As noted in Cliff’s post yesterday (relying on a Bill Gertz report in the Washington Times), the Pentagon has sacked an authentic, influential scholar of Islam, Stephen Coughlin, who evidently refused to lie about — er, I mean, “soften his views on” — Islamic extremism (which, like it or not, is rooted in Islamic scripture) at the insistence of one Hasham Islam, Army Chief Gordon England’s Islamophilic factotum (one of countless such creatures now pervading the federal government).
For more on this, check out this post on the new website of Andrew Bostom, another scholar of Islam. Andy knows Coughlin and his work. He also draws a worthy comparison between Coughlin and William Eaton, whose travails trying to defend the American people against both jihadism and elements in his own government occurred two centuries ago. Particularly interesting is this, from early America’s first contacts with the jihadists of the day, the Barbary pirates:
Thirty years earlier, in 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracy—murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets—emanating from the Barbary states (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:
… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, 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 Mussulman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.
’Twas ever thus. Steve Coughlin is apparently gone for saying so.