Reparations from Muslims?
EuropeNews, Denmark – <NOBR>0
In early September 2008, demands were made that France must make
reparations for its colonial past in Algeria. The calls followed the
signing between Italy and Libya of a 5 billion dollar investment
agreement to resolve colonial-era disputes. The 25-year deal includes
the construction of a highway running between Egypt and Tunisia and
the return to Libya of a prized ancient marble statue taken to Rome in
colonial times.
The settlement was a "complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage
inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial period," said Italy’s
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "Italy committed historic errors in
Libya, and the Italian government’s move to apologise is positive,"
secretary of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) party, Al-Said
Abu Haja, told Algerian daily El-Khabar.
The FLN led the war of independence from France between 1954 and
1962. "We hope that the European Union will be able to put pressure on
other former colonial powers such as France and get it to make amends
for what it did in Algeria," Haja added. "Algeria asked for France to
apologise long before Libya [asked Italy]. The French occupied us for
130 years."
I’m not an expert on French colonial history, but if I recall
correctly, the French were at least partly motivated for establishing
themselves in Algeria due to the Barbary pirates, who continued their
evil activities well into the nineteenth century. The period of French
colonial rule is the only period of civilization Algeria has
experienced since the Romans.
Muslims have been raiding Europe, especially the southern regions but
sometimes even north of the Alps, continuously since the seventh
century. In fact, the only period during more than 1300 years they
haven’t done this was during the time of European colonialism. That’s
what they are whining about now.
This is compensation for lost jizya. Moreover, there are now more
North Africans in France than there ever were Frenchmen in North
Africa. If non-Europeans can resist colonization and expel intruders,
why can’t Europeans do the same thing? I’m not even going to mention
the Spanish and the Portuguese, who were under colonial rule much
longer than were the Algerians. As Ibn Warraq says in his book
Defending the West "Where the French presence lasted fewer than four
years before they were ignominiously expelled by the British and
Turks, the Ottomans had been the masters of Egypt since 1517, a total
of 280 years. Even if we count the later British and French
protectorates, Egypt was under Western control for sixty-seven years,
Syria for twenty-one years, and Iraq for only fifteen – and, of
course, Saudi Arabia was never under Western control.
Contrast this with southern Spain, which was under the Muslim yoke for
781 years, Greece for 381 years, and the splendid new Christian
capital that eclipsed Rome – Byzantium – which is still in Muslim
hands.But no Spanish or Greek politics of victimhood apparently
exist."
>From their strongholds in the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere, Muslims
raided the Mediterranean for centuries. Here is Timothy Gregory in A
History of Byzantium "In 826/8 Crete was taken by Arab adventurers
from Spain, and in 827/9 Spanish Arabs were able to establish
footholds in Sicily. The Arab presenceon these two islands was to have
serious repercussions for Byzantium. Crete became a base for Arab
‘pirates’ who made the Aegean and its shorelines unsafe for the
Byzantines and presumably also disrupted trade in the area.
The Arab bases on Sicily were the beginning of a long contest between
Byzantines and Arabs for control of southern Italy and Sicily that was
alsoto involve the papacy and, eventually, other powers from Western
Europe. The Arabs also used these Sicilian bases to raid Italy and the
Balkans."
The reason why the Vatican became a "city within the city" in Rome
with fortifications was due to repeated attacks by Muslims
(Saracens). Here are a couple of quotes from the book Rome: Art &
Architecture, edited by Marco Bussagli: "Leo IV’s major building
project is generally considered to be the fortification of the Vatican
area. After the devastation wrought by the Saracens in St. Peter’s,
profoundly shocking to the Christian world, it was decided to fortify
the area around St. Peter’s tomb. Leo III had already made this
decision, but little had been done because of the theft of the
materials set aside for the job. Leo IV, who had already undertaken
the repair of the Aurelian walls, gates, and towers, organized the
work in such a way that within four years he saw it complete.
On June 27, 852 the ceremony of consecration of the walls was
performed, in the presence of the pope and clergy, who, barefoot and
with heads smeared with ashes, processed round the entire circuit of
the fortifications, sprinkling them with holy water and at every gate
calling on divine protection against the enemy that threatened the
inhabitants. The enclosed area was to take on the status of a city in
its own right, which was both separate and distinct from the Urbe of
Rome, despite its proximity to it."
"Despite defeat in 849 and 916 in the coastal cities of Naples, Gaeta,
and Amalfi, the Saracens continued to lay waste to the countryside and
sack the outskirts of Rome, causing the already precarious living
conditions of the urban population to deteriorate still further. In
the face of this continuing external threat, not only was the Vatican
area fortified, but the churchesof San Sebastiano on the Appian Way
Sant’Agnese on Via Nomentana, and San Lorenzo on Via Tiburtina were
strengthened."
Muslims complain because they want the good, old days of jizya
payments back.
Here is what the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina says in his recent book
Understanding Muhammad "Megalomania, bullishness, the sense of
entitlement and all other narcissistic traits of Muhammad are present
in each and every Muslim, to the extent that they emulate their
prophet.
>From king to pauper, from president to janitor, Muslims consider
themselves to be superior to the rest of humanity. They are convinced
that one day Islam will dominate, mankind will submit to them, and
they will be the masters of the world. This feeling of self importance
was expressed eloquently by Dr.
Mahatir, the outgoing Prime Minister of Malaysia during an OIC
(Organization of Islamic Conference) summit in 2003.
He acknowledged that the early Muslims built their ‘civilization’ by
studying the works of the Greeks and other scholars before Islam and
then boastfully added that the ‘Europeans had to kneel at the feet of
Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage.’ In
his speech he invited the Muslims to amass ‘guns and rockets, bombs
and warplanes, tanks and warships’ to subdue that non-Muslim
detractors and again rule over them."
Those who were hit the hardest were the Balkan populations. The
Balkans, with its close connections to Byzantium, was a reasonably
sophisticated region of Europe in medieval times, until the Ottomans
Turks devastated much of the area. One of the most appalling aspects
of this was the practice of devshirme, the collecting of boys among
the Christian minorities who were forcibly converted to Islam and
taught to hate their own kin.
Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, author of the books The Legacy of Islamic
Antisemitism and The Legacy of Jihad, quotes the work of scholar
Vasiliki Papoulia, who highlights the continuous desperate struggle of
the Christian populations against this forcefully imposed Ottoman levy
"It is obvious that the population strongly resented…this measure
[and the levy] could be carried out only by force. Those who refused
to surrender their sons- the healthiest, the handsomest and the most
intelligent- were on the spot put to death by hanging. Nevertheless we
have examples of armed resistance. In 1565 a revolt took place in
Epirus and Albania.
The inhabitants killed the recruiting officers and the revolt was put
down only after the sultan sent five hundred janissaries in support of
the local sanjak-bey. We are better informed, thanks to the historic
archivesof Yerroia, about the uprising in Naousa in 1705 where the
inhabitants killed the Silahdar Ahmed Celebi and his assistants and
fled to the mountains as rebels. Some of them were later arrested and
put to death."
The Christian subjects tried for centuries to combat this evil
practice: "Since there was no possibility of escaping [the levy] the
population resorted to several subterfuges. Some left their villages
and fled to certain cities which enjoyed exemption from the child levy
or migrated to Venetian-held territories. The result was a
depopulation of the countryside. Others had their children marry at an
early age…Nicephorus Angelus…states that at times the children ran
away on their own initiative, but when they heard that the authorities
had arrested their parents and were torturing them to death, returned
and gave themselves up.
La Giulletiere cites the case of a young Athenian who returned from
hiding in order to save his father’s life and then chose to die
himself rather than abjure his faith. According to the evidence in
Turkish sources, some parents even succeeded in abducting their
children after they had been recruited. The most successful way of
escaping recruitment was through bribery. That the latter was very
widespread is evident from the large amounts of money confiscated by
the sultan from corrupt…officials."
Lee Harris in his book The Suicide of Reason describes how this
practice of devshirme, the process of culling the best, brightest and
fittest "alpha boys," targeted the non-Muslim subject populations:
"The bodyguard of Janissaries ‘had the task of protecting the
sovereign from internal and external enemies,’ writes scholar Vasiliki
Papoulia. ‘In order to fulfill this taskit was subjected to very
rigorous and special training, the janissary education famous in
Ottoman society.
This training made possible the spiritual transformation of Christian
children into ardent fighters for the glory of the sultan and their
newly acquired Islamic faith.’ Because the Christian boys had to be
transformed into single-minded fanatics, it was not enough that they
simply inherit their position.
They had to be brainwashed into it, as we would say today, and this
could be done most effectively with boys who had been completely cut
off from all family ties. By taking the boys from their homes, and
transporting them to virtually another world, devçirme assured that
there would be no conflict of loyalties between family and duty to the
empire. All loyalty would be focused on the group itself and on the
sultan."
This practice drained the strength of the Christian
populations. Harris again: "The culling of these alpha boys had two
effects, both of them good for the Ottoman Empire, both bad for the
subject population. By filling the critical posts in the Ottoman
Empire with boys who had been selected on the basis of their intrinsic
merit, and not on their family connection, the Empire was
automatically creating a meritocracy – if a boy was tough, courageous,
intelligent, and fanatically loyal, he was able to work his way up the
Ottoman hierarchy; indeed, as we have seen, he become a member of the
ruling elite, despite having the formal title of being the sultan’s
slave.
The Ottoman Empire was both strengthening itself through acquiring
these alpha boys, and weakening its subject population by taking their
best and brightest. Thanks to the institution of devçirme, the more
‘fit’ Christian boys who would be most likely to be the agents of
rebellion against the Empire become the fanatical Muslim warriors who
were used to suppress whatever troubles the less ‘fit’ Christian boys
left behind were able to cause."
Raphael Israeli in his 2008 book The Islamic Challenge in Europe
tracks the Islamization of various European countries, from
Switzerland to Britain, and describes the efforts to recreate the
Ottoman Empire and use the Balkans as a launching pad for Jihad:
"After the fall of Communism in the new regime recognized, in 1991,
the self-declared Republic of Kosovo, and its head, Ibrahim Rugova,
opened an office in Tirana. The disintegration of Yugoslavia by
necessity revived the old dreams of the Greater Albania, which now
eyed not only Kosovo, but also parts of Macedonia, Greece, Serbia, and
Montenegro where an Albanian population had settled over the
years. The rising of Muslim consciousness in the Balkans, after the
Bosnian precedent=80¦now acts as a catalyst to draw together, under
the combined banners of Greater Albania and Islam, all the Albanian
populationsof that region.
In 1992 joined the Conference of Islamic Countries, and it has been
working to attract support by other Islamic countries to the Greater
Albania plan, actually presenting itself as ‘the shield of Islam’ in
the Balkans. It has been noted that while the Albanian demographic
explosion in Kosovo, which has allowed them to predominate and demand
secession, has not taken place in Albania itself, perhaps an
indication, as in Palestine and Bosnia, that the ‘battle of the womb’
heralded by nationalists and Muslim fundamentalists, is not merely a
natural growth but may be also politically motivated."
Now that the entire Western world is under attack by Islamic Jihad, we
would do well to listen to those who know the frontlines, such as
Serge Trifkovic in his book Defeating Jihad.
The wars in the Balkans all the way into the 21st century are a direct
result of the legacy of Turkish Muslim brutality. So why does nobody
demand that the Turks apologize in public for their massacres? They
should pay reparations to their former subjects, starting with the
Armenians, who suffered a Jihad less than a century ago, and
continuing with the Serbs, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Croatians
and others who have suffered hundreds of years of abuse and
exploitation at their hands.
We can continue with all those European countries that have suffered
attacks and enslavement by North African Barbary pirates for more than
a thousand years. These nations should now demand public apologies
and substantial financial reparations from Arabs and Turks.
If these countries lack the funds to pay, we should hold the Islamic
world collectively responsible and demand compensation from the rich
members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference such as Saudi
Arabia. While we are at it, why not demand compensation to all victims
of Jihad, from the Jews who have been expelled from the Middle East to
the Indians, who have died in the tens of millions for a thousand
years or more?
September 7th, 2008