First Muslim American Government Official

Because of David Gaubatz' attack on Muslim Congressional interns, recalling the USA's first Muslim American government official is worthwhile.

He was George Bethune English (Muhammad Effendi).

Short biographies can be found at the following webpages:

• George Bethune English (7 Mar 1787 - 20 Sep 1828)
• George Bethune English
• George Bethune English - Summary

He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Boston Latin School.

At Harvard College he was admitted to membership in the Hasty Pudding Club in 1805 because of his poetic skills.

He graduated from Harvard in 1807 and was awarded the Bowdoin Prize for his dissertation. In 1811 he received a Masters of Theology but had begun to doubt Christianity.

He published several works including:

• The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing the New Testament with the Old (1813)
• A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Channing Relative to His Two Sermons on Infidelity (1813)
• Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar (London 1822)
• Five Pebbles from the Brook (1824).
  

The publication of the former book provoked the Christ Church in Cambridge to excommunicate English in 1814.

Subsequently he became a newspaper editor and may have learned Cherokee.

He served as a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant in the War of 1812, afterward traveled to the Mediterranean, resigned his commission shortly after arriving in Egypt, converted to Islam, and and participated in Ismail Pasha's Nile Expedition with distinction as the artillery commander. English described his Nile adventures in his 1822 Narrative.

Some accounts question the sincerity of English' conversion to Islam, but two Christian missionaries, British former Jew Joseph Wolff and New Englander Pliny Fisk, failed to convince him to return to Christianity.

Fisk condemned English, "Obstinate hostility to the truth is the prevailing temper of your soul. ... I consider your case one of the most deplorable and dangerous cases that I have ever known."

English became homesick and returned to New England in 1822.

Shortly after he arrived in the USA, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams recruited English for the US diplomatic corps as his personal and secret envoy to negotiate a trade treaty with the Ottoman Empire.

English reached Istanbul on Nov. 5, 1823. The talks stalled because of the Greek Rebellion, which was widely supported in the USA, English' relations with Adams soured after Adams assumed the Presidency, and English' was reduced in rank to translator assisting Mediterranean Squadron Commander John Rogers, whose lack of diplomatic skills made discussions even more difficult.

English returned to the USA in 1827 and died in Washington in 1828.

President Andrew Jackson's envoy David Offley, who had earlier accused English of excessive closeness to Ottoman officials, completed the negotiations with the Ottoman government in 1830.

Offley's allegation against English anticipates modern Jewish Zionist denunciations of State Department Arabists.

While Offley's criticism was almost certainly sincere and resulted from discomfort at his inability to understand choices that English made on the basis of superior knowledge of Ottoman Islamic politics and culture, today's Jewish subversives engage in an hypocritical form of psychological projection, for they only pretend to serve the US government while their true loyalty lies with the Israel Lobby, which is the public face of the Zionist imperial system. Sphere: Related Content