The visit of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to Israel this week is a timely reminder that Israel's problems with Islam are not unique. Like Israel, Bulgaria was ruled over by the Ottoman Empire, which exported their population to Bulgaria, oppressed the native Bulgarians, seized their lands and attempted to become the dominant majority. And when the Ottoman Empire lost control over Bulgaria, it left behind a huge Muslim population in Bulgaria.
The key difference between Bulgaria and Israel, is that Bulgaria since the 1870's forced much of its Turkic Muslim population to leave. As a result millions of Turkic Muslims left Bulgaria, leaving it a quieter place than neighboring Yugoslavia or Russia, or for that matter modern day France. Muslim clothing was banned, mosques were torn down and lands held by the Ottoman Muslim settlers were returned to native Bulgarians.
Today Bulgaria still has a troublesome Muslim minority of under a million, led by Ahmet Dogan, and backed by Turkish intelligence, which under Islamist PM Erdogan has branched out into promoting Jihad, much as Pakistan had. But despite Turkish attempts to intervene in Bulgaria, the country's Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov is a staunchly anti-Muslim leader, who has challenged Turkey's EU bid over its expulsion of Bulgarian in the 1920's.
Bulgaria is an example and a warning not just to Israel, but to Europe, Russia, Australia, America and many other parts of the world as well. Had Bulgaria not made life uncomfortable for Muslims, its fate in the 1990's would have probably resembled that of Yugoslavia, torn apart by foreign backed civil war and then carved up by Clinton and Albright. That same fate is now overtaking Israel and will overtake Europe as well.
That is because Israel's Muslim problem is not unique. Israel, like so many other lands, was overrun by Muslim conquerors who repressed the native Jewish population and settled their own population in its stead. The only unique thing about Israel's dilemma is that when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, Israel did not receive its freedom. Instead a British Mandate that was supposed to create a Jewish state, instead tried to create an Arab client state by expanding Arab immigration to Israel, while restricting Jewish immigration.
Had Israel received its freedom after WW1 when its Ottoman overlords departed, it would have never been overrun by Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who were magically transformed into "Palestinians" in the 70's at the behest of the KGB. Nor would the Holocaust have claimed a fraction of the lives that it did, had Israel existed as an independent nation capable of taking in refugees, instead of having its ports shut to refugees by a British Empire more interested in appeasing Muslims and using them to establish client states under their control. And the worldwide Jihad and Oil for Terror are the aftereffects of British and American appeasement and coddling of Muslim desert sheiks then.
But the past is in the past. The challenge of the future is to learn from it. The long term effects of Muslim expansionism around the world has embedded Muslim minorities in countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Those minorities have always served as a local powder keg, which is now being lit with the help of Saudi petrodollars. Now a new wave of Islamic expansionism through immigration and Jihad is spreading even into regions that had never known the tyranny of Islam such as Australia, North and South America; as well as Europe where Islam had not succeeded in taking root before.
The toxic brew of religious supremacism and nationalist racism represented by Islamic expansionism is a threat to nearly every country in the world, whether they choose to admit it or not. And while Israel's troubles with Islam are more likely to become front page news, because its presence some 700 miles from Mecca is a perennial thumb in the eye of the Jihad-- it is also the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world.
Islamism insures that Muslims cannot co-exist with non-Muslims except under a harsh dictatorship. Which leaves free nations with a choice between tyranny and removing the Muslim minority within its borders. The absence of Islam within one's borders does not guarantee peace, but the presence of Islam insures that conflict will come sooner or later. The examples of that are unfortunately all too numerous across the globe, across entire hemispheres where blood is being spilled in the name of Islam. From suicide bombings to honor killings, from Muslim insurgencies in the countryside to Islamist parties creeping in from within, from Sharia at the point of a sharpened knife to riots in the streets-- where there is Islamism, there can be no peace.
Israel's great mistake was its belief that it could co-exist with Muslims, and for its entire existence has bent over backward to accommodate them. From accepting the UN Partition Plan to sending troops to urge fleeing Arabs to return to Israel, to leaving the Temple Mount in Muslim hands, to the entire disastrous attempt to negotiate a peace with terror by agreeing to the creation of a terrorist state within its borders-- Israel's folly has been to seek peace with an ideology that uses the promise of peace as a lure to convince you to cut your own throat.
Where Islam exists in a nation, it will sooner or later either be suppressed or it will come to dominate. That is a scenario that every nation with a Muslim minority must understand and address, or it will become a Muslim nation with the native population reduced to an oppressed minority or butchered in the night. A totalitarian ideology cannot be made peace with. Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you.
Today Bulgaria still has a troublesome Muslim minority of under a million, led by Ahmet Dogan, and backed by Turkish intelligence, which under Islamist PM Erdogan has branched out into promoting Jihad, much as Pakistan had. But despite Turkish attempts to intervene in Bulgaria, the country's Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov is a staunchly anti-Muslim leader, who has challenged Turkey's EU bid over its expulsion of Bulgarian in the 1920's.
Bulgaria is an example and a warning not just to Israel, but to Europe, Russia, Australia, America and many other parts of the world as well. Had Bulgaria not made life uncomfortable for Muslims, its fate in the 1990's would have probably resembled that of Yugoslavia, torn apart by foreign backed civil war and then carved up by Clinton and Albright. That same fate is now overtaking Israel and will overtake Europe as well.
That is because Israel's Muslim problem is not unique. Israel, like so many other lands, was overrun by Muslim conquerors who repressed the native Jewish population and settled their own population in its stead. The only unique thing about Israel's dilemma is that when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, Israel did not receive its freedom. Instead a British Mandate that was supposed to create a Jewish state, instead tried to create an Arab client state by expanding Arab immigration to Israel, while restricting Jewish immigration.
Had Israel received its freedom after WW1 when its Ottoman overlords departed, it would have never been overrun by Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who were magically transformed into "Palestinians" in the 70's at the behest of the KGB. Nor would the Holocaust have claimed a fraction of the lives that it did, had Israel existed as an independent nation capable of taking in refugees, instead of having its ports shut to refugees by a British Empire more interested in appeasing Muslims and using them to establish client states under their control. And the worldwide Jihad and Oil for Terror are the aftereffects of British and American appeasement and coddling of Muslim desert sheiks then.
But the past is in the past. The challenge of the future is to learn from it. The long term effects of Muslim expansionism around the world has embedded Muslim minorities in countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Those minorities have always served as a local powder keg, which is now being lit with the help of Saudi petrodollars. Now a new wave of Islamic expansionism through immigration and Jihad is spreading even into regions that had never known the tyranny of Islam such as Australia, North and South America; as well as Europe where Islam had not succeeded in taking root before.
The toxic brew of religious supremacism and nationalist racism represented by Islamic expansionism is a threat to nearly every country in the world, whether they choose to admit it or not. And while Israel's troubles with Islam are more likely to become front page news, because its presence some 700 miles from Mecca is a perennial thumb in the eye of the Jihad-- it is also the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world. Islamism insures that Muslims cannot co-exist with non-Muslims except under a harsh dictatorship. Which leaves free nations with a choice between tyranny and removing the Muslim minority within its borders. The absence of Islam within one's borders does not guarantee peace, but the presence of Islam insures that conflict will come sooner or later. The examples of that are unfortunately all too numerous across the globe, across entire hemispheres where blood is being spilled in the name of Islam. From suicide bombings to honor killings, from Muslim insurgencies in the countryside to Islamist parties creeping in from within, from Sharia at the point of a sharpened knife to riots in the streets-- where there is Islamism, there can be no peace.
Israel's great mistake was its belief that it could co-exist with Muslims, and for its entire existence has bent over backward to accommodate them. From accepting the UN Partition Plan to sending troops to urge fleeing Arabs to return to Israel, to leaving the Temple Mount in Muslim hands, to the entire disastrous attempt to negotiate a peace with terror by agreeing to the creation of a terrorist state within its borders-- Israel's folly has been to seek peace with an ideology that uses the promise of peace as a lure to convince you to cut your own throat.
Where Islam exists in a nation, it will sooner or later either be suppressed or it will come to dominate. That is a scenario that every nation with a Muslim minority must understand and address, or it will become a Muslim nation with the native population reduced to an oppressed minority or butchered in the night. A totalitarian ideology cannot be made peace with. Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you.
Comments
when they immigrate, chinese, indian, mexicans, east europeans, adopt the religon of the country theyre in, so moslems will leave islam, most mexicans in the us are now secular, not catholic, same with jews, hindus chinese,
ReplyDeletethis will happen with the moslems too,
forgot to add, most moslems don't like saudi's nor their brand of islamism
ReplyDeleteThe Europeans are belatedly discovering their Muslims cannot be assimilated and made good Europeans. Most of the crime in Europe today is committed by Muslims. Ditto for anti-Semitism. Muslim immigration should be halted and reversed where that is possible. The UK today placed an order before the House Of Commons to ban several Islamist groups. The clear and present danger will not go away any time soon.
ReplyDeleteIsrael has somehow got used to security everywhere, but intrusive security is getting increasingly irksome for Europeans and Americamns.
ReplyDeleteSooner or later, the connection will be made that all these security measures - the inabilty to travel without fear, the inability to even walk into the Vatican without undergoing severe security checks, is directly related to the presence of Muslims in the West.
Then the demand will be made that something be done about the Muslim community. Our Liberal elite, whose belief is such that they would rather die, along with their chideen, rather then admit their folly, would perfer to deport the indegenous population of Europe. Somehow I dont think this will go down well.
The 21st century promises to be one of interest.
You said ... "Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you."
ReplyDeleteI wish those in government had this same understanding about Islam.
Keep telling it like it is my friend. God bless your effort.
Malka,
ReplyDeletesome people will adopt the religion of the country. They're in. Most won't. Considering that the US and much of the Europe no longer have a single religion to adopt, this isn't terribly likely to happen.
And most Muslims have their mosques run by the Saudis.
NormanF,
ReplyDeleteunfortunately European governments still think they can be assimilated, even conservative ones, by applying a mixture of social pressure and respect.
DP111,
ReplyDeletethere's a psychological price to pay for pervasive security, especially when it doesn't help.
Sultan,
ReplyDeleteI apologize for my English, but I have to say what I have to say.
You are a splendid writer and good thinker, but you went too far. Because what you say amounts to ethnic cleansing. Amounts to exactly what Hitler did to Jews. And rhetoric is exactly same: Jews are foreigners and trouble makers and should be driven out of the Germany land.
It is true that Islam produced from itself the viciously virulent movement of Global Jihad. It is true that that movement is spreading like flu virus among Muslim population. It is true that that movement presents existential thread to the Western Civilization and should be dealt with with all possible might and without any mercy. And if there is unavoidable collateral damage, so it will be.
However ethnic cleansing is something totally different. In its best form ethnic cleansing means that people expelled from their homes and brought to entire different surrounding where they should start life from beginning. In its worst case it means just mass killing probably with help of gas chambers. This is not acceptable in civilized world. Even in World War II there was no call for extermination off all Germans.
You cannot say a man that he is not lawful inhabitant of the land just because his ancestors were brought here by military might of his former fatherland and because you do not like his traditions. And Israel does not allow so called Palestinians to return home not because this is not their home, but because they are violent and will destroy the Country being let in.
Next, your description of Islam as violent expansionist religion also does not hold in historical perspective. Throughout of History Muslim nations were not more violent then their Christian counterparts. They congruent the world with sword and fire, but Christian nations did the same and even more successfully. And there were times when Muslim countries were even more civilized and more tolerant then Christian countries.
Do not forget, that when Spine had expelled Jews some 500 years ago it were Muslim counties that accepted them.
The problem is that Muslim countries lag behind the West at least for several hundred years.
You can cherry-pick quotes from Koran, that supports your idea of violent Islam . But people does not read their Holy books literally. They always read them through the prism of their cultural tradition. So it is not Koran that tells Muslim Jihadjist to kill, but their desire for killing makes them read Koran the way that justify killing. Change tradition and Koran will be read differently.
Right now all that we see are Muslim terrorists committing terrible crime after crime.
And we see that terrorists are requited even among our own Muslim population. And we see that our own communist government rushes to appease Muslims Jihadjists the most idiotic way and even does not allow to use the words Islamic Jihad and Islamic terrorism. In this condition it is tempting tempting to fell into another extreme and proclaim, that all Islam is violent. But I think it is not productive, not human and not true.
Instead of labeling the whole Islam as violent we should proclaim there is the violent Islam with the idea of Global Jihad and there is the peaceful Islam. And we should tell Muslims, that they have to openly take side. And we should tread peaceful Muslims as heroes and our Alli, even if there is only one such Muslim, but others as enemy with all that follows from this definition.
Lev
Lev,
ReplyDeleteWhat Hitler did was extermination, what I'm talking about is removing people who abide by an ideology that calls for them to take power and murder those who stand in their way. Namely Islam.
The world has accepted the principle of expelling ethnic populations repeatedly. For that matter many Eastern European countries, e.g. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia expelled sizable numbers of Volksdeutsche after the war, after they had collaborated with the Nazis.
The world demands that Israel ethnically cleanse Jews from the West Bank and Gaza. If it accepts that principle, then removing the actual source of the trouble, Muslims, would be far more justifiable.
So yes it is entirely acceptable in the civilized world. I could count the number of nations that did it, but it would require an atlas of the world.
"Next, your description of Islam as violent expansionist religion also does not hold in historical perspective. Throughout of History Muslim nations were not more violent then their Christian counterparts."
Regardless of whether or not that's so, the issue is that Christians have changed, Muslims have not.
"Do not forget, that when Spine had expelled Jews some 500 years ago it were Muslim counties that accepted them."
It was specific Muslim rulers that accepted them... for their own profit. Throughout history Christian rulers and Muslim rulers alternately invited Jews in and then oppressed them.
"The problem is that Muslim countries lag behind the West at least for several hundred years."
You're assuming that Muslims are on the same path as Europe and will eventually catch up. The current evidence is pointing the other way.
"You can cherry-pick quotes from Koran, that supports your idea of violent Islam . But people does not read their Holy books literally. They always read them through the prism of their cultural tradition. So it is not Koran that tells Muslim Jihadjist to kill, but their desire for killing makes them read Koran the way that justify killing. Change tradition and Koran will be read differently."
We can dispense with Koranic quotes and look at actual Muslim behavior and history.
Since Mohammed conquered and ruled by killing, Islam is an ideology that rules by conquering and killing.
"Right now all that we see are Muslim terrorists committing terrible crime after crime.
And we see that terrorists are requited even among our own Muslim population. And we see that our own communist government rushes to appease Muslims Jihadjists the most idiotic way and even does not allow to use the words Islamic Jihad and Islamic terrorism. In this condition it is tempting tempting to fell into another extreme and proclaim, that all Islam is violent. But I think it is not productive, not human and not true.
Instead of labeling the whole Islam as violent we should proclaim there is the violent Islam with the idea of Global Jihad and there is the peaceful Islam. And we should tell Muslims, that they have to openly take side. And we should tread peaceful Muslims as heroes and our Alli, even if there is only one such Muslim, but others as enemy with all that follows from this definition."
We've already done that. The problem with this formula is that
A. Muslims internally make no such distinctions between a violent and a peaceful Islam. To them there is only one Islam, that is violent when it needs to be, and peaceful when it needs to be.
B. Telling people what their religion should be does not have a great track record of working, and is little more than wishful thinking.
C. Muslims will not take sides without being forced to. What will force Muslims in Europe or Israel to take sides?
Danny,
ReplyDeleteGreat post as always, but here what I disagree with you on one important issue. It is a case of a simple faulty generalization based on misconstrued historical fact and misplaced historical analysis in context of muslim invasion of Europe. While your description of Bulgaria's case is extremely useful and ethically sound. Surely, it was the warring Ottoman expansionist and imperialist policies that brought these Turkic muslims and their cronies into once lands of Christiandom, BUT to equate the case of Bulgaria with that of current French, or that matter British or German muslims, in this I will have to totally disagree.
I think my argument is defensible, and you know that I have a case. French, British, and German Muslims were brought willingly into post war European countries by open immigration policies. These muslims were and are not a product of some expansionist policies by their former imperial banner. They were simply taken and used as the demand for labor increased after WWII. Now as far as the problems of integration, I agree they are real and relevant and I am not in the position to advocate a complete population transfer of these people to their former countries. Again we have to be careful, we should demand that people accept the rules of land they come to live in and that's all we can do. I mean no let go for any fundamental rights, freedom and privileges that undermine the Western democratic values even if it will go into deporting hundreds of people who do not accept the rules of the games. But to a policy of widespread en masse population transfer I would say it is unethical and damaging to the values we all adhere to.
People show their intention by their behavior. When their behavior is domineering and violent, and imposes their way at any and all costs, then it is de facto expansionistic, regardless of whether they came on a crusade or to get jobs.
ReplyDeleteAs far as values go, unless they can survive Eurabia, then perhaps they're not workable values in the first place. A value system cannot be a suicide pact.
This rhetoric is the same as Hitlers?
ReplyDeleteThese are not some baseless lies were talking about here. Muslims pray to an idol that commands them to kill all those who refuse to submit AND YOU ARE SAYING WE SHOULD TURN A BLIND EYE BECAUSE FACING UP TO THAT THREAT MAKES US SOUND LIKE HITLER?
I have heard with my own ears how pious muslims talk about non-muslims when theyre not aware that somone else is listening and I can tell you, theyre not talking about integration!
Excellent article. Spot on!
ReplyDeleteExcept one thing: "Islamism".
Our enemies know of no such thing. Lets call it Islam and be done with it.
As for the troll above who gleefully roasts the old chestnut:
"Spain had expelled Jews some 500 years ago it were Muslim counties that accepted them."
It was specific Muslim rulers that accepted them... for their own profit. Throughout history Christian rulers and Muslim rulers alternately invited Jews in and then oppressed them.
Hmm. I cannot speak for the Christians, but the Jews preferred to live among them for there was less oppression then under the Moslems.
There is a verse in the Koran re asylum:
"If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah; and then escort him to where he can be secure that is because they are men without knowledge." [Al-Qur’an 9:6]
It was for that reason that Moslems offered Jews asylum: to hear the word of Allah. If they didn't like the idea of conversion, the asylum covenant became rather precarious.
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately there are many people who persist in the delusion that Islam is a similar religion to Judaism and Christianity. They bury their heads in the sand and ignore the political aspect of Islam.
For those seeking to compare what SULTAN KNISH says about Islam, to what Hitler did to Jews - EPIC FAIL, guys.
Hitler and the Nazis used centuries of anti semitism to exterminate Jews in Europe. Those Jews were, in the case of Germany, totally **assimilated**. They were law abiding citizens.
This is not comparable to many Muslim citizens in Europe today. Yes, many are peaceful, but equally many take the Quran literally and thus are working towards establishing SHARIA LAW in NON MUSLIM nations.
Nobody is suggesting these Muslims be exterminated.
Nobody is insisting they cease being Muslims.
All we're saying is that if they want Islamic law, they should go TO Islamic countries.
It is a perfectly logical statement to make.
Yes indeed, thank you. People have been so trained to trot out the Hitler analogy at the least provocation
ReplyDelete...and it's not as if there's a shortage of Islamic nations in the world.
It's the other way around. There is only one Jewish state and a diminishing number of Christian ones.
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