NCJ Number
216498
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 45 Issue: 2 Dated: 2006 Pages: 93-109
Date Published
2006
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article compares the dynamics of the Bush administration's Terror War on radical Muslims after September 11 with the dynamics of the Barbary Wars against Muslim "pirates" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Abstract
The Barbary states (Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli) rose to prominence after the 15th Century when anti-Muslim pogroms in Spain sent hundreds of thousands of Muslims fleeing to North Africa, dreaming of revenge for the loss of their homes and property and for the slaughter of family and friends. They took with them their skills as navigators. Early raids by the so-called "Barbary pirates" were conducted more out of vengeance than for material gain. In Europe the Barbary corsairs were labeled the Satanic scourge of some imaginary entity called Christendom. To the 18th-century American mind, Muslim became synonymous with "pirate," much as it would become interchangeable with Terrorist two centuries later. In the Barbary Wars, Americans were convinced they had to be defended economically and militarily against a fanatical foe which waged terror against innocents in the name of Islam. If today it has become clear that most justifications for the current Terror War were fabrications intended to cloak other agendas at home and abroad, the Barbary Wars had some of the same agendas at work. In both wars, the "politics of fear" was operating. During the Barbary Wars, carefully cultivated fears of a rising Islamic threat diverted public attention from domestic political problems, suppressed political dissent, provided cover for regressive fiscal changes, cloaked aggressive militarism in a defensive guise, and discarded both conventions of international diplomacy and traditional standards of criminal justice. The overriding aura of the battle was a sense of Christian mission. 47 notes