REMEMBERING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE , PART 1 & PART 2
The Tribune Papers
Jan31 2014
Islam's Holy War Against Christianity - Turkey, 1894-1923
Part 1 of a Series by Mike Scruggs-
In nations governed by Islamic Law (Sharia), non-Muslims have the
status of dhimmis ("protected people"). They are protected from
slaughter or expulsion so long as they remain subservient and pay a
special poll tax, called the Jizya, to their Muslim masters. Under the
rules of dhimmitude the "protected people" must show deference at all
times to Muslims and wear special clothing to distinguish themselves
from Muslims. They are allowed only limited religious freedoms and
have no political or civil rights outside the Sharia, which regulates
their mandated status of degradation and humiliation. Usually, besides
the Jizya, they must also pay a large part of their income to the
Muslim community. Their continued status as dhimmis is strictly at
the pleasure of the dominant Muslim population. They are subject to
have their properties confiscated or their lives forfeited at any time.
Muhammad instituted this practice as a source of Muslim income, which
resulted in the umma (Muslim people) becoming somewhat dependent on
the dhimmi class for various technical skills.
The Armenians are an ethnic group whose original homeland was the
highlands surrounding Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4). They have been an
identifiable people for at least 4,000 years. The modern Republic
of Armenia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, borders Turkey on the
west, the Republic of Georgia on the north, Azerbaijan on the east,
and Iran on the south. The Kingdom of Armenia, established about 500
BC, also now referred to as Greater Armenia, encompassed large parts
of Eastern Turkey. Armenia was the first nation to declare itself a
Christian nation about 301 AD. Most Armenians belong to the Armenian
Apostolic Church, but about ten percent belong to the Armenian
Catholic Church and about two percent to the Armenian Evangelical
Church. There were once large Armenian populations in Istanbul, Izmir
(formerly known as Smyrna, Revelation 2:8), and other metropolitan
areas. Only a remnant now remain in Turkey.
Near the beginning of the twentieth century, the 4.5 million Armenian
and Greek Christians in Ottoman Turkey were of the subjugated dhimmi
class. In Christian Europe and especially Britain, however, such Muslim
practices were being viewed with alarm. Consequently, the Armenians
began to appeal to Britain and other European powers to put pressure
on Turkey to relax the Sharia rules pertaining to non-Muslims. There
had been some relaxation late in the nineteenth century, but the Turks
began to resent the Armenian overtures to European powers and became
uncertain of their loyalty to Turkey. They considered these Armenian
pleas for help to have violated their constraints as protected people
under Sharia.
In 1894, fearing increasing unrest, the Ottoman government persuaded
Muslim religious leaders to undertake a major crack-down on any
dissent by Armenian dhimmis regarding their subjugated status. In an
1896 dispatch, Henry Barnham, a British Consulate official, gave his
personal description of events:
"The butchers and tanners, with sleeves tucked up to the shoulders,
armed with clubs and cleavers, cut down the Christians with cries of
'Allahu akbar!' (Allah is great!) (and) broke down the doors of their
houses with pickaxes and levers, or scaled the walls with ladders.
Then when mid-day came they knelt down and said their prayers, and then
jumped up and resumed the dreadful work, carrying it on far into the
night. Whenever they were unable to beat down the doors they fired
the houses with petroleum..."
One survivor recounted the destruction of two churches in the town
of Severek in December of 1896:
"The mob had plundered the Gregorian (Armenian) church, desecrated it,
murdered all who had sought shelter there, and as a sacrifice beheaded
the sexton on the stone threshold. Now it (the mob) filled our yard.
The blows of an axe crashed in the church doors."
This survivor described the scene as this mob rushed into the second
church and ripped apart Bibles and hymnbooks, blasphemed the cross
as a sign of victory, and chanted their prayer ("There is no god but
Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.") He then related:
"The leader of the mob cried: 'Believe in Muhammad and deny your
religion.' No one answered...The leader gave the order to massacre. The
first attack was on our pastor. The blow of an axe decapitated him.
His blood spurting in all directions, spattered the walls and ceiling"
The British Consul intercepted a letter from a Turkish soldier giving
this account to his family:
"My brother, if you want news from here we have killed 1,200 Armenians,
all of them food for the dogs...Mother I am safe and sound.
Father, 20 days ago we made war on the Armenian unbelievers. Through
Allah's grace no harm befell us...May Allah bless you."
Another intercepted letter, evidently from an Armenian survivor,
described the slaughter of refugees at a church in ancient Edessa.
After breaking down the door, Turkish troops mockingly called for
Christ to prove himself a greater prophet than Muhammad. Then according
to the survivor:
"They began killing everyone on the floor of the church by hand or
with pistols. From the altar they gunned down women and children in
the gallery. Finally the Turks gathered bedding and straw, on which
they poured some thirty cans of kerosene and set the church ablaze."
This 1894-1896 Jihad against Christians in Eastern Turkey claimed
250,000 lives. Many Armenian women were forced into harems, and many
women and children were sold as slaves. Rape, considered one of the
rights of "booty" in Muslim Jihad, was routine. Some under duress
converted to Islam, but others escaped to the West and reported the
massacre. This enormous suffering inflicted upon Armenian Christians
in Turkey was only a shadow of what was to come. In 1915, the Turkish
government would order a far more organized genocide of Armenian and
Greek Christians.
---------------------------
Part 2, Feb 9, 2014
Part 2 of a Series by Mike Scruggs-In 1915 the Turkish government
ordered a far more organized genocide of the Armenians. In a period
of two years, about 1.5 million Christians were killed. Johannes
Lepsius, a missionary who visited the area during the First World
War, reported that 549 villages were laid waste and the surviving
inhabitants forcibly converted to Islam. He reported that 568 churches
were destroyed and 282 churches were converted into mosques. A total
of 21 protestant pastors and 170 Gregorian (Armenian) priests were
subjected to unspeakable tortures before being murdered for refusing
to denounce their faith and accept Islam.
In the summer of 1915, Leslie Davis, the American Consul in Harput,
tried to save as many Armenians as possible by hiding them in the
consulate building. He soon ran out of room and had to put some in the
consulate's walled garden. At night the consulate employees could hear
the Turks praying for Allah to bless them in their efforts to kill the
Christians. Outside, they carried on their bloody work. The leaders in
these atrocities were primarily Muslim clerics and theology students.
To promote the idea of Jihad, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the most senior
Sunni Muslim religious leader in Turkey, published a pamphlet with
these words:
"Oh Muslims, ye who are smitten with happiness are on the verge of
sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right...He who
kills one unbeliever of those who rule over us, whether he does it
secretly or in the open, shall be rewarded by Allah."
Note the words "of those who rule over us" turn upside down the actual
status of the victims. Anyone who rejects Islam is considered to be
an oppressor.
The Jihad against Christians was renewed in 1922. Perhaps the last
brutal act was in the western Turkish city of Smyrna (now Izmir), one
of the seven towns mentioned in the book of Revelation. The inhabitants
were surrounded by the Turkish Army and systematically murdered. More
than 150,000 died in four days of slaughter. The city was then burned
to the ground. Allied British, French and American naval vessels were
anchored in the city's port, and their crews could hear the desperate
cries of Smyrna's Christians for rescue. To our eternal shame, they
had been ordered not to interfere. The years of 1922 and 1923 claimed
the lives of another one million Armenian and Greek Christians. Several
hundred thousand were eventually able to make it to safety in Britain
and the United States, and only about 100,000 remain in Turkey.
Despite massive photographic and documental evidence and substantial
personal testimonies, the Turkish government has never acknowledged
its genocide of approximately 2.75 million Christians from 1894 to
1923. The victims included Armenian, Greek, and Protestant believers.
Jihad occurs everywhere Islam encounters other cultures. In the Sudan,
the Muslim regime is waging a bloody war against Christians, who are
mostly concentrated in the southern part of the country. Thus far,
two million Sudanese Christians have been killed, and five million have
been displaced and are facing rampant disease and possible starvation.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said :
"There is no greater tragedy on the face of the earth than the tragedy
that is unfolding in the Sudan."
Meanwhile, Muslim terrorists are killing tens of thousands in the
Philippines, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Indian Kashmir, and wherever
Islam has established a beachhead in non-Muslim countries. Over 100,000
Muslims have died in an Islamic-sectarian civil war in Algeria. Once
majority-Christian Lebanon is being destroyed as Muslim immigration
and Hezbollah infiltration threaten renewed civil war there. The
world is ablaze with Muslim Jihad.
Yet most prominent European and American politicians continue to
insist that Islam is "a religion of peace and tolerance" that has
been hijacked by a small group of radicals.
"Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism;
still others, Islamo-facism. Whatever we choose to call the enemy,
we must recognize that this ideology is very different from the tenets
of the great religion of Islam."
-George W. Bush, November 14, 2005
"We honor the universal values that are embodied in Islam--love of
family and community, mutual respect, the power of education, and
the deepest yearning of all: to live in peace. Values that can bring
people of every faith and culture together, strengthen us as people,
and I would argue, strengthen the United States as a nation."
-Hillary Clinton, January 21, 1999
In December 2011, just nine months before the murder of the American
ambassador to Libya and three American staff members in Benghazi,
Hillary Clinton, acting on the desires of President Obama, was
conspiring with the 56-nation-member Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC) to make "Islamophobia" or criticism of Islam a
United Nations hate crime enforceable and punishable in the United
States and other Western countries. This plan would have been more
salable in the U.S., if the murder of American officials could have
been blamed on an anti-Muslim video rather than an embarrassing
resurgence of al-Qaeda terrorism.
As to President Obama, this quote from FreedomPost.com should suffice:
"Obama has repeatedly attacked traditional Christianity, and he has
a very long history of anti-Christian actions. In public speeches he
has repeatedly cast doubt on the Bible, he has repeatedly stated that
he does not believe that Jesus is necessary for salvation, and he has
consistently said that all 'people of faith' believe in the same God."
How is it that so many of our leaders are blind to the true nature
of Islam, clearly taught in the Koran, the teachings of Muhammad,
and clearly seen in history and current events? Too many of them
reject scholarly Christian counsel and base their knowledge of Islam
on the Muslim Brotherhood financed propaganda of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the delusional politically
correct advice of liberal academics. American infatuation with
multiculturalism and Islam is the path to national calamity.
Part 1:
http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2014/01/31/remembering-the-armenian-genocide/
Part 2:
http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2014/02/09/remembering-the-armenian-genocide-2/
From: A. Papazian