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To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Sunday April 24, 2005, and also in a perfectly timed refutation to this story, Andrew Bostom writes in The American Thinker on "The Jihad Genocide of the Armenians"
I attended a banquet in New York City April 2, 2005, celebrating Professor Vahakn Dadrian’s distinguished career, most notably, his singular contributions to the study of the Armenian genocide. Dadrian’s scholarship is characterized by a unique combination of painstaking, tireless research in the face of unseemly and well financed resistance, brilliant innovation (for example, his use of Austrian and German diplomatic sources free of either Armenian or Turkish biases), and, most remarkable of all in this era, an intellectual honesty oblivious to political correctness.Regarding this latter point, specifically, Dadrian has always been unafraid to identify the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad as a critical etiologic factor in the Armenian genocide. Indeed, the most revealing interlude of that April 2nd evening, for me, was his blunt recapitulation of a massacre as depicted in Reverend K. Balakian’s eyewitness narrative Hai Koghota (The Armenian Golgotha)—the major literary work affecting Dadrian’s decision to study the genocide. In a 2003 essay collection, Dadrian recounted the harrowing details of this particular slaughter, its Islamic religious motifs unexpurgated. Six thousand four hundred Armenian children, young girls, and women from Yozgad, were decamped by their Turkish captors at a promontory some distance from the city. Then,
To save shell and powder, the gendarmerie commander in charge of this large convoy had gathered 10,000-12,000 Turkish peasants and other villagers, and armed with “hatchets, meat cleavers, saddler’s knives, cudgels, axes, pickaxes, shovels”, the latter attacked and for some 4-5 hours mercilessly butchered the victims while crying “Oh God, Oh God” (Allah, Allah). In a moment of rare candor, this gendarmerie commander confided to the priest-author, whom he did not expect to survive the mass murder, that after each massacre episode, he spread his little prayer rug and performed the namaz, the ritual of worship, centered on prayer, with a great sense of redemption in the service of Almighty God...
A True Genocide
Was the horrific fate of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian minority, at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, in particular, during World War I, due to “civil war”, or genocide ? A seminal analysis by Dadrian published in 2002 validates the conclusion that the Ottoman Turks committed a centrally organized mass murder, i.e., a genocide, against their Armenian population. Relying upon a vast array of quintessential, primary source documents from the World War I allies of the Ottoman Empire, Germany and Austria- Hungary, Dadrian obviated the intractable disputes surrounding the reliability and authenticity of both Ottoman Turkish, and Armenian documents. He elucidated the truly unique nature of this documentary German and Austro-Hungarian evidence:
During the war, Germany and Austria-Hungary disposed over a vast network of ambassadorial, consular, military, and commercial representatives throughout the Ottoman Empire. Not only did they have access to high-ranking Ottoman officials and power-wielding decision-makers who were in a position to report to their superiors as locus in quo observers on many aspects of the wartime treatment of Ottoman Armenians. They supplemented their reports with as much detail as they could garner from trusted informers and paid agents, many of whom were Muslims, both civilians and military…
Moreover, the documents analyzed possessed another critical attribute: they included confidential correspondence prepared and sent to Berlin and Vienna, which were meant for wartime use only. This confidentiality, Dadrian notes, enabled German or Austro-Hungarian officials to openly question the contentions of their wartime Ottoman allies, when ascertaining and conveying facts truthfully to their superiors in Europe. Dadrian cites the compelling example of the November 16, 1915 report to the German chancellor, by Aleppo Consul Rossler. Rossler states,
I do not intend to frame my reports in such a way that I may be favoring one or the other party. Rather, I consider it my duty to present to you the description of things which have occurred in my district and which I consider to be the truth.
Rossler was reacting specifically to the official Ottoman allegation that the Armenians had begun to massacre the Turkish population in the Turkish sections of Urfa, a city within his district, after reportedly capturing them. He dismissed the charge, unequivocally, with a single word: “invented”.
Amassed painstakingly by Dadrian, the primary source evidence from these German and Austro-Hungarian officials- reluctant witnesses- leads to this inescapable conclusion: the anti-Armenian measures, despite a multitude of attempts at cover-up and outright denial, were meticulously planned by the Ottoman authorities, and were designed to destroy wholesale, the victim population...
Read it all, please.
Posted by Rebecca at April 23, 2005 5:24 PM
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A couple of links:
http://www.theforgotten.org/intro.html
Posted by: Skeet Street![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 23, 2005 6:04 PM
But was it jihad? I consider myself second to one in opposing Muslim imperialism and aggression, but my (admittedly weak) understaning of the Armenian genocide tells me this cannot be blamed on the idealogy of jihad. Of course it bears some marks of Islamic conditioning (the perpetrators' yells of "Allah, Allah") but it does not conform to the MO of jihad in many important ways.
The point of jihad is to subjugate and then lord it over the infidel, not to exterminate him. In traditional jihad women and children are thus made slaves, not butchered. What I think was at work here was the traditional Islamic enmity toward the infidel, mixed with such modern ideologies as nationalism and racialism. Ironically had the West not so discredited slavery by then, the Armenians (well, actually only their women and children) might have meet a marginally less horrible fate.
We opponents of Islamic jihad need to be careful not to become intellectually sloppy. Else we will be no bette than those who claim Nazism was an outgrowth of Christianity, just because Hitler and Goebbels were born Catholics.
Posted by: emperor_diocletian at April 23, 2005 7:31 PM
But of course, if the inhabitants refused to be dhimmis, or were merely thought to be refusing, they also could have been murdered under islamic law: Sura 9 of the Quran is quite specific about that.
Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at April 23, 2005 7:50 PM
Present Turkey where Mein Kampf is on the bestseller list.
Posted by: RED at April 23, 2005 8:18 PM
This was genocide and it was definitely jihad. This is what happens when the balance is tipped in Muslim favor -- when they outnumber the other ethnic or religious groups in their midst. This is what happens when the minority in Muslim lands attempt to throw off the yoke of dhimmitude. This is what what happen to the Armenians, it happened to the Maronite Christians, it's is happening to Christians living under thumb of PLO in Israel, and to the Christians and Animists in Sudan. Keep your ear to the ground because this is happening in Europe -- the circumstances are becoming ripe as Muslims numbers increase they become more strident with their inborn sense of intitlement and superiority. And if the numbers tilt the scale or if the powers that be keep thrusting the neck of Israel towards the Islamic sword, G-d forbid .. Wake up and smell the gore.
Posted by: Kemaste at April 23, 2005 9:18 PM
By-the-way, the links provided by Skeet Street are an excellent source of information, photos and first hand accounts of survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
Posted by: Kemaste at April 23, 2005 9:24 PM
It's always the same:
In Malaysia the 'riots' in 68/69 the muslims killed about 20.000 ethnic Chinese and several thousand Indians. In Jakarta just a few years ago they killed many of the ethnic Chinese and raped and beat their women. The Christians in Ambon, Aceh and in the Molukka Islands are being close to wiped out, the Jihad continues.
The MSM won't report it, if they report it it is usually buried in the back of the paper somewhere. With Saudi 'investors' buying into more and more of our media comes pressure and control, which is evident but how would the average Joe know about this?
When and where did you see the last decent or honest report on Jihad violence? Even out of Israel you get no more than a 15 second sound blip when another suicide bomber kills 10, 15 or 20 of our people.
What you see is mostly winching Paleys complaining about how bad they are treated by the Israelis. It is pathetic!
Posted by: Terminator at April 23, 2005 9:40 PM
OT, but in case there were any question about the motivations and intentions of islamic imams with respect to the opinion of the West, read the propaganda that the PA is spewing about American soldiers and the US in general.
It is BEYOND belief that anyone would think this were rational or real, but this is exactly what they are saying about us, in plain view, in Arabic, where they think no one will hear. Don't be fooled for a moment that Middle Eastern societies are talking neutral lines about us. They aren't.
READ.
Geoff
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=24962
Thursday, April 21, 2005
PMW: PA Accusation: US forcing Christianity on Muslims
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin
April 21, 2005
PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH
www.pmw.org.il
PA Accusation: US forcing Christianity on Muslims
By Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook
Introduction
Palestinian Authority leaders and the official PA media have long presented America as an enemy of Islam and the US war on terror as a war against Islam. This promotion continues unabated today, in spite of the American political and financial support of new PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
This week, a religious leader whose salary is paid by the PA added a new accusation to the standard attacks on American policy by preaching that the US war effort in Iraq and elsewhere, including "Palestine," attempts to force Muslims to convert to Christianity. He said US actions today were crueler than those of a Christian Caesar who, according to Islamic tradition, dipped a Muslim into boiling oil in order to force his conversion to Christianity.
In addition, an old accusation was repeated in an article in the official PA daily this week. The writer states that the true enemy of the Arabs is not Israel but the US, and that Israel is merely an arm of the US in its imperialist wars. In this article the US is accused of "grinding the bones" of Palestinian children, "devouring their eyes."
It is important to note that the inflammatory sermon comes only a few weeks after the PA leadership announced it would review the Friday sermons to remove incitement and hateful content.
The following are the two items from this week's PA media:
Friday sermon on PA TV
"Our prisoners are subjected to most criminal kinds of physical torture. They are tied with chains and trussed up with iron chains, and hung by their feet from the ceiling, like animals are hung after slaughter for days. Many of them lose consciousness. Our prisoners are exposed to
beating, electricity and fire tortures. "The prisoners are exposed to conversion to Christianity, to abandoning religion, [as it was] in the distant past and recently. Yes, our prisoners are forced to curse Muhammad; our prisoners are forced to curse the religion of Allah, our prisoners are forced to curse the essence of divinity.
"Haven't you heard of our prisoners [of war] in Palestine, have you not heard of our prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and all over the world, who are exploited and imprisoned, and are offered conversion to Christianity?
"This is an old - new infidel policy. Allah's servant, Ibn Al-Hudhafa Al-Sahmi, totally refused this. The [Christian] Caesar told him: 'We shall dip you in boiling oil'. He answered: 'Do as you wish'. He arrived with two
Muslims and was dipped in boiling oil until his flesh separated from his bone. But what the Caesar did was not as bad as what his followers do, the missionaries of freedom and democracy of today. In the name of Allah, what Caesar did, dipping Muslims in boiling oil, was one hundred thousand times lighter than what their soldiers are doing today to our wives and daughters
in Iraq, in Palestine, in Guantanamo and in Abu Gharib.
"What Caesar did is not as bad as five American soldiers who meet to rape one of our daughters, a girl who has the honor of a Muslim woman, in order to desecrate her honor at the Abu-Gharib prison."
[Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, PA TV, April 15, 2005]
Article from official PA daily newspaper
"Seventeen years (since the assassination of the fighter Abu Jihad) that the murderous millstones of America have been turning, grinding the bones
of our children and devouring their eyes. Not Israel! There is no such thing called Israel! It is America repeating upon us, the Arabs, the
tragedy of the Indians [sic] from the dawn of her [American] history that began with this first crime of genocide."
[Article by Said "Abu Ajima," Al Hayat Al Jadida, April 16, 2005 ]
Posted by: Geoff at April 23, 2005 9:51 PM
"PA Accusation: US forcing Christianity on Muslims"
Classic TURNSPEAK.. THEY ACCUSE OTHERS OF WHAT EXACTLY THEY ARE DOING AND ARE GUILTY OF.. They are forcing Islam on Christians and running them out of their shops and homes, raping their daughters and making their lives a living hell. THAT, is what's happening! No-one forces Christianity of Muslims and lives to talk about it ...
at April 23, 2005 10:15 PM
Skeet Street -very interesting links. It was 90 years ago but the pictures of those poor little kids is still heartbreaking.
Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 24, 2005 12:24 AM
All this should surprise no one , who is informed regarding the basic tenets of islam , and what it requires of it's followers to be called "a good muslim " .
Does anyone know the origin of the name given to mountains in India called " Hindu Kush " ?
Bottom line folks -- the blood of non-muslims is less valuable than that of muslims .
Religious racist fascism at it's most wretched .
Sorry , but the Q'uran is in and of itself INDEFENSIBLE . I give it no quarter , nor will I accept the excuse of misinterpretation .
The final word of islam is - you convert or you die .
......lets stop kidding ourselves K ?
Posted by: Excaliber at April 24, 2005 10:32 AM
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