April 15, 2006
STATELY DREAMS:
What the Sultan Saw: Practicing a tolerant strain of Islam, the Ottomans clashed with fundamentalists. (MATTHEW KAMINSKI, April 11, 2006, Opinion Journal)
[T]he religious aspect of the 9/11 attacks has made the Ottomans, who led the Muslim world for half a millennium, topical again. The sultans are famous for sacking Constantinople in the 15th century and besieging Vienna in the 16th. Both events became symbols of Muslim aggression against Christendom. And the "barbarian Turk" is still a villain in the folklore of the empire's northern reaches. Yet such caricature fails to do justice to the remarkable Ottomans, whose story is a corrective to the perceived wisdom that Islam is inherently unable to reconcile itself with the West.Caroline Finkel takes the title of her Ottoman history, "Osman's Dream," from a founding myth, apparently invented in the 1500s, nearly two centuries after the death of the first sultan, Osman. It was said that one memorable night, Osman dreamed of a beautiful, enormous tree growing from his navel, a tree whose shade "compassed the world," including distant mountains and mighty rivers. It was a tale heavy with imperial symbolism, meant for a young state that, despite humble beginnings, had come to dominate parts of Europe and would eventually extend across northern Africa, including Egypt, through the Middle East and eastward toward Persia. [...]
Practicing a more tolerant strain of Islam, the Ottomans clashed with fundamentalists, like the Wahhabi who rose up against them on the Saudi peninsula in the 18th century. This conflict rages on today in different forms. In the Balkans and now in Iraq, Saudi money pays for the razing of Ottoman houses of worship. The zealots prefer glass-and-steel mosques.
The peak of the Pax Ottomanica came in the 16th century under Süleyman the Magnificent, who ruled, lest we forget, at the same time as Britain's Henry VIII and Russia's Ivan the Terrible. He surpassed both in the glories of his court, the arts of his culture and the extent of his lands. Süleyman defied tradition in one crucial respect: He fell in love with a slave girl, Hürrem, and had five sons by her; by convention, concubines were to bear only one. When the sultan married her, "Hürrem was accused of having bewitched him," writes Ms. Finkel.
While the empire's source of legitimacy was the Islamic caliphate in Istanbul, religion played a fitful role in political life, just as it did in Christian lands. Wars were justified as "holy" often after the fact. At various times the French, British and Germans--even the pope in Rome--stood with the Ottomans against Russia, the Hapsburgs and the Poles. Such affiliations were built on the universal concept of self-interest. Before joining the Axis powers in World War I, the Ottoman rulers called for jihad against the Allies, but geopolitics obviously had more to do with the alliance than religion.
Ms. Finkel describes the rise of the Ottomans in exhaustive detail, and their fall, too. Financial trouble, internal strife, wayward foreign ventures and rising local nationalism--all helped to hasten the empire's decline.
It's significant that the equally far-sighted Ataturk dreamed of replacing the rather moderate empire of Osman's with a genuinely secular and Westernized state.
More wishful thinking.
The Ottomans were not quite so mad as some other RICO members, but they were part on the criminal conspiracy, nonetheless. Their corrupt politics and the barbaric oppression of their captive nations were legendary.
Modern Turkey had the wisdom and good fortune to turn away from fanaticism, abandoning even the Muslim scriprt in favor of Roman letters.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 15, 2006 2:33 PMMore wishful thinking.
The Ottomans were not quite so mad as some other RICO members, but they were part on the criminal conspiracy, nonetheless. Their corrupt politics and the barbaric oppression of their captive nations were legendary.
Modern Turkey had the wisdom and good fortune to turn away from fanaticism, abandoning even the Muslim scriprt in favor of Roman letters.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 15, 2006 2:33 PMMore wishful thinking.
The Ottomans were not quite so mad as some other RICO members, but they were part on the criminal conspiracy, nonetheless. Their corrupt politics and the barbaric oppression of their captive nations were legendary.
Modern Turkey had the wisdom and good fortune to turn away from fanaticism, abandoning even the Muslim scriprt in favor of Roman letters.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 15, 2006 2:34 PMNot only were they not objectively oppressive but by comparison to the West positively liberal.
Posted by: oj at April 15, 2006 11:02 PMSerbians, Greeks and Armenians might have a different take on that.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 16, 2006 7:05 AMNot different than Maori, Carib, etc.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2006 7:58 AMLou, have you forgotten that oj opines the Ottoman Turks were benevolent oppressors.
oj. I had no idea the Ottoman empire extended to the Maori and Carib?
Posted by: erp at April 16, 2006 8:45 AMerp:
Do you think the Maori believe the West to have been a benign empire? We were extermninationists. The Turks weren't.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2006 8:53 AMhow many maori are there now, how many before the first white settlers ?
what is the lifespan of the average maori now, and then ?
infant mortality ?
quality of life ?
incidence of cannibalism ?
number of players in the nfl ?
Posted by: toe at April 16, 2006 1:26 PMoj. For the sake of argument, I'll concede your point about the Maori and Caribs, but so what?
Are you grading degradations? If so, please explain the criteria you are using in your formula. Do the number of dead and maimed trump being killed by horrible torture? If you kill them off by peaceful means, ala Tom Lehrer, is that a plus or a minus.
The Turks have been historically untrustworthy and they proved it again when they refused to allow our troops passage only a few years ago. If you know any Armenians, you will hear stories that will make your hair stand on end, they are so horrible.
I fear for my relatives in Albania who have only had a few short years of freedom and are in a very vulnerable position vis a vis their Moslem majority newly emboldened by the militants on their borders.
These folks are very pro-American and in fact, when my cousin got off the plane at Kennedy, he said it was the first time in his 50 plus years that he could really breathe free and he was actually shaking with emotion.
erp:
I'm saying that native peoples were better off being conquered by Turkey than by the West.
We proved ourselves to be unworthy allies by demanding Turkish assistance for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan on their border and then acting petulant when they wouldn't help.
"Muslim majority" says it all.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2006 11:08 PMoj. Wow! That's a point of view I haven't encountered before.
Posted by: erp at April 17, 2006 10:36 AMerp:
It's the decimated natives descendants who then benefit from living in Westernized societies. But no one argues that Hitler was good for Jews because they have more freedom and prosperity today than they did before he came to power.
Posted by: oj at April 17, 2006 10:54 AMoj. I am having trouble following your argument. I don't know if I'm too many grey cells down, or just can't reconcile your position.
Jews in Germany were in the mainstream of German society before Hitler.
The difference between us and the Turks is that we stopped decimating and exploiting native populations a long time ago and are now in the business of pandering to them. It's hard to know which of these positions have done them the most harm.