The History of Jihad- From Muhammad to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  But revolution was in the air all over the world, and no Ottoman brutality could quench the thirst for independence among its subject Christian peoples. In 1821, it was the Greeks of the Morea. Thomas Gordon, a British army officer, published The History of the Greek Revolution in 1833, providing a vivid account of the Greek rage after centuries of oppression, and the brutality of the Ottoman response.

  After the Greek independence fighters took Kalavryta, a small town that the Ottomans surrendered without a fight, the Greeks proceeded to Patras. After hearing what had happened at Kalavryta, the warriors of the Sultan were prepared to make a stand. According to Gordon, the Turks “commenced hostilities by setting fire to the house of a primate, named Papadiamandopoulos; but being attacked by a body of Ionians, that were prepared for the conflict, they fled to the castle, and opened a cannonade against the town. The Greek population immediately rose, and, amidst volleys of musketry, proclaimed with loud shouts the liberty of their country.”32

  The two sides, Gordon reported, “massacred each other without mercy.”33 Archbishop Germanos, the metropolitan of Patras, and, said Gordon, “the other Greek generals, Papadiamandopoulos, Londos, Zaimis, and Sotiri, primates of Patrass, Vostizza, and Kalavryta, set forth a proclamation containing merely these emphatic words—Peace to the Christians! Respect to the Consuls! Death to the Turks!”34

  Chanting, “Not a Turk shall remain in the Morea,” the Greeks, having endured centuries of brutal oppression, began a pitiless campaign against the Muslims, who were ready to respond in kind.35 On the island of Crete, the janissaries killed the metropolitan of Candia and five bishops at the altar of their cathedral.36 And in Patras on Palm Sunday, according to Gordon, “the Christians had prepared to celebrate with pomp a festival ushered in by inauspicious omens; first a smart shock of an earthquake, then a cannonade announcing the arrival of Yussuf Pasha, and lastly the appearance of an Ottoman brig of war, which saluted the fort, and cast anchor before the town.”37 That was the end of the Palm Sunday festivities. “The Mussulmans obtained a rich booty, and for several days the Pasha and his troops amused themselves at their leisure in impaling or beheading prisoners and circumcising Christian children.”38

  Determined to put down the rebellion, one week later the Ottomans arrested the patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory V, shortly after the conclusion of the Paschal Divine Liturgy on Easter Sunday. Although he had not worked with the rebels or said anything about the rebellion, Ottoman officials were determined to make an example of him, and told the patriarch that he was being dismissed from his office, as he was “unworthy of the patriarchal dignity and ungrateful to the Sublime Porte and a traitor.”39 He was stripped of his patriarchal robes, imprisoned, and tortured. His torturers told him that his misery could be ended simply by his conversion to Islam, but he replied, “Do your job. The patriarch of the Orthodox Christians dies as an Orthodox Christian.”40

  And so he did. The Ottomans hanged him in front of the gates of his patriarchate and left his body there, as a warning to others who might have been contemplating rebellion, for three days. Then, in keeping with their standard procedure of keeping the dhimmi communities antagonistic to one another, and to prevent them from uniting against their overlords, they prevailed upon some Jews of Constantinople to cut down the body and throw it into the sea.41

  But the Ottomans could not crush the rebellion. The Greeks of the Morea won their independence. And more trouble was coming for the sultanate. The Albanian commander Mehmet Ali Pasha, appointed their wali (viceroy) in Egypt in 1805, began to pursue an independent course, ultimately challenging Ottoman control of Syria. The British and French Empires were ultimately the beneficiaries of this infighting, moving into Egypt and Syria, respectively. That would not be, however, for several more decades; and in the short term, the Ottomans needed British and French help in yet another war with the Russians over the Crimea.

  Their help was going to come only at a price. Stratford Canning, the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte, in 1842 protested to the sultan Abdulmecid after seeing two Christians who had converted to Islam and then returned to Christianity executed in accord with Islam’s death penalty for apostasy. He urged the caliph to “give his royal word that henceforward neither should Christianity be insulted in his dominions, nor should Christians be in any way persecuted for their religion.”42

  Needing British support, Abdulmecid agreed, for which Queen Victoria sent him congratulations. As the British and French allied with the Ottomans against Russia in the Crimean War, Canning used the increasing Ottoman dependence on the Western powers to continue to press the Ottomans for reform of the dhimmi laws. This culminated in the Hatt-i Humayun decree of 1856 that enacted what were known as the Tanzimat reforms, declaring that all Ottoman subjects were equal before the law, regardless of religion.

  The Europeans added the Hatt-i Humayun decree to the Treaty of Paris that ended the Crimean War, and praised “the Sultan’s generous intentions towards the Christian population of his Empire.”43 However, the British and French severely disappointed Canning by assuring the Ottomans and the world that they did not consider themselves to have any right “to interfere either collectively or individually in the relations of the Sultan with his subjects or in the internal administration of the Empire.”44

  Canning knew this would doom the reform: without Western pressure, the Ottomans would continue to enforce Islamic law, as the immutable law of Allah was more important and more binding than any treaty or decree. The Sublime Porte, Canning said, would “give way to its natural indolence and leave the firman [decree] of reform…a lifeless paper, valuable only as a record of sound principles.”45

  That is exactly what happened. The British consul James H. Skene wrote to another British official on March 31, 1859, that “the Christian subjects of the sultan at Aleppo still live in a state of terror.” He attributed this to the trauma they had suffered nine years earlier, when

  …houses were plundered, men of distinction among them were murdered, and women violated.… They were not allowed to ride in the town, not even to walk in the gardens. Rich merchants were fain to dress in the humblest garb to escape notice; when they failed in this they were often forced to sweep the streets or act as porters in order to give proofs of their patience and obedience; and they were never addressed by a Mussulman without expressions of contempt.”46

  Another British consul, James Brant, wrote in July 1860 about “the inability of the Sultans [sic] Government to protect its Christian subjects,” referring to massacres of Christians by Muslim mobs in Ottoman domains.47 Yet another British consul, James Finn, wrote at the same time that “oppression against Christians usually begins with the fanatic populace, but it is neither repressed nor punished by the Government.”48 This was because the “fanatic populace” was as aware of Islamic law as the government was, and was much more determined to enforce it.

  Some Ottoman officials, on the other hand, realized that what the “fanatic populace” wanted was not always what was best for them. The grand vizier Ali Pasha gave the Sultan Abdulaziz a revolutionary reason why he should support these reforms: strict adherence to the Sharia was actually weakening the empire. Christians, being barred from military service, which was supposed to be one element of their subjugation, were getting rich devoting themselves to other pursuits, and the jizya was not enough to strip them of all this wealth:

  The [unequal] privileges enjoyed by different communities arise from inequalities in their obligations. This is a grave inconvenience. The Muslims are absorbed almost entirely in the service of government. Other people devote themselves to professions which bring wealth. In this way the latter establish an effective and fatal superiority over Your Majesty’s Muslim subjects. In addition [only the Muslims serve in the army]. Under these circumstances the Muslim population, which decreases at a frightening rate, will be quickly absorbed and become nothing more than a tiny minority, growing weaker day b
y day.… What is a man good for when he returns to his village after spending the most vigorous part of his life in the army barracks or camps…? Muslims must, like the Christians, devote themselves to [commercial] agriculture, trade, industry and crafts. Labour is the only durable capital. Let us put ourselves to work, Sire, that is the only way to safety for us. There is still time to liberate the Muslim population from obligations which benefit the Christians.… Let the Christians furnish soldiers, officers and government functionaries in proportion to their numbers.49

  This was an extraordinary statement, and in a more devout age it might have cost Ali Pasha his head for implying that adherence to the law of Allah was disadvantageous in this world for the Turks, when Allah had promised that the believers would prosper in this world as well as in the next. Ali Pasha was presaging the subversive idea that Kemal Ataturk would make the basis of his secular Turkish government after World War I: the reason for Turkish failure was Islam, and the only path to its resuscitation required discarding Islam, at least as a political system.

  Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire continued its decline, although the sultan Abdulhamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, declared that the caliphate was as powerful as it ever was and could be summoned by his word. He raised the prospect of jihad’s being waged by Muslims who were living under the rule of the colonial powers:

  As long as the unity of Islam continues, England, France, Russia and Holland are in my hands, because with a word [I] the caliph could unleash the cihad among their Muslim subjects and this would be a tragedy for the Christians.… One day [Muslims] will rise and shake off the infidel’s yoke. Eighty-five million Muslims under [British] rule, 30 million in the colonies of the Dutch, 10 million in Russia…altogether 250 million Muslims are beseeching God for delivery from foreign rule. They have pinned their hopes on the caliph, the deputy of the Prophet Muhammad. We cannot [therefore] remain submissive in dealing with the great powers.50

  But this was just empty bravado. In practice, Abdulhamid had little choice but to remain submissive in dealing with the great powers. At the Conference of Berlin in 1878, his caliphate had little choice but to give up almost its European territories. Now Bosnia, Wallachia, Moravia, Bulgaria, and Serbia were all outside its domains. Without a shot, the Ottomans also handed over Cyprus, over which so much jihadi blood had been shed in the past, to the British.

  Slavery in Tripoli, Dhimmitude in Morocco

  In the North African lands formerly under Ottoman control, little changed with the waning of Ottoman power. In 1818, Captain G. F. Lyon of the British Navy traveled to Tripoli, where he noted that Muhammad al-Mukani of the Bey of Fezzan (in modern southwestern Libya) “waged war on all his defenceless neighbours and annually carried off 4000 or 5000 slaves. From one of these slave hunts into Kanem he had just returned to Tripoli, with a numerous body of captives and many camels, and was, in consequence, in the highest favour with the Bashaw,” that is, the sultan of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli.51 The sultan, noted Lyon, possessed “about fifty young women, all black and very comely…guarded by five eunuchs, who keep up their authority by occasionally beating them.”52

  Lyon witnessed the arrival of a shipment of slaves in Murzuq:

  At the end of the month [August 1819], a large Kafflé [caravan] of Arabs, Tripolines, and Tibboo, arrived from Bornou, bringing with them 1400 slaves of both sexes and all ages, the greater part being females.… We rode out to meet the great kafflé, and to see them enter the town—it was indeed a piteous spectacle! The poor oppressed beings were, many of them, so exhausted as to be scarcely able to walk; their legs and feet were much swelled, and by their enormous size, formed a striking contrast with their emaciated bodies. They were all borne down with loads of firewood; and even poor little children, worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear the burthen, while many of their inhuman masters rode on camels, with the dreaded whip suspended from their wrists, with which they, from time to time, enforced obedience from these wretched captives. Care was taken, however, that the hair of the females should be arranged in nice order, and that their bodies should be well oiled, whilst the males were closely shaven, to give them a good appearance on entering the town. All the traders speak of the slaves as farmers do of cattle.53

  In 1842, the British consul general in Morocco asked the Moroccan sultan Abd al-Rahman what he was doing to restrict the slave trade. Abd al-Rahman was incredulous, responding that “the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam…up to this day.”54 He said that he was “not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect” and that the very idea that anyone would question its morality was absurd: “no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.”55 From the beginnings of Islam until the end of the eighteenth century, Muslim slave traders who shared these views sent nearly ten million souls from sub-Saharan Africa to the slave markets of the Islamic world, generally making sure to enslave non-Muslims, not fellow Muslims.56

  The dhimmi laws also remained in force in Morocco. A traveler to that country in 1880 reported that “a deputation of Israelites, with a grave and reverend rabbi at their head,” asked the local Muslim ruler for permission “for them to wear their shoes in the town. ‘We are old, Bashador,’ they said, ‘and our limbs are weak; and our women, too, are delicately nurtured, and this law presses heavily upon us.’” As reasonable as this request was, and as humane as it would have been for the bashador to grant it, the traveler expressed relief that the Jews decided not to ask after all. He “was glad they were dissuaded from pressing their request, the granting of which would exasperate the populace, and might lead to consequences too terrible to contemplate.”57

  Eight years later, the Anglo-Jewish Association pushed for the abolition of dhimmi laws in Morocco, under which Jews were required to “live in the ghetto.… On leaving the ghetto they are compelled to remove their footwear and remove their headcovering.… Jews are not permitted to build their houses above a certain height.… Jews ‘are not allowed to drink from the public fountains in the Moorish quarter nor to take water therefrom’ as the Jews are considered unclean.”58 The Anglo-Jewish Association appeal went nowhere.

  The Armenian Genocide Begins

  Meanwhile, more infidel blood was to be shed in another historic field of jihad, Asia Minor. In 1894, the Armenians rebelled at having to pay taxes both to Kurdish warlords in Anatolia and to the Ottoman state. The sultanate was in no mood to hear them out, and began massacring Armenians ruthlessly, committing mass rapes, killing even children, and burning Armenian villages.

  The chief dragoman (Turkish interpreter) of the British Embassy wrote that those who committed these atrocities were “guided in their general action by the prescriptions of Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if the ‘rayah’ [subject] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed to them by their Mussulman masters, and free themselves from their bondage, their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the mercy of the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind, the Armenians had tried to overstep these limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially England. They, therefore, considered it their religious duty and a righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and property of the Armenians.”59

  On August 18, 1894, the Ottoman authorities began a massacre of Armenians in the Sassoun region of eastern Asia Minor that lasted a full twenty-four days, until September 10. British vice consul Cecil M. Hallward investigated the massacre and reported to the British crown that “a large majority of the population of some twenty-five villages perished, and some of the villages were unusually large for this country.”60 At Bitlis, Ottoman soldiers “took eighty tins of petroleum…[which] was utilized for burning the houses, together with the inhabitants inside them.”61

  At Geliguzan, “a number o
f young men were bound hand and foot, laid out in a row, had brushwood piled on them, and were burned alive.”62 And “many other disgusting barbarities are said to have been committed, such as ripping open pregnant women, tearing children to pieces by main force.”63 At yet another Armenian village, “some sixty young women and girls were driven into a church, where some soldiers were ordered to do as they liked with them and afterwards kill them, which order was carried out.”64 Hallward noted that he collected these details largely from “soldiers who took part in the massacre.”65

  The jihad against the Armenians went on even in Constantinople, after Armenian revolutionaries seized the Bank Ottoman in 1894. In retaliation, Muslim mobs for two days bludgeoned Armenians to death with cudgels wherever they found them. The streets of the great city again ran red with blood, as they had on May 29, 1453, when Mehmet the Conqueror and his jihad warriors broke through the Byzantine defenses. The British chargé in Constantinople wrote that the “Turkish mob” was aided by “a large number of softas [student of Islamic theology] and other fanatics…individuals wearing turbans and long linen robes rarely seen in this part of the town. They mostly carried clubs which had evidently been carefully shaped after a uniform pattern; some had, instead of these, iron bars…there is nothing improbable in the stories current that the clubs and bars…were furnished by the municipal authorities.”66

  The French ambassador pointed to “the interminable series of events which exhaustively prove that it is the Sultan himself who arms these bludgeoners, exhorting them to go out and extirpate all that is Armenian. It is maintained that the police had given advance notice to all these rascals, distributing to them the cudgels, and deploying them at convenient spots.”67 The Austrian military attaché likewise charged that Ottoman authorities gave the mobs cudgels and sticks “fitted with a piece of iron” and told them “to start killing Armenians, irrespective of age and gender, for the duration of 48 hours…the method of killing involved the bludgeoning of the victims with blows on their heads. These horrible scenes repeated themselves before my eyes interminably.”68 The Russian Embassy dragoman Maximof indignantly carried one of the cudgels into the very palace of the sultan, declaring: “The Turks are killing in the streets the poor Armenians with these cudgels.”69