Turkish vs Arabian imperialism

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 9, 2007 at 19:18

Dear Plato , you wrote :

"He (Kemal Pasha) allegedly fought Islam but no one else did so much to make Turkey a virtual Moslem monoculture "

> Here was a man who went about systematically destroying many of the outward manifestations of Islam, especially with an Arabian flavour to them.

These facts were exaggeratedly acclaimed in the West. The fundamental things were willingly ommited.
One problem was that objectively speaking Islam most benefited from his genocidal policy directed against all non-Moslems in Anatolia.
The other problem was that his war against Islam was no matter of principle. Its origins were accidental. It manifested itself as a private revenge that due to the absolute power attained by Mustafa Pasha looked like a struggle between good ("secularism" a la Mustafa Pasha ) and evil (Islam). And it wasn't that of course.

The outward weakening of Islam served the strengthening of Muastafa Pasha's personal power and did no real harm to the cause of Iaslam as now it was the only religion of Turkey , something in purity comparable only ibn Saud's Arabia. Mustafa Pasha fought Mehmet VI out of fear that if if didn't beat the caliph the caliph would take revenge on his disloyal and insubordinated army inspector. And then his severed head would most probably adorn a gate in the Sarail palace.

And as the caliph personified Islam, so Mustafa had no choice but to order his fanatically Moslem Anatolian soldiers to fight their previous "shadow of Allah on earth" (as once the caliph was officially called) and all its minor shadows. They did it only because they believed that Allah had sent a new "ghazi" a better caliph to them. They had no idea what "secularism" stood for. So relying on Moslem fanatism Mustafa built his own religious personality cult and tried futilely to dismantale the old deen. His slaves looked on him as a new shadow of Allah on Turkish soil.

> What of Islam was left?

99% of population confessing Islam !!!! Something which has never existed before in spite of the most rabid Islamization policy.

> Just the rituals?

Deep faith which expressed itself in the fez dispute which is unjustly ridiculed by the Western authors and which showed that the new "secular" caliph could depose the old Osman caliph but it was impossible to persuade his tyrannized subjects that they should voluntarily get similar to kafirs.

> Did he issue any call for jihad to further the Islamic empire.

And his pan-Turkism? What was it if not a jihad without using the name? He condemned Enver Pasha for his adventures in Turkestan (Small wonder !Mustafa Pasha was Lenin's first ally) but later started dreaming of re-creating a Pan-Turkish empire. His "secular" successors after the fall of the Soviet Union took up that dream.

> He sounds to me more like a Turkish imperialist (as you yourself noted) rather than an Islamic one.

The difference between the two is hardly discernible to me. Both ways lead to the same end -Islam's supremacy. The means and people may look different.

And , dear Plato, Kemalist "secularism" is in the long run doomed for failure. In a country with 99% Moslems external re-Islamization is just a question of time. Internally it's a Moslem society.

>> I have never attached much significance to such superficial things, dear Plato. He changed not only the alphabet but also the language ......to be proud of what they are as they are the most ancient nation on earth. They come directly from the Sumerians and the Hittites ! ..."

> Reading that para, one does not see the Ataturk trying to carry forward the Islamic agenda of the Prophet.

He had an incidental dispute with one of the prophet's successors , so he willy-nilly was forced to carry out his own agenda against the legal caliph. It was an erratic agenda of course. The task of returning formally to the Islamic world has already been taken up by his successors.

>>> "were only cosmetic changes and just a sort of camouflage to fool the rest of the world.

> >I would never never try to to dismiss the conclusion as irrational."

> From what you have put forward previously it does look as though he was trying to camouflage his Islamic agenda. But clearly he seemed to have had a rather a clear Turkish agenda.

Being Turkish without being Islamic is rather a strange combination to my mind , althought what Mustafa Pasha's mind thought was held as a self-evident and sacred truth. You can't make a Moslem nation secular only because you can kill anyone who may remind you of the hard statistics. Mustafa Pasha tolerated no opposition , no arguments. No discussions were possible with him. No statistics worked with him. Woe if someone angered him by appealing to his reason ! Those who knew him were all afraid of his whims and his wrath.

To all his slaves (he introduced civil laws but was bound by none as he had many killed sometimes for jokes) he was a new sultan and a new caliph. The anecdote I told you reflects a general opinion. They followed him as their religious upbringing told them the caliph is always impeccable and infallible even if he fights their own faith. He was always right otherwise Allah wouldn't have allowed him to expell and exterminate the kafirs. Submission (=Islam) was a way he used to force his tyrannical and often irrational decisions through. And his decisions and thoughts were listened to like ayats , absurd as they might have been in themselves.

When it turned out e.g. that his genocidal policy , exterminating the Greeks and Armenians who produced most things necessary for everyday life , brought Turkey on the verge of economic ruin, he staged large-scale show trials against alleged "opposition" and those who obstructed and failed to implement his wise decisions. As a true Moslem he never admitted any mistakes.

>>."And now thinking about Islam I couldn't resist the impression it is a sort of intellectual infantilism , a collective regression in mental development of mankind..."

>You have described the Muslim thinker to perfection. Regressive thinking to end regressive thinking. The Koran is immutable to the last full stop. All knowledge is encapsulated in its 114 surahs.

>> "Are you referring implicitly to ordinary Moslems , dear Plato ?"

> I know you dislike the example of the Nazis but I think it is appropriate here. You cannot have explicity blamed all Germans for Nazi crimes though implicity you could.

I would blame all those gentlemen who thought out and enforced with guns and ultimatums as their final arguments the treaty of Versailles , for the crimes that followed as a direct result of the failed peace. I can't see anything comparable to the treaty of Versailles in the history of Islam.

>Just as all Catholics cannot be blamed explicitly for the Inquisition though implicitly you could.

Well, being catholic exposes you to many temptations. But your Christianity works against those temptations.

>> "I find the Europe analogy quite unsatisfactory and misleading while dealing with the Moslem world. We have never produced anything comparable to Islam."

> Ianus, please remember that I am not a professional historian but these are some statements and figures I have gathered:

> The destruction of the World War I & II, secular events, but European: Estimated dead around 15 million & 50 million. Atlantic slave trade: around 18 million dead . And some secular and others religious casualties: Thirty year war, Napoleonic wars, French religious wars together about 15 million. Stalin 20 million.

> As you say the analogy is probably unsatisfactory but the deaths seem quite comparable.

> Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world." David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World (1992) page x

We Europeans have admitted that and coped with it best we could in accordance with our knowledge and consciousness. I personally have no problem with those things. We have investigated those cases, we have written plenty of books on the subject. We have discussed them openly. We have looked for the reasons. We have regretted the consequences. This gives a good testimony to our culture and morality , if I may moralize for a moment.

Now look at the Moslems who are the most vocal in finger-pointing and denigrating us and our ancestors and our civilization! No Moslems will ever admit the crimes committed by Muhammad (have you read the last post by our Moderate Muslim?). Can you indicate a single Moslem study on the crimes committed in the name of Islam? A single sermon condemning the crimes of the rightly-guided caliphs ? Can you indicate a significant Moslem public opinion condmening the atrocities committed against the kaffirs in the name of Islam ? This gives a telling testimony of what sort of "civilization" we are confronted with at the moment.

>>"....Christianity has never developed this deadly self-defence mechanism to that horrible degree. That's why it was possible for us to wake up from the Christian hypnotisation. It's not possible to awaken from the Islam hypnotisation."

> You say 'to that horrible degree'. I agree, all disparities in human behaviour, collective and indivdual are all matters of degree.

I meant Christianity as a system of power and social control has never developed and perpetuated mechanisms making sure it will never lose its power and control over the collectives it dominated. In other words you could criticise Chrsitianity without losing your life immediately as in Christianity you have i.al. the commandment "Thou shalt not kill".

> That is why categorically ruling out that Muslims can be dehypnotised is questionable.

Is it ? What punishment awaits you for 'ridda' ( denying the validity of Islam) ? Other Moslems will not ostracise you. They will kill you on the spot as it is the law of Islam for which you'll be rewarded in the hereafter if not already here.

>> "I was surprised by your insistence on the innocence of moderate Islam ....It runs counter to what Islam was , is and will always be all about ."

> I believe I have never talked about moderate Islam. Yes I have talked about moderate Muslims.

What a typically Western distinction! You imply people are more important than ideas. It applies no doubt to our humanistic culture. But transferring it so simply onto Islam it's highly risky. In the East an individual is nothing. The collective is all and the religion(deen) is sacred and infallible and most tyrannical.

> Islam is what it is, it cannot be changed. Muslims are human beings and their mental states can be changed like any persons.

Provided they can be separated from Islam and all too numerous Moslem killers. Isolate them and there is a chance they will apostasize. As long as they remain Moslems there is no hope. They will always backslide into what they were brain-washed into.

> They can be persuaded to interpret their religion differently.

Differently ? How do you mean that ? They will invent un-Islamic Islam like Islamo-democracy and Islamo-humanism or what ?

> You probably think that is an impossible task.

Actually , I do.

> That is where we part ways.

I just wonder where your way leads to ? What sort of new Islam are you trying to conjure up?

>> "Given the perversion of ideas and meanings practised by Islamic semantics , Moslems mustn't think there is anything wrong with their Allah-inspired paranoia. On the contrary, all is fine and positive in it as the obligatory laudatory vocabulary of Islam insinuates."

> That is something interesting you say. It means it is possible to interpret Islamic teachings to mean what they did not originally mean.

All things are possible. Only the probability that all will happen is so damn low, dear Plato.

> Islamic semantics has inspired the paranoia and the vocabulary of Islam. Can the semantics not be reworked to domesticate Islam from its wilder manifestations?

By whom ? By Moslem scholars of the traditional school or those trained at the US universities sponsored by Saudi millions or by kaffirs ?

> It does seem to have happened when the Mutazilites prevailed for a brief time in Islamic theology.

Aren't you too optimistic about your Moslems , Plato ?

> Ianus, I find it difficult to reconcile some of your statements among themselves:

I am not a pope and the privilege of infallibility doesn't belong to me. I am perfectly aware I may be wrong on many points. But I suspect that you as a typical Westerner project too much of your own culture and Enlightenmant mentality into the Muslim mind. I contend that it is a risky procedure that may lead you astray. It gives nurishment for your optimism but it doesn't work simply because the Moslem mind doesn't belong to our cultural environemnt. It is constructed and works according to a totally different civilizational blueprint , if I may put it so.

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