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manhefnawi

Europe and the Turks: The Civilization of the Ottoman Empire | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...ks-civilization-ottoman-empire

Ottoman Empire

shared by manhefnawi on 22 May 18 - No Cached
  • This year the Turks have been celebrating the 500th anniversary of their conquest of Constantinople. Turkish rule in Europe began nearly a century earlier, and was firmly established by the time that the occupation of the Imperial city rounded off the Turkish dominions and made Constantinople once again the capital of a great empire. But the anniversary may serve as the occasion for some reflections on the place of the Ottoman Empire in the history of Europe and of the world
  • the loss of Constantinople is a great historical disaster, a defeat of Christendom which has never been repaired
  • Western travellers in Turkey, who were the major source of information to the Western world, with few exceptions reinforced these prejudices. Most of them lacked the perceptiveness and imagination to realize that though the familiar good qualities that they appreciated at home were missing in Turkey, there were others present of a different kind
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Like most liberated peoples, the Balkan, and later the Arab, states tended to blame all the defects and shortcomings of their societies upon the misrule of the fallen imperial masters
  • This negative attitude to the Turks, while predominant, is not the only one. There is also what one might call a positive legend of the Turk in Europe - and here I am not speaking of the political and military considerations which from time to time led European powers to sup with the Turk, though with a long spoon
  • Turkish culture is, as one would expect, mainly Islamic, and the educated Ottoman was as familiar with the Arabic and Persian classics as his Western contemporaries with those of Greece and Rome
  • Against the charge of destructiveness that is often brought against Turkish rule, the same evidence may be cited. The registers show an increase in population and prosperity in most areas after the conquest, which the travellers - by no means friendly witnesses - confirm
  • Certainly the Sultan was no democrat; but after all, democracy, as we know and practise it, has flourished in only a few places, and in most of them is recent and precarious. The Sultan was not a true despot, but the supreme custodian of the God-given Holy Law of Islam, to which he himself was subject.
  • This security and prosperity, given to peasant agriculture by a Government which had inherited the ancient loyalty owed by the Balkan peoples to the Imperial Byzantine throne, did much to reconcile them to the other imperfections of Ottoman rule, and account in large measure for the long tranquillity that reigned in the Balkans until the explosive irruption of nationalist ideas from the West
  • Two other qualities which have been attributed to the Turks are fanaticism and intolerance. The Ottoman Turks were indeed fanatical Moslems, dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of the Islamic state. But toleration is a relative matter
  • The well-known preference of the 15th-century Greeks for Moslem rather than Frankish rule was not without its reasons. The confrontation of Christendom and Islam has sometimes been compared with the present Cold War
  • When Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended, the Balkan peoples resumed their national existence, with their own religions and languages and national cultures intact
  • With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, some of the traditional charges against the Turks become in part justified.
  • Islam is far more akin to Europe in its cultural traditions than to the true Orient, in India and China. But the Turks were familiar in a nearer and more material sense. They had been in Anatolia since the 11th century, absorbing the ancient races of the peninsula; in Europe since the 14th century
  • The loss of Constantinople was certainly a defeat of Christendom and of Europe - though perhaps not so total as was once feared.
  • Nor was it a victory of barbarism, but rather of another and not undistinguished civilization
Javier E

How Arabs view the anti-mosque movement | Marc Lynch - 0 views

lynch.foreignpolicy.com/...ainstream_arabs_not_extremists

arabs moslem radicals mosque 'clash of civilizations moderates

shared by Javier E on 28 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Where the anti-mosque movement and escalating anti-Islam rhetoric is really resonating is with the Arab mainstream --- that vast middle ground which had hoped that the election of Barack Obama would mark a real change from the Bush administration but have grown increasingly disappointed.   The mosque issue has been covered heavily on Arab satellite TV stations such as al-Jazeera, and the images of angry Americans chanting slogans and waving signs against Islam have resonated much like the images of angry Arabs burning American flags and denouncing U.S. policy did with American viewers after 9/11.   The recent public opinion surveys showing widespread hostility towards Islam among Americans have also gotten a lot of attention. 
  • It's confirming the worst fears of too many mainstream Arabs and Muslims, and thus providing fodder for the extremists who hope to exploit that atmosphere. It's become a cliche to say so, but it's true:  by fueling the narrative of a clash of civilizations and an inevitable war between Islam and the West, this unfortunate trend is empowering extremists on all sides and weakening moderates.  That's exactly the dynamic which I warned about here and in my recent Foreign Affairs article, and it's one which counter-terrorism professionals and public diplomacy specialists alike understand needs to be broken before it's too late. 
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