Politics

WaPo claims Thomas Jefferson held White House ‘Iftar dinner,’ history says otherwise

The so-called “mainstream media” and their liberal puppets became upset when President Trump chose not to hold an official White House Iftar dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan.  The propaganda outlet Washington Post, for example, claimed it was a tradition that dates back to Thomas Jefferson, but, Breitbart.com said, that’s not entirely true.

The Posts’ Amy B. Wang claimed that Thomas Jefferson held the “first Iftar dinner” in a June 24 piece entitled, “Trump just ended a long tradition of celebrating Ramadan at the White House.”

Wang, the report said, “recounted the time when the diplomatic envoy from the Bey of Tunis, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, visited Washington during Ramadan in 1805.”

But there’s more to this story, Breitbart said:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Jefferson invited the envoy to the White House for dinner at 3:30 PM—the time most Washingtonians had dinner in those days. But after he sent the invitation he was told that Melli Melli could not partake of a meal until after sunset because of Ramadan. Thomas Jefferson was faced with two choices: cancel the dinner entirely or simply have the meal later in the evening at a time when his guest could attend. As a good host and a decent person, Jefferson chose the latter.

In fact, all Jefferson did was change the time of his meal. He had no intention of honoring Islam. Jefferson simply was not honoring the religion of “the Musselmen”—as he termed Muslims at the time—when he changed the time of the meal. Also, there is no evidence that Jefferson asked Melli Melli what sort of food a “Musselman” would eat, so no special food was prepared to suit a Muslim’s religious needs. Jefferson neither inquired about religious accommodations nor was any made. All he did was move the time of the meal as a courtesy.

Further, Jefferson sent no letters containing proclamations about the meal being an Iftar dinner nor mentioning Islam, he never mentioned such honors in his private papers, and there is no record that he spoke to anyone about his intentions to honor the Muslim practice of an Iftar dinner.

“To the Post’s Wang, that Jefferson had a dinner at all was somehow proof positive that he invented a ‘tradition’ of some sort. As “proof” that it was an Iftar dinner, Wang quoted the words of liberal historian John Ragosta who gave the scintillating argument, ‘Yeah, it sounds to me like an Iftar dinner,'” Warner Todd Huston added.

So what about this so-called “tradition” and who actually started it?

Huston continued:

Bill Clinton held the first one, a politically motivated dinner aimed at peeling Muslim voters away from the GOP, since at the time the growing Muslim-American community leaned toward becoming a Republican constituency.

George W. Bush, in a diplomatic effort, followed Clinton’s practice of holding Iftar dinners because he wanted to prove that the U.S. wasn’t looking to go to war with all of Islam in the wake of the attacks on 9/11/2001 and the subsequent implementation of the war on terror.

Naturally, Barack Obama held them because he had a personal connection to Islam through his childhood, growing up in Indonesia and raised during that time as a Muslim.

In other words, three of 45 presidents held an Iftar dinner, and this, to the propagandists in the liberal media, constitutes a “tradition.”

Got it.

Trump, by the way, did issue a warm statement wishing Muslims a happy Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan:

On behalf of the American people, Melania and I send our warm greetings to Muslims as they celebrate Eid al-Fitr.

With Muslims around the world, the United States renews our commitment to honor these values. Eid Mubarak.

A post at BizPac Review observed the hypocrisy of liberals upset with Trump’s decision to not hold an Iftar dinner:

The leftist hypocrisy in slamming Trump as islamophobic is laughable, considering many public schools bar Christian prayers and the Christian greeting “Merry Christmas.”

In 2015, Samantha Dawson — an 8-year-old elementary school student in San Francisco — was suspended for wishing her homeroom teacher “Merry Christmas.” Liberals ignored that anti-Christian attack.

The media’s pro-Islam agenda is so skewed that public school children are being brainwashed about Islam through lessons financed by taxpayers, unbeknownst to their unsuspecting parents.

Scratch a liberal, find a hypocrite…

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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