The slow process of betraying Christianity

Turkish conquest

That is it: Bosnia was Serbian only. There were no "Muslims" -- not even a single family -- for at least FIVE HUNDRED years! The Islamic onslaught on Europe started centuries later. For the Turks who wanted to conquer Europe for Allah, Balkans was the shortest route. Their immense armies were first stopped by heroic Serb resistance in a gigantic battle at Kosovo field in 1389. Some 70 years later the Turks recovered and took now defenceless Bosnia.

Centuries of peace the Serbs enjoyed in Bosnia were to be substituted with centuries long struggle to survive brutal tyranny by foreign oppressor.

In order to govern this, 100% Christian land, the Turks needed to find (in today's terms) local quislings. In those ancient times, when religion was one's alpha and omega of existence, the conquering Turks could not hope to convert Christians to Islam over night. Despite that, it turns out, Bosnia was somewhat fertile ground. The Turkish conquest left substantial portion of the population converted to Islam - more so than in other, vast Christian lands, governed by the Ottoman Empire.

There are few theories how it happened. The most prevalent theory present in Western literature claims that the Turks found an easy prey in Christian cult of Bogumilism. This is one of many theories, though. The opposing ones claim that Bogumilism, while quite present in Bosnia for some time, was extinct centuries before Turkish arrival.

As it was question of honour, not to abandon ones religion for the religion of the enemy, the process of conversion was a slow one. It took centuries. No-one disputes that. Also the process took many different forms, many of which were forms of forceful conversion. For sure those who converted to the religion of the oppressor immediately reaped benefits. Over night they would cease to be oppressed. They would not be hungry any more. The record of individual conversions for the last few centuries of the Ottoman rule was kept in the main archive in Sarajevo, which was in Muslim hands in the recent civil war. It burned to the ground with all the documents. The incident, as everything else, was blamed on the besieging Serbs even though it was in Muslim Serb, and certainly not in Christian Serb, interest for that to happen...

From: "Yugoslavia, a Country Study"

Situated on the dividing line between the areas of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religious influence, Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered from constant internal turmoil from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries. This situation was complicated by the introduction from Bulgaria of an ascetic heretical Christian cult -- Bogumilism -- during the twelfth century... Many Bosnian nobles and a large portion of the peasantry persisted in the heresy despite repeated attempts by both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches to crush the cult. The chaos caused by this religious struggle laid the country open to the Ottoman Turks after they again defeated the [remaining, unconquered] Serbs in 1459. By 1463 the Turks controlled Bosnia and twenty years later gained control of Herzegovina; many Bogumil nobles and peasants accepted the Islamic religion of their conquerors.

From: "A History of the Balkans" by Professor Ferdinand Schevill, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1995, pp 202, 203

To the west of Serbia lay Bosnia,... a mountain region, like Serbia and racially homogeneous with it... [W]hole sections of the Bosnians did not scruple to see in Islam a deliverer. Numerous castles treacherously opened their gates to the enemy, and when the wretched Bosnian king, despairing of his cause, surrendered, he was, in spite of a solemn promise made in writing, cruelly decapitated under the eyes of the sultan (1462)... Mohamed held the convenient doctrine that a pledge made to a dog of an infidel possessed no binding character.

Thus Bosnia, sharp on the heel of Serbia, perished, and throughout Balkania the land of the Serbs with the single exception of the Zeta [future Montenegro], passed under the heel of the oppressor.

From: "A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples" by Professor Fred Singleton, Cambridge University Press, Edition 1985, page 20

The absorption of the heretic Bosnian (Bogumil) Church into the Islamic world did not come about as a result of a dramatic act of mass conversion, but, if Ottoman statistics is to be believed, it was a relatively rapid process. According to a census of 1489... 18.4 per cent of the population of Bosnia practised the Islamic faith... [T]he greatest increases were recorded... especially in the towns... Slav-speaking Muslim aristocracy came into existence. The 1.5 million Muslims in modern Bosnia, who are listed in the Yugoslav census [of 1981]... are descendents of those ealy converts.

From: "Yugoslavia, a Country Study"

The Islamised nobles were allowed to retain their lands and their feudal privileges, and the peasants who accepted Islam were granted land free from feudal obligations. The Christian nobles were killed and Christian peasants subjected to oppressive rule.

For more than four centuries, from the time of conquest in 1463 to 1878 when Western powers ordered them to relinquish Bosnia and Herzegovina and hand it over to the Austro-Hungarian empire control, the Turks ruled Bosnia. Their devoted quislings, the Serbs who betrayed Christianity in order to serve the Asiatic conqueror, identified with the foreign oppressor so much that Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910, finds Bosnian Muslims, now after more than 20 years under Christian rule still wanting everyone to call them - Turks! These "Turks," though can speak only one language - the same language that Serbs and Croats speak: Serbo-Croatian.

Let us take a closer look into the origin of the terms "Bosnian," "Bosniak," "Bosnitch." Do Bosnian Muslims have an exclusive right, as exercised by the Western press in these days, to call themselves "Bosnians?"

Source:

http://srpska-mreza.com/History/pre-wwOne/Bosnia-conquered.html

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