Islam has been at war with the west since its inception

 
> Subject: Thomas Jefferson writing on March 28, 1786
> ------
> We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their
> pretensions to make war upon a Nation 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 Ambassador answered us 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 Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to
> Paradise.
>
> He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave
> over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's
> ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which
> usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at
> once. "
>
> - Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), writing on March 28, 1786. A photograph
> of the letter can be seen here.
>
> Background to the Quote:
>
> When the United States had officially declared independence from Britain, its
> vessels no longer had the protection of the British Navy.
>
> The Barbary States of North Africa (with ports at Tripoli, Algiers and
> Tangier) had been kidnapping Westerners since the 15th century and holding
> them as hostages. Even Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, had spent five years
> as a hostage. Ransoms were sought in Europe, and those who could not be
> redeemed with money were generally worked to death as slaves. Moulay Ismail
> ibn Sharif (c. 1672 – 1727) built a massive palace at Meknes in Morocco,
> with the labor of thousands of European captives and 50,000 African slaves.
> Little of this grand palace remains after an earthquake in 1755.
>
> Some of the Barbary pirates, such as Murad Reis, had themselves been captives
> until they converted to Islam. The hunted became the hunters. Murad Reis had
> been a Dutchman named Jan Janszoon. He led a pirate raid against the Irish
> coastal village of Baltimore in 1631, taking all the able-bodied inhabitants
> into slavery.
>
> By 1786, many American sailors had been taken hostage by Barbary Corsairs,
> and Jefferson and John Adams had tried to find a diplomatic solution. They
> visited Tripoli's Ambassador to London, a man named Ambassador Sidi Haji
> Abdrahaman. The quote above is from their report of their encounter with him.
>
> Congress authorized the expenditure of ten thousand dollars to secure the
> release of 20 captives. Such bargaining continued.
>
> On August 18, 1786, Jefferson had written to James Monroe that: "The states
> must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every
> national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and
> should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can
> never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do
> both."
>
> On December 26, 1786, Jefferson wrote to Ezra Stiles that: "it will be more
> easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to
> bribe them."
>
> In 1801, when Jefferson became president, the Pasha of Tripoli demanded
> ransom money, which Jefferson refused to pay. This caused Tripoli to declare
> war with the United States. This was the first Barbary War (also called the
> Algerine War). The loss of the ship the Philadelphia and its crew to the
> pirates was a humiliation. In 1815, the second Barbary War brought the
> tributes and ransoms of American sailors to an end.
>
> That victory is commemorated in the second line of the Marine's Hymn: "to
> the shores of Tripoli".