(Login pigeti) Forum Owner Posted Nov 29, 2005 2:10 PM
What do you mean you don’t agree with me? How dare you? What the hell do you know about the Ottomans anyway? Just kidding!
But seriously, you need to say more than that the massacres were committed under the reign of an Islamic regime. Is having an Islamic regime enough to bring into the discussion the whole history of the Ottoman Empire? Can we claim that the political and social matrix (even if it is religiously based) that was responsible for the massacres and later the total or nearly total annihilation of Ottoman Armenians and their culture was established in the pre-modern era? We might as well go all the way back to the Arabs since it was their religion to begin with; they were the ones who came up with it. And finally why not bring in Judaism as well, since Islam is almost a replica or a very similar version of it? I don’t think that the pre-modern period of the Ottoman period is connected with the modern period in this respect just because they both used Sharia (Islamic Law) in managing the empire. In fact one of them must have not been an Islamic regime; otherwise what happened would not happen.
I will claim, first of all, that the Ottoman state was never a true Islamic regime. They never let Islam have full control of the state. Secondly, I will stick to my original claim that the massacres and the genocide at the end are entirely modern phenomena. And finally I will state that Abdul Hamid was probably the most modern emperor in the Ottoman history. We could even say that he laid the groundwork or established the infrastructure for the modern Turkey. He did put a stop to the constitutional rule or what was to become a constitutional rule during his reign, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he was anti-modern.
This is where I will stop, since I have to get busy with something else now. I will perhaps continue tomorrow, but before I do that, could you briefly explain me what made you state what you stated in your reply to my previous post? Why do you think that being an Islamic regime is important or necessary in understanding the massacres or is linked to them?