Posted by panch from pool0047.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.47) on Thursday, July 04, 2002 at 9:32AM :
I've never accepted the notion that Islam is evil and that Muslims, all of them, are murderers. To study history as Aprim does is merely to indulge in shallow partisanship, rooting for your side and making the other guy out to be simply a monster. Hardly likely in any case, certainly not in the case of Islam.
What in god's name possessed the Christians of Europe, Germany in particular, to start gassing innocent children? Well actually it WAS in their God's name...he demanded it so they said because Jews killed his son...the one he insisted HAD to be killed before you guys could get into heaven...go figure!
We gloss over that embarrassing chapter in Christian barbarity when we can, say it is "old news" and many don't even believe it happened...another Jewish trick. Remember, these European Christians weren't backward tent dwellers but among the most advanced and sophisticated people of their day, they will tell you...and Christians...not evil Muslims, to boot.
I'd always heard that the Assyrians caught hell in Turkey for what the Armenians did...that we ourselves didn't give the government any cause to doubt our loyalty...that they reacted against all Christians when they saw the Armenians do as they did.
Apparently the Armenians were far more revolutionary...those were hot times. Reading about the 1850's till the 1900's in Turkey you get an appreciation for just what they were facing at the hands of the Christian royal vultures circling their fading empire.
Brtitain, Germany, Austria, France and Russia were racing each other, often in sly underhanded ways to gain influence over what appears to have been a rather unstable Sultan, Abdul Hamid. Wars were being declared against Turkey by Russia, the Brits were playing their old game of,"now we're your friends, now we're not"...and the Christian population of Turkey, with its own nationalist yearnings, was most definitely used as a means of coersion...their welfare all of a sudden being very dear to these powers...but only when it suited their Imperial interests.
It was understandable, in the full context of where the Turks were in those days, that the largely illiterate and religion besotted lower classes could be easily roused to blame Christians and see them as fundamentally disloyal..(.look at how Americans viewed us after 9/11). It was convenient for the Sultan to use the Christians as scapegoats...besides he was humiliated by the Western powers and didn't appreciate being told by outside Christians how to deal with any of his subjects. In Turkey all citizens were near slaves of the Sultan...that's just the way things were. He knew these wiley bastards were using the Christians anyway as a pretext...when it was convenient...like America shed tears for victims of the Shah, but not the victims of the Mullahs of Iran. Never believe a politician..never. They HAVE to lie in order to make their country "greater" than the next one.
In the late 1890's a band of revolutionary Armenians took guns and bombs into the main bank in Istanbul and threatened to blow themselves and the whole place up unless the Western Christian powers came to their rescue. These were extremist nationalistic Armenians who wanted an Armenian state...sound familiar?
No one wanted to give them one, not Russia, not Germany, not even the Brits...but the Armenian extremists, being extremists, had seen signs they interpreted as real and genuine solicitude for their cause...believing as our chumps do...that some Christian power is going to give them something because they are all Christians...like Christians have NEVER murdered each other. (the inflated notion our Christians have of their value to more powerful Christian forces...that they will pet us and give us warm milk just because we are all Christians...might be compared to Lina's feeling that we are going to do anything for her because we are all Christians and Assyrians too...in both cases there is room for doubt...shall we say?)
The British did manage to diffuse the situation and the thirty men were given safe conduct out of the country on the British envoy's yacht. I don't know what these Armenian Patriots had been thinking...but the day after they got safely out, there was a reaction against all Christians by a furious mob and six thousand of them were murdered in every greusome way imaginable.
That still doesn't beat the Christian record set during the St Bartholemew's Day celebration when ten thousand Christians were killed in a 24 hour period...by other Christians!!!
After that event the public in most European countries was primed and ready to accept any sort of retaliation against the Sultan...and the day when Turkey would be carved up to give us petroleum were on the horizon. The Turks were villified and nothing was bad enough to do to them. The Germans however, another Christian butcher in waiting, continued its close ties even training the Turkish Army...Bismark had plans Hitler would realize.
There is plenty of blame to go around. But our partisans aren't interested in an even handed approach...they want blood...and since they can't get anyone elses, they want our own.
It might be good to point out that within Two World wars these Christians soon brought upon us...Christians of Europe were rounding up and murdering all sorts of people...Jews primarily...and what had Jews done to anyone? I mean really...to deserve so horrendous a treatment?
This must be why to this day Turkey feels it was defending itself against proven radicals within it's own country...people who themselves were willing to use Christianity as a rallying cry and as a device with which to compel the Western powers to come to their rescue. This is what scares me about Peter and his Rabbits...they too would like to see more Assyrian Christian blood shed in the Mideast...in that same delusional fond hope that the West will become "outraged" and ride to our rescue. Like the only way we can get anyone to notice us is by getting our children killed so there will be pity for us!
In Turkey we didn't ask for it...but we got it anyway. Innocent people of any one religion are always lumped together with those of the same religion who committed some crime or depredation . In other words because of what some extremist, nationalistic Armenian Christians did, ALL Christians became suspect and subjects of retaliation. As we are trying to do with Islam and all Muslims. The Sultan had already seen his nation stripped of several European territories of his by these same Christian countries...just put the shoe on America's foot and see how we would react...The United States HAS been killing Muslims in their own countries for some time now...whereas the Sultan of Turkey never attacked the civillian populations of Christian countries...just fought wars to keep those Christian countries from annexing his European provinces further.
It was a land grab by the Europeans...and religion was one of the main battle cries...just as Israel is engaged in a land grab using religion as the banner they all unfurl. It's taken some time to carve up them oil fields and ports.
No one is innocent or blameless...and to do what Peter and his Rabbits do is to try to be sanctimonious about it...perpetuating the cycle of violence, hatred and ignorance...and all Aprim does is root around for a sentence here or a page there that can be lifted and put to work...he knows none of us are going to go check his sources.
Addmittedly, the Assyrians themselves did little to the Turks...except afterwards when Agha Petrous got involved...but even there he took training and was encouraged by Russian officers....who were mortal enemies of the Sultan most of the time.
Any help we expected from the Western Christian Powers was a delusion on our part fostered by them and our priests for their own policy interests. Between two bad and hopeless choices...we made the worst one. This religion proved ultimately to be the death of us, not the salvation. The proof of that is that here in this Christian nation where we are free to do as we please...we do nothing as Assyrians. We've lost that lovin' feeling.
-- panch
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