Yugoslavia: Past and present

Myths and Politics - Origin or the Myth of a Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society

BAT YE'OR speech:

My subject this evening is: Myths and Politics: Origin of the Myth of a Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society. I stress the world "Tolerant", which was omitted from the program.

Ten years ago, when I came to America for the launching of my book: THE DHIMMI, JEWS AND CHRISTIANS UNDER ISLAM, I was struck by the inscription on the Archives Building in Washington: "Past is Prologue". I had thought -- at least at the beginning of my research -- that my subject related to a remote past, but I realised that contemporary events were rapidly modernising this past. Muslim countries where Islamic law -- the Shari'a -- had been replaced by modern juridic (imposed by the European colonising powers,) were abandoning the secularising trend, replacing it with Islamisation in numerous sectors of life. This impression of the return of the past became even more acute when I was working on my next book, published in 1991, the English edition which will appear in a few months under the title: THE DECLINE OF EASTERN CHRISTIANITY UNDER ISLAM - 7th TO 20th CENTURY: FROM JIHAD TO DHIMMITUDE (Associated University Presses).

In this study, I tried to analyze the numerous processes that had transformed rich, powerful Christian civilisations into Islamic lands and their long-term effects, which had reduced native Christian majorities into scattered small religious minorities, now slowly disappearing. This complex Islamisation process of Christian lands and civilisations on both shores of the Mediterranean - and in Irak and Armenia - I have called: the process of "dhimmitude" and the civilisation of those peoples who underwent such transformation, I have named the civilisation of "dhimmitude". The indigenous native peoples were Jews and Christians: Orthodox, Catholics, or from other Eastern Christian Churches. They are all referred to by Muslim jurists as the "Peoples of the Book" - the Book being the Bible - and are subjected to the same condition according to Islamic law. They are called dhimmis: protected peoples, because Islamic law protects their life and goods on condition that they submit to Islamic rule. I will not go into details here for this is a very long and complex subject, but in order to understand the Serbian situation one should know that the Serbs were treated during half a millennium just like the other Christian and Jewish dhimmis. They participated in this civilisation of dhimmitude. It is important to understand that the civilisation of dhimmitude grows from two religious institutions: Jihad and SHARI'A, which establish a particular ideological system that makes it mandatory - during the jihad operation -- to use terror, mass killings, deportation and slavery. And the Serbs -- because I am speaking of them tonight -- did not escape from this fate, which was the same for all the populations around the Mediterranean basin, vanquished by Jihad. For centuries, the Serbs fought to liberate their land from the laws of Jihad and of Shari'a, which had legalised their condition of oppression.

So while I was analyzing and writing about the processes of dhimmitude and the civilisation of dhimmitude, while listening to the radio, watching television, reading the newspapers, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the clock was being turned back.

Modern politicians, sophisticated writers -- using phones, planes, computers and all the modern techniques -- seemed to be returning several centuries back, with WIGS or STIFF COLLARS, using exactly the same CORRUPTING ARGUMENTS, the same tortuous short-term politics that had previously contributed to the gradual Islamisation of numerous non-Muslim peoples. I had to shake myself in an effort to distinguish the past from the present.

So, is the past always prologue? Are we doomed to remain always prisoners of the same errors? Certainly, if we do not know the past; and this past -- the long and agonising process of Christian annihilation by the laws of Jihad and dhimmitude -- is a taboo history, not only in Islamic lands, but above all in the West. It has been buried beneath a myth, fabricated by Western politicians and religious leaders, in order to promote their own national strategic and economic interests.

Curiously, this myth started in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 19th century. It alleges that Turkish rule over Christians in its European provinces was just and lawful. That the Ottoman regime, being Islamic, was naturally "tolerant" and well disposed toward its Christian subjects; that its justice was fair, and that safety for life and goods was guaranteed to Christians by Islamic laws. Ottoman rule was brandished as the most suitable regime to rule Christians of the Balkans.

This theory was advanced by European politicians in order to safeguard the balance of power in Europe, and in order to block the Russian advance towards the Mediterranean. To justify the maintenance of the Turkish yoke on the Slavs it was portrayed as a model for a multi-ethnical and multi-religious empire. Of course, the reality was totally different! First the Ottoman Empire was created by centuries of Jihad against Christian populations; consequently the rules of Jihad, elaborated by Arab-Muslim theologians from the 8th to the 10th centuries, applied to the subjected Christian and Jewish populations of the Turkish Islamic dominions. Those regulations are integrated into the Islamic legislation concerning the non-Muslim vanquished peoples and consequently they present a certain homogeneity throughout the Arab and Turkish empires.

The civilisation of dhimmitude in which the Serbs participated had many aspects that evolved with changing political situations. In the 1830s, forced by the European powers, the Ottomans adopted a series of reforms aiming at ending the oppression of the Christians.

In the Serbian regions, the most fanatical opponents of Christian emancipation were the Muslims Bosniacs. They fought against the Christian right to possess lands and, in legal matters, to have equal rights as themselves. They pretended that under the old system that gave them full domination over the Christians, Muslims and Christians had lived for centuries in a convivial fraternity. And this argument is still used today by President Izetbegovic and others. He repeatedly affirms that the 500 years of Christian dhimmitude was a period of peace and religious harmony.

Let us now confront the myth with reality. A systematic enquiry into the condition of the Christians was conducted by British consuls in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s. Britain was then Turkey's strongest ally. It was in its own interest to see that the oppression of the Christians would be eliminated in order to prevent any Russian or Austrian interference. Consul James Zohrab sent from Bosna-Serai (Sarajevo) a lengthy report, dated July 22, 1860, to his ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Bulwer, in which he analyzed the administration of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He stated that from 1463 to 1850 the Bosniac Muslims enjoyed all the privileges of feudalism. During a period of nearly 400 years Christians were subjected to much oppression and cruelty. For them no other law but the caprice of their masters existed.

The DEVSHIRME system is well known. Begun by the Sultan Orkhan (1326-1359), it existed for about 300 years. It consisted of a regular levy of Christian children from the Christian population of the Balkans. These youngsters, aged from fourteen to twenty, were Islamised and enslaved for their army. The periodic levies, which took place in contingents of a thousand, subsequently became annual. To discourage runaways, children were transferred to remote provinces and entrusted to Muslim soldiers who treated them harshly as slaves. Another parallel recruitment system operated. It provided for the levy of Christian children aged six to ten (ICHOGHLANI), reserved for the sultans' palace. Entrusted to eunuchs, they underwent a tyrannical training for fourteen years. (A system of enslaving Black Christian and Animist children, similar to the DEVSHIRME existed in Sudan as is shown from documents to be published in my book. A sort of DEVSHIRME system still exists today in Sudan and has been described and denounced by the United Nations Special Report on Sudan and in a recent article last Friday's TIMES OF LONDON.) In 1850, the Bosniac Muslims opposed the authority of the Sultan and the reforms, but were defeated by the Sultan's army aided by the Christians who hoped that their position would thereby improve, "but they hardly benefited." Moreover, despite their assistance to the sultan's army, Christians were disarmed, while the Muslims who fought the sultan could retain weapons. Christians remained oppressed as before, Consul Zobrab writes about the reforms: "I can safely say, they practically remain a dead letter".

Discussing the impunity granted to the Muslims by the sultan, Zohrab wrote:

"This impunity, while it does not extend to permitting the Christians to be treated as they formerly were treated, is so far unbearable and unjust in that it permits the Muslims to despoil them with heavy exactions. Under false accusations imprisonments are of daily occurrence. A Christian has but a small chance of exculpating himself when his opponent is a Muslim." "Christians are now permitted to possess real property, but the obstacles which they meet with when they attempt to acquire it are so many and vexatious that very few have as yet dared to brave them. Although a Christian can buy land and take possession it is when he has got his land into order [...] that the Christian feels the helplessness of his position and the insincerity of the Government. [Under any pretext] "the Christian is in nineteen cases out of twenty dispossessed, and he may then deem himself fortunate if he gets back the price he gave."

Commenting on this situation, the consul writes:

"Such being, generally speaking, the course pursued by the Government towards the Christians in the capital of the province Sarajevo where the Consular Agents of the different Powers reside and can exercise some degree of control, it may easily be guessed to what extend the Christians, in the remoter districts, suffer who are governed by Mudirs generally fanatical."

He continues:

"Christian evidence in the Medjlises (tribunal) as a rule is refused. Knowing this, the Christians generally come forward prepared with Mussulman witnesses (...), twenty years ago, it is true, and they had no laws beyond the caprice of their landlords."

"Cases of oppression are frequently the result of Mussulman fanaticism, but for these the Government must be held responsible, for if offenders were punished, oppression would of necessity become rare."

In the spring of 1861 the sultan announced new reforms in Herzegovina, promising among other things freedom to build churches, the use of church bells and the opportunity for Christians to acquire land.

Commenting on this, Consul William Holmes in Bosna-Serai writes to Ambassador Sir Henry Bulwer that those promises rarely applied. He mentions that the Serbs, the biggest community were refused the right to build a church in Bosna-Serai. Concerning the right to buy land, he writes; "Every possible obstacle is still thrown in the way of the purchase of lands by Christians, and very often after they have succeeded in purchasing and improving land, it is no secret that on one unjust pretext or another, it has been taken from them."

Consul Longworth writes, from Belgrade on 1860 that by its Edicts the "Government may hasten such a reform but I question very much whether more evil than good will not arise from proclaiming a social equality which is, in the present stage of things and relations of society, morally impossible."

The biggest problem, in fact, was the refusal to accept either Christian or Jewish testimony in Islamic tribunals.

Consul Longworth comments on "the lax and vicious principle acted upon in the Mussulman Courts, where, as the only means of securing justice to Christians, Mussulman false witnesses are permitted to give evidence on their behalf."

The situation didn't change, and in 1875 the Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha admitted to the British Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Elliot, the "impossibility of allowing Christian testimony at courts of justice in Bosnia." Thus, the Ambassador noted: "The professed equality of Christians and Mussulmans is, however, so illusory so long as this distinction is maintained."

This juridical situation had serious consequences due to the system of justice, as he explained: "This is a point [the refusal of testimony] of much importance to the Christians, for, as the religious courts neither admit documentary nor written evidence, nor receive Christian evidence, they could hope for little justice from them."

The difficulty of imposing reforms in such a vast empire provoked this disillusioned comment, from Sir Francis, consul-general, judge at the British Consular Court in 1875 Constantinople: "Indeed, the modern perversion of the Oriental idea of justice is a concession to a suitor through grace and favour, and not the declaration of a right, on principles of law, and in pursuance of equity."

From Consul Blunt writing from Pristina on 14 July 1860 to Ambassador Bulwer, we learn about the situation in the province of Macedonia: "[...] For a long time the province of Uscup [Skopje, Macedonia] has been a prey to brigandage: [...] Christian churches and monasteries, towns and inhabitants, are now pillaged, massacred, and burnt by Albanian hordes as used to be done ten years ago."

"The Christians are not allowed to carry arms. This, considering the want of a good police, exposes them the more to attacks from brigands." "Christian evidence in law suits between a Mussulman and a non-Mussulman is not admitted in the Local Courts."

Ten years before he said: "Churches were not allowed to be built; and one can judge of the measure of toleration practiced at that time by having had to creep under doors scarcely four feet high. It was an offence to smoke and ride before a Turk; to cross his path, or not stand up before him, was equally wrong." [...]

Fifteen years later, in another report from Bosna-Serai, dated December 30, 1875, from consul Edward Freeman, we learn that the Bosnian Muslims had sent a petition to the sultan stating that before the reforms, "they lived as brother with the Christian population. In fact, wrote the Consul, "their aim appears to reduce the Christians to their former ancient state of serfdom." So once again we go back to the myth. When reading the literature of the time, we see that the obstruction to Serbian, Greek and other Christian liberation movement was rooted in two main arguments:

1. Christian Dhimmis are congenitally unfitted for independence and self-government. They should therefore remain under the Islamic rule.

2. The Ottoman rule is a perfect model for a multi-religious and multi-ethnical society.

Indeed these are theological Islamic arguments that justify the JIHAD since all non-Muslim people should not retain political independence because their laws are evil and must be eventually replaced by the Islamic rule. We find the same reasoning in the Palestinian 1988 Covenant of the Hamas. Those arguments are very common in the theological and legal literature and are exposed by modern Islamists.

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