He has a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; he also holds a M. A. in Medieval History from Fordham University, as well as a B.A. in Government & Politics from St. John’s University. He is also author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up.

Book available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or WestBow Press.