Throughout the Islamic world there are Muslims asking if the United States intends to seize control of oil wells for its own economic gain or is the United States motivated by a higher purpose.  With the end of World War II, the iron curtain enslaved those trapped behind it, forced to live under dictatorship, and those who benefited from the higher purpose of the United States.  The higher purpose of the United States, known as the Marshall Plan, sought to modernize and liberate Europe from the dictatorship they had known and thereby created a prosperous and self-governing Europe.  Forty years later, this higher purpose would become a reality for those behind the iron curtain.

What was the philosophy of the United States for the radical departure from colonizing the conquered fascist and communist European continent, as victors throughout history would have done, to promoting ideals of individual rights and self-determination?  The answer is in the Federalist Papers, the classic work of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, which details the philosophy the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, which combined, are the state the ideals the United States Government rests upon.  In the federalist papers, it states that the rights of sovereignty would continue to exist in the United States.  However, unlike Europe, where there was only one sovereign in each nation, endowed with the Divine Right of Kings, the United States declared in the Declaration of Independence in the 1700’s (Christian Calendar) every free person was a sovereign, “endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these rights are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”.  The forefathers of the United States believed their ideals would in the future allow every person in the United States the natural and Divine rights of sovereignty that in Europe only a King or Queen enjoyed.

President George W. Bush extends this concept of “every man a sovereign” to Muslims throughout the Islamic world, particularly those living in countries where people do not have the right to determine representation in government.  Every Muslim is a sovereign with the same natural and Divine rights as the King of Saudi of Arabia or the Ayatollah of Iran.  It is not the goal of the United States to set up colonies in the Islamic world no matter how much oil Muslims possess.  The Unites States answers to a higher purpose, the ideal that we are each “endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  Every individual person in the Islamic world has a natural and Divine right, from the Creator, to individual rights and self-determination in a free society.

This ideal of the forefathers of the United States is still a work in progress over 200 years after their first formal declaration.  Achieving these ideals in the Islamic World will not occur overnight.  Patience and perseverance for multiple generations is necessary.  The people and government of the United States want to walk this journey alongside Muslims as we have and are doing with Europe.