Historical Perspective

Submitted by Fred Baehr (United States), Oct 27, 2010 at 23:56

With the expansion of Moscovite power in the 18th century pressing down on the Ottomans in the Balkans, it was natural for the Ottomans to ally themselves with the Germans and Hungarians to resist the Russians. The modernization of the Ottoman military in the 18th and 19th centuries was effected largely by German instructors with German equipment. So it was natural for the Ottomans to ally themselves with Germany in WW1. Even though that conflict proved the final destruction of the Ottomans, the Turkish relationship with Germany was by then some 200 years old, long enough to have inculcated German ideas into Turkish society, especially the military. Their subsequent alliance with Nazi Germany would seem then to be predictable and the antisemitism of the Nazis must have seemed to them to be consistent with certain passages from the Koran.

The current Islamist scourge is capitalizing on this long development, but antisemitism is only a facet of modern Islamism which is a religion of hate. One can hear essentially similar feelings of hate from Fred Phelps of the Westburough Baptist Church in Colorado Hate as Islam and hate as Christianity are equally repulsive, destructive and absurd. However, Phelps and his cadre number only 50 or so pathetic morons. Islamism has, according to the recent Gallup pole of Muslims worldwide, a militant following numbering at least a few million, and a philosophic following of 50 million or more. These unfortunate souls are mostly propagandized masses, lead by an influential few, who have in mind a world view and a set of political goals that I as an atheist must call "evil". Hate is evil with or without a God.

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