This is the full text of the chain email received by PolitiFact about the Barbary pirates and Islam.

To read our fact check of this email -- which we rated False -- please use this URL: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/11/chain-email/barbary-wars-did-us-declare-war-islam/

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Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago, the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!



At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic. They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart breaking letters home, begging their government and family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.



These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers â collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.



Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets. Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy.



Beginning in 1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became Americaâs Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States, rather than engaging them in war.



In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Day of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.



In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoliâs ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.



The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written 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 (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."



Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages.



The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800. Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every year forthcoming. That changed everything.



Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit.



Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond coastal defense, but having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery for long enough, decided that it was finally time to meet force with force.



He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never forget.



Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to âcause to be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war would justifyâ.



When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will and might to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to

Tripoli.

The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps in these wars led to the line âto the shores of Tripoliâ in the Marine Hymn, They would forever be known as âleathernecksâ for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified, doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply. America had a tradition of religious tolerance. In fact, Jefferson himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever seen.



A religion based on supremacism, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers was unacceptable to him. His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the United States.



This should bother every American and Canadian. That the Islamic âreligionâ has brought about women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged, Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities.



Ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the picture on the wrapper looked similar to the Arabic script for Allah, public schools are pulling pork from their menus, on and on in the newspapersâ¦. Itâs death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans and Canadians have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across America and Canada. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture, the United States and Canada are cutting their own throat with the politically correctness knife, and helping to further the Islamic / Muslim agenda. Sadly, it appears that todayâs North America would rather be politically correct than victorious.



Any doubts re this history lesson, just Google Thomas Jefferson vs the Muslim World or click on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War



Those who don't know HISTORY are destined to REPEAT IT!



Also remember Muslims are ordered to "lie, cheat, steal and murder or do anything that advances the takeover of the world by the Muslims." Let that sink in as every day we see more and more Muslims showing up and taking high level positions in our state and federal government. What happened to common sense?