As Turkey marches to re-Islamization and the "glory" (/sarc) days of the caliphate and the Ottoman Empire. Let us take a moment and revisit the work of the Islamic empire. And we are not allowed to say genocide because.............you cannot defame Islam.
This is a letter written by my friend in Israel. His brother in law found this old picture in his album. It was taken by his uncle who was deported to Alexandria, Egypt. It shows Turkish soldiers proud on the Armenian men they slaughtered.(hat tip Jack)
Bat Ye'or here: ....."dhimmitude is the civilization that was developed by the non-Muslim populations where conquered by jihad. Because jihad is not just any war, jihad has an ideology, and it has its ruling, its jurisdiction. And this jurisdiction imposes on those populations a total subjection to the Islamic rulers, and also imposes some rules to which the non-Muslims must abide and must apply. And among those rules it is the fact, the prohibition to criticize Islam. So if you cannot criticize only one religion, this is absolutely contrary to our principles in the West, because everything can be criticized.
And especially that Islam is together a religion, a law and the politics. So if you cannot criticize the politics of Islam, and Islam wants to Islamize you, so this means that you are neutralized. You cannot defend yourself.
[....]
So, because the Islamic view of history, the Islamic interpretation of history is only according to Sharia -- and this means that Islamic history is perfect. And there was nothing wrong—jihad has nothing wrong. This is why we cannot criticize jihad. Because everything is perfect. So we have a conflict, an argument, even on words. What is jihad. What is terrorism. We cannot even criticize jihad, for instance. We also cannot criticize Islamic justice. We have to say, we have to know that Islamic justice is the justice according to Sharia. But we cannot abide by this interpretation of justice, because it means--Sharia promotes the cutting of the hands, also crucifixion in case of apostasy, and many other aspects. And so this is not justice for us. We have another definition of justice. Justice is equality of men and women, it is equality of all human beings, it is based on the Ten Commandments, it is based on The Enlightenment, it is based on a lot of other principles which are not based on Sharia. So when we speak about justice, even this word has different meaning. When we speak of peace, it has different meaning. Peace in Islam is peace according to Sharia. Peace for us is contrary to what this means in the Sharia."
UPDATE: OT related:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A Catholic bishop who was a leading figure in Christian communities in the Middle East was stabbed to death at his home in southern Turkey Thursday, and police arrested his driver in connection with the attack.
The motive for the killing of Luigi Padovese, apostolic vicar for Anatolia, in the town of Iskenderun was not known (of course not). Previous attacks on Christians have raised concerns about the safety of religious minorities in Muslim Turkey.
