re PEACE and Kurdish.. (long)

Margo: I cannot defend the Turkish record on human rights, it's been
abyssmal since 1453 when they took
Constantinople murdered the Byzantine civilization. However, I don't
think their current mistreatment of the
Kurds is the fault of the US nor has it approached Holocaust
proportions as another writer implied.

Of all moslem states, Turkey in the last 70 or 80 years has come the
farthest toward creating a
secular democracy rather than the theocratic dictatorships which seem to
be the norm in the muslim world.

I'm aware of the Armenian genocide -- WWI and its aftermath were
traumatic enough for my family
that as a child I was told to remember the "starving Armenians" when I
wouldn't clean my plate
at dinner. I might add that the Armenians have been very successful at
killing the "Young Turks" who
engineered the forced migrations and subsequent starvation. Armenian
terrorists were still killing
Turkish officials in California in the 60's or 70's.

Turkey was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI and there was
some reason for the
Turks to fear the Armenians as a Fifth Column on the side of the
Allies. I'm not saying that that
justified the genocide, but it makes it easier to understand.

It is well known that the Iranian and other Islamic immigrant groups in
the US are a potential Fifth Column
too, but so far their leadership seems to be cooperating with the FBI
and other law enforcement agencies.
Bush's appearance and speech at the Islamic Center in Washington, D. C.
was the right and necessary step
to prevent vigilante violence and maintain the cooperation of the
Islamic community, whom I think understand
that only such cooperation can regain the trust and respect of the rest
of America and ensure a future for
them and their children in this country.

there were similar, if less justified, fears in the US in WWII with
respect to the Japanese communities
on the West Coast. I used to date a nisei woman in Seattle who spent her
childhood in one such camp in
Oregon and discussed the experience with her and her father. Although
the camps were spartan and didn't
provide for much privacy, there was no mistreatment and no starvation.
Japanese men were allowed to get
jobs outside of the camps near the end of the war and the local people
were so friendly, that the family settled
nearby after the War. The main injustice was that the government did not
protect their property or compensate
them fully for their losses. My friends lost a wholesale produce
business and a new home in Seattle, but
eventually made a modest living in eastern Oregon.

The father also said that the first feelings they had when they were
rounded up was that they would now
be safe from violence by Americans angry over Pearl Harbour. The police
closed streets at night and
imposed curfews on the Japanese neighborhoods in Seattle to protect
them. He said there signs in stores
that said "Jap Hunting Licences sold here" and that he feared that he
might be killed if he stepped into a
neighborhood bar for an afterwork beer.

>(Here it should be emphasized that the Ottoman persecutions of the
>Armenians did not reflect any inherent Islamic policy: the toleration
>both of Christians and Jews in Islamic Spain during the Middle Ages,

I don't think we should get too warm and fuzzy about the alleged
toleration and pacific
nature of Islam. Its record may be better than Christianity's, but our
standards are
also higher now. The word Islam doesn't mean "peace" as some moslems
have claimed -
it means "submission" and Muslims are those who submit to the will of
God. Salaam comes
from the same root-- presumable submissive people are peaceable.

Some Islamic rulers were tolerant of Jews and Christians, some weren't,
and almost none were
tolerant towards Hindus, Zoroastrians and other pagans. The Emperore
Akbar was tolerant, but
his son Aurangzeb persecuted Hindus, destroyed temples, and caused the
breakup of the Mughal Empire.
In any case, Akbar's rule religion was a very syncretic and unorthodox
version of Islam. The slogan
on his coinage "Allahu Akbar" can mean both "God is Great" or "Akbar is God."

Mohammad himself lead battles agains the Jews of Medina (Battle of the
Hedge) when
they refused to embrace Islam. The false Jewish Messiah Shabbtai Zvi was
given the choice of conversion
to Islam or death by the Turkish Sultan. (He converted)

The Turks "sawed the Archibishop in half and committed other
atrocities" when they took Constantinople.

Also, it must not be forgotten by those who remember only the piratical
and barbarous Crusades and the
European colonial policies of the last few centuries, that Islam has
been pursuing a policy of aggression and
colonialization against Christians and pagans for1400 years. The first
imperialist attacks outside of Arabia
proper were against Egypt and Persia within Mohammad's lifetime and the
muslim armies then spread across
North Africa and into Spain and Southern France. Charlemagne's
grandfather stopped them at Tours, but it took
700 hundred years "just wars of national liberation" to expel them from
Spain and Portugal.

I must say though, that Moslem Spain was probably the most
intellectually and culturally brilliant period
in Spanish history. Similarly, there were enlightened and tolerant
Christian rulers in Sicily.

After Persia fell, Islam spread through the Near East into Central Asia
at the expense of the Orthodox Byzantine and
Nestorian Christians. While the Mongol invasions held Islam in check for
a while, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks
eventually conquered the Byzantine and Slavic Orthodox Christian states,
taking Constantinople in 1453
and reaching the gates of Vienna before they were stopped. The moslem
communities in the Balkans date from these
Turkish conquests and subsequent rule.

Greece and the Balkans got their freedom only in the 19th century as the
Ottoman empire decayed,
a process finished by WWI. It is not too surprising that the Serbs,
Bulgarians, etc. hate the Turks
and slavic moslems, whom they consider turncoats and traitors.

I disagree that Islamic polity is not inherently oppresive. While one
can probably justify anything
but atheism by quoting the Koran, Islam was originally a racist Arabic
faith for Arabs alone, and
after the early conquests, it was some years before the conquered people
were allowed to convert.
Yes, Jews and Christians in most places were allowed to keep their
faiths if they paid heavy taxes to
support the Arab conquerors (not just in lieu of mandatory muslim
charitable contributions).

Islam is not just the Koran, but also the Hadith and Shariah, the
non-Koranic sayings of Mohammad and the laws
of the first Islamic communities in the 7th century. The Shariah cannot
be revised or rejected, but only interpreted.
Islam is thus a totalitarian culture and not one in which individuals
can freely choose to believe in or not. It is
community of believers and apostasy is punished by death. The concept of
individual freedom of belief is really alien
to Islam, despite what apologists claim. One is born into a religous
community and that is one's identity. One can
convert to Islam, but there is no going back, if one does.

Islam is also a creationist faith, teaching that Adam was made by God
from a drop of blood (or a blood clot). Although
this idea could be construed as a form of theistic evolution, since the
blood might have come from a pre-existent
animal, none of the moslems I've spoken to interpret it this way and
I've not seen any Islamic publication that
does either.

Islam has also been intolerant of its own numerous sects. There is a
bloody civil war going on in Algeria between
the Sunni military and radical groups who think nothing of going into
villages and hacking everyone to death with machetes to
destabilize the regime The present rulers of Saudi Arabia are members
of a sect (Wahabbiah?) which was notorious for
its atrocities against other moslems in the 19th century. The split
between Shiah and Sunni traditions has also lead to bloody
conflicts. Bin Ladin is alleged to be almost as opposed to the Shiites
in Iran and Iraq as he is the West.

The Assassin sect, whose current head is, IIRC, the Agha Khan, developed
the doctrine of "intelligent dissimulation" to cloak
their policies of infiltration and terrorism against both the Crusaders
and other moslem rulers. As far as I know,
this doctrine has never been repudiated by other moslems and makes one
wonder how good the Taliban's word is.

There is some hope; Mutazilism is having a limited revival among Islamic
intellectuals and perhaps there will
be a long-delayed Islamic Reformation and Englightenment such as Europe
went through several centuries ago,
hopefully without the relgious wars and persecutions that Europe
experienced. I've gotten this from Karen Anderson's
"A History of God," which I think is very good on the varieties of
Islamic thought over the ages, but a Turkish
acquaintance thinks she is overly sympathetic and tends to ignore
unpleasant facts and events.

It would nice if all ethnic minorities had their own cantons or
reservations, but this ideal doesn't work well
in practice. Belgium experienced bloody fighting between the French and
Flemish-speaking populations
in the 50's. Canada has had a serious separatist movement in Quebec,
despite strenuous good-faith efforts
by the English-speaking parts to become bilingual. In Quebec itself, the
use of English is limited by a number of
repressive laws and native French speakers are given preference in
employment. Switzerland is the best example I can
think of a multilingual country and I think it's a special case based
on geography (mountains and narrow valleys)
and history (neutrality means your can sell to both sides and serve as
mercenaries for anyone who will pay enough).

--John