Christian Hitchins Barely Touched Upon Islam’s Predations

In a viral clip, Hitchens spoke about the Muslims’ centuries-long slave trade against Europeans and Americans. He understated the severity of the problem.

S. David Sultzer | March 25, 2026

A viral clip is making the rounds showing Christopher Hitchens, who passed away in 2011, giving a talk in 2005. In it, he discusses the Barbary slave trade that captured an estimated 1.5 million Europeans and Americans over several hundred years. If anything, Hitchens understated how aggressive the Islamic world was against the West.

Anyone with a knowledge of history knows that Islam, born in seventh-century Arabia, has always been at war with Western civilization. Indeed, it has been the single most prolific conquering and colonizing force in history, much of it being Christian lands. And all of this has been driven by religious imperatives and duties written into the Koran.

That is reality, not “Islamophobia,” a word the left recently invented to protect their radical Islamist allies in the West. The threat of destruction from radical Islamists, as we term them today, has always been real and as imminent as their abilities allowed.

America fought its first wars outside of its borders—the Barbary Wars—to stop Islamic nations from attacking our ships and enslaving their crews. That was what Christopher Hitchens was referring to in this 21-year-old clip that recently went viral:

Christopher Hitchens: ”In 1786, when the United States was barely a country, it was having its sailors taken as slaves by the Barbary states, the states of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Tripoli, shores of Tripoli. Ships stopped, its crews carried off into slavery. We… pic.twitter.com/hbRRR4mCYPAdvertisement if (window.publir_show_ads) { document.write(''); } — Taya (@travelingflying) March 21, 2026

Christopher Hitchens: ”In 1786, when the United States was barely a country, it was having its sailors taken as slaves by the Barbary states, the states of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Tripoli, shores of Tripoli. Ships stopped, its crews carried off into slavery. We… pic.twitter.com/hbRRR4mCYP

The letter Hitchens paraphrases is far more damning and explicit, for it ties the Barbary pirates’ predations directly to the Koran and Islam.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met in London with the Ambassador from the Barbary States to discuss the pirates’ attacking American shipping and enslaving the crews. They wrote of the meeting in a joint letter to Congress:

We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretentions to make war upon Nations who had done them no Injury, & 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, & 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...Advertisement if(page_width_onload

© American Thinker