The Armenian Genocide was a Jihad
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
by _Ibn Warraq_ (;field-author=3DIbn%25 20Warraq/103-9556480-7979849)
ISIS: the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society
_Recent Additions to the ISIS Site_ ()
9-15-04
By Andrew G. Bostom
The Greater Boston Armenian Genocide Commemoration Committee, issued a
press release, April 7, 2003, noting that April 24, 2003 marked the
88th “anniversary” of the Armenian genocide. On April 24, 1915, the
Turkish Interior Ministry issued an order authorizing the arrest of
all Armenian political and community leaders suspected of anti-Ittihad
(`Young Turk’ government), or Armenian nationalist sentiments. In
Istanbul alone, 2345 such leaders were seized and incarcerated, and
most of them were subsequently executed. The majority were neither
nationalists, nor were they involved in politics. None were charged
with sabotage, espionage, or any other crime, and appropriately
tried.1 As the Turkish author Taner Akcam recently acknowledged,
`Under the pretext of searching for arms, of collecting war levies, or
tracking down deserters, there had already been established a practice
of systematically carried-out plunders, raids, and murders [against
the Armenians] which had become daily occurrences’2 Within a month,
the final, definitive stage of the process which reduced the Armenian
population to utter helplessness, i.e., mass deportation, would
begin.3
A True Genocide
Was the horrific fate of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority, at
the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, in particular, during
World War I, due to “civil war”, or genocide ? A seminal analysis by
Professor Vahakn Dadrian published last year validates the conclusion
that the Ottoman Turks committed a centrally organized mass murder,
i.e., a genocide, against their Armenian population.4 Relying upon a
vast array of quintessential, primary source documents from the World
War I allies of the Ottoman Empire, Germany and Austria- Hungary,
Dadrian obviated the intractable disputes surrounding the reliability
and authenticity of both Ottoman Turkish, and Armenian documents. He
elucidated the truly unique nature of this documentary German and
Austro-Hungarian evidence:
“During the war, Germany and Austria-Hungary disposed over a
vastnetwork of ambassadorial, consular, military, and commercial
representatives throughout the Ottoman Empire. Not only did they have
access to high-ranking Ottoman officials and power-wielding
decision-makers who were in a position to report to their superiors as
locus in quo observers on many aspects of the wartime treatment of
Ottoman Armenians. They supplemented their reports with as much detail
as they could garner from trusted informers and paid agents, many of
whom were Muslims, both civilians and military”5
Moreover, the documents analyzed possessed another critical attribute:
they included confidential correspondence prepared and sent to Berlin
and Vienna, which were meant for wartime use only.6 This
confidentiality, Dadrian notes, enabled German or Austro-Hungarian
officials to openly question the contentions of their wartime Ottoman
allies, when ascertaining and conveying facts truthfully to their
superiors in Europe. Dadrian cites the compelling example of the
November 16, 1915 report to the German chancellor, by Aleppo Consul
Rossler. Rossler states, “I do not intend to frame my reports in such
a way that I may be favoring one or the other party. Rather, I
consider it my duty to present to you the description of things which
have occurred in my district and which I consider to be the truth” 7
Rossler was reacting specifically to the official Ottoman allegation
that the Armenians had begun to massacre the Turkish population in the
Turkish sections of Urfa, a city within his district, after reportedly
capturing them. He dismissed the charge, unequivocally, with a single
word: “invented”. 8 Amassed painstakingly by Dadrian, the primary
source evidence from these German and Austro-Hungarian officials-
reluctant witnesses- leads to this inescapable conclusion: the
anti-Armenian measures, despite a multitude ofattempts at cover-up and
outright denial, were meticulously planned by the Ottoman authorities,
and were designed to destroy wholesale, the victim population.
Dadrian further validates this assessment with remarkable testimony
before the Mazhar Inquiry Commission, which conducted a preliminary
investigation in the post-war period to determine the criminal
liability of the wartime Ottoman authorities regarding the Armenian
deportations and massacres. The December15, 1918 deposition by General
Mehmed Vehip, commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Third Army, and ardent
CUP (Committee of Union and Progress, i.e., the “Ittihadists”, or
“Young Turks”) member, included this summary statement:
“The murder and annihilation of the Armenians and the plunder and
expropriation of their possessions were the result of the decisions
made by the CUP These atrocities occurred under a program that was
determined upon and involved a definite case of willfulness. They
occurred because they were ordered, approved, and pursued first by the
CUP’s [provincial] delegates and central boards, and second by
governmental chiefs who hadpushed aside their conscience, and had
become the tools of the wishes and desires of the Ittihadist society
“9
Dadrian’s own compelling assessment of this primary source evidence is
summarized as follows:
“Through the episodic interventions of the European Powers, the
historically evolving and intensifying Turko-Armenian conflict had
become a source of anger and frustration for the Ottoman rulers and
elites driven by a xenophobic nationalism. A monolithic political
party that had managed to eliminate all opposition and had gained
control of the Ottoman state apparatus efficiently took advantage of
the opportunities provided by World War I. It purged by violent and
lethal means the bulk of the Armenian population from the territories
of the empire. By any standard definition, this was an act of
genocide”10
Jihad: A Major Determinant of the Armenian genocide
The wartime reports from German and Austro-Hungarian officials also
confirm independent evidence that the origins and evolution of the
genocide had little to do with World War I “Armenian
provocations”. Emphasis is placed, instead, on the larger pre-war
context dating from the failure of the mid-19th century Ottoman
Tanzimat reform efforts.11 These reforms, initiated by the declining
Ottoman Empire (i.e., in 1839 and 1856) under intense pressure from
the European powers, were designed to abrogate the repressive laws of
dhimmitude, to which non-Muslim (primarily Christian) minorities,
including the Armenians, had been subjected for centuries, following
the Turkish jihad conquests of their indigenous homelands. 12
Led by their patriarch, the Armenians felt encouraged by the Tanzimat
reform scheme, and began to deluge the Porte (Ottoman seat of
government) with pleas and requests, primarily seeking governmental
protection against a host of mistreatments, particularly in the remote
provinces. Between 1850 and 1870, alone, 537 notes were sent to the
Porte by the Armenian patriarch characterizing numerous occurrences of
theft, abduction, murder, confiscatory taxes, and fraud by government
officials.13 These entreaties were largely ignored, and ominously,
were even considered as signs of rebelliousness. For example, British
Consul (to Erzurum) Clifford Lloyd reported in 1890, “Discontent, or
any description of protest is regarded by the local Turkish Local
Government as seditious”14
He went on to note that this Turkish reaction occurred irrespective of
the fact that “..the idea of revolution..” was not being entertained
by the Armenian peasants involved in these protests.15
The renowned Ottomanist, Roderick Davison, has observed that under the
Shari’a (Islamic Holy Law) the “..infidel gavours [“dhimmis”,
“rayas”]” were permanently relegated to a status of “inferiority” and
subjected to a “contemptuous half-toleration”. Davison further
maintained that this contempt emanated from “an innate attitude of
superiority”, and was driven by an “innate Muslim feeling”, prone to
paroxysms of “open fanaticism”. 16 Sustained, vehement reactions to
the 1839 and 1856 Tanzimat reform acts by large segments of the Muslim
population, led by Muslim spiritual leaders and the military,
illustrate Davison’s point.17 Perhaps the most candid and telling
assessment of the doomed Tanzimat reforms, in particular the 1856 Act,
was provided by Mustafa Resid, Ottoman Grand Vizier at six different
times between 1846-58. In his denunciation of the reforms, Resid
argued the proposed “complete emancipation” of the non-Muslim
subjects, appropriately destined to be subjugated and ruled, was
“entirely contradictory” to “the 600 year traditions of the Ottoman
Empire”. He openly proclaimed the “complete emancipation” segment of
the initiative as disingenuous, enacted deliberately to mislead the
Europeans, who had insisted upon this provision. Sadly prescient,
Resid then made the ominous prediction of a “great massacre” if
equality was in fact granted to non-Muslims. 18
Despite their “revolutionary” advent, and accompanying comparisons to
the ideals of the French Revolution, the CUP’s “Young Turk” regime
eventually adopted a discriminatory, anti-reform attitude toward
non-Muslims within the Ottoman Empire. During an August 6, 1910 speech
in Saloniki, Mehmed Talat, pre-eminent leader of the Young Turks
disdainfully rejected the notion of equality with “gavours” , arguing
that it “is an unrecognizable ideal since it is inimical with Sheriat
[Shari’a] and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of Muslims”.19
Roderick Davison notes that in fact “..no genuine equality was ever
attained..”, re-enacting the failure of the prior Tanzimat reform
period. As a consequence, he observes, the CUP leadership “soon
turned from equality to Turkification”20
During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Ottoman Turks massacred
over 200,000 Armenians between 1894-96. This was followed, under the
Young Turk regime, by the Adana massacres of 25,000 Armenians in 1909,
and the first formal genocide of the 20th century, when in 1915 alone,
an additional 600,000 to 800,000 Armenians were slaughtered.21 The
massacres of the 1890s had an “organic” connection to the Adana
massacres of 1909, and more importantly,the events of 1915. As Vahakn
Dadrian argues, they facilitated the genocidal acts of 1915 by
providing the Young Turks with “a predictable impunity.” The absence
of adverse consequences for the Abdul Hamid massacres in the 1890s
allowed the Young Turks to move forward without constraint.22
Contemporary accounts from European diplomats make clear that these
brutal massacres were perpetrated in the context of a formal jihad
against the Armenians who had attempted to throw off the yoke of
dhimmitude by seekingequal rights and autonomy. For example, the Chief
Dragoman (Turkish-speaking interpreter) of the British embassy
reported regarding the 1894-96 massacres:
[The perpetrators] are guided in their general action by the
prescriptions of the Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if
the “rayah” [dhimmi] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign
powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed them by their
Mussulman [Muslim] masters, andfree 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 those limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially
England. They therefore considered it their religious duty and a
righteousthing to destroy and seize the lives and properties of the
Armenians”23
The scholar Bat Ye’or confirms this reasoning, noting that the
Armenian quest for reforms invalidated their “legal status,” which
involved a “contract” (i.e., with their Muslim Turkish rulers). This
breachrestored to the umma [the Muslim community] its initial right to
kill the subjugated minority [the dhimmis], [and] seize their
property24 An intrepid Protestant historian and missionary Johannes
Lepsius, who earlier had undertaken a two-month trip to examine the
sites of the Abul Hamid era massacres, traveled again to Turkey during
World War I. Regarding the period between 1914-1918, he wrote :
” Are we then simply forbidden to speak of the Armenians as persecuted
on account of their religious belief’? If so, there have never been
any religious persecutions in the worldWe have lists before us of 559
villages whose surviving inhabitants were converted to Islam with fire
and sword; of 568 churches thoroughly pillaged, destroyed and razed to
the ground; of 282 Christian churches transformed into mosques; of 21
Protestant preachers and 170 Gregorian (Armenian) priests who were,
after enduring unspeakable tortures, murdered on their refusal to
accept Islam. We repeat, however, that those figures express only the
extent of our information, and do not by a long way reachto the extent
of the reality. Is this a religious persecution or is it not?…”25
Finally, Bat Ye’or places the continuum of massacres from the 1890s
through World War I in an overall theological and juridical context,
as follows:
“The genocide of the Armenians was the natural outcome of a policy
inherent in the politico-religious structure of dhimmitude. This
process of physically eliminating a rebel nation had already been used
against the rebel Slav and Greek Christians, rescued from collective
extermination by European intervention, although sometimes
reluctantly.
The genocide of the Armenians was a jihad. No rayas took part in
it. Despite the disapproval of many Muslim Turks and Arabs, and their
refusal to collaborate in the crime, these masssacres were perpetrated
solely by Muslims and they alone profited from the booty: the victims’
property, houses, and lands granted to the muhajirun, and the
allocation to them of women and child slaves. The elimination of male
children over the age of twelve was in accordance with the
commandments of the jihad and conformed to the age fixed for the
payment of the jizya. The four stages of the liquidation- deportation,
enslavement, forced conversion, and massacre- reproduced the historic
conditions of the jihad carried out in the dar-al-harb from the
seventh century on. Chronicles from a variety of sources, by Muslim
authors in particular, give detailed descriptions of the organized
massacres or deportation of captives, whose sufferings in forced
marches behind the armies paralleled the Armenian experience in the
twentieth century”26
Conclusions
The Ottoman Turkish destruction of the Armenian people, beginning in
the late 19th and intensifying in the early 20th century, was a
genocide, and jihad ideology contributed significantly to this decades
long human liquidation process. These facts are now beyond dispute.
Milan Kundera, the Czech author, has written that man’s struggle
against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.27 In his
thoughtful analysis of the Armenian genocide,`The Banality of
Indifference’, Professor Yair Auron reminds us of the importance of
this struggle:
`Recognition of the Armenian genocide on the part of the entire
international community, including Turkey (or perhaps first and
foremost Turkey), is therefore a demand of the first
order. Understanding and remembering the tragic past is an essential
condition, even if not sufficient in and of itself, to preventing the
repetition of such acts in the future.’28
Notes
1. Uras E., The Armenians and the Armenian Question in History, 2nd
ed., (Istanbul, 1976), p.612
2. Akcam T., Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question,
(Istanbul, 1992), p. 109.
3. Hovanissian R., Armenia on the Road to Independence, (Berkeley, CA,
1967), p. 51.
4. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World
War IAllies: Germany and Austria-Hungary’, International Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies, (2002), Vol. 32, Pp. 59-85.
5. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians’ , p.60.
6. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians’ , p.76
7. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians’ , p.76, with specific primary source documentation, p.84
n.109.
8. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians’ , p.76, with specific primary source documentation, p.84
n.109.
9. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the
Armenians’ , p.77, with specific primary source documentation,
Pp.84-85 n.111.
10. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of
theArmenians’ , p.77.
11. Davison R., “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim
Equality in the Nineteenth Century”, The American Historical Review
(1954), Vol. 54, Pp. 844-864.
12. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam,
(Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996) 522 Pp.
13. Dadrian V., Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian
Conflict, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999), p. 39.
14. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of
theArmenians’ , p.61, with specific primary source documentation p.79,
n.11
15. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of
theArmenians’ , p.61, with specific primary source documentation p.79,
n.11
16. Davison R., “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim
Equality in the Nineteenth Century”, p.855.
17. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam,
Reports by British Diplomats [1850-1876], Pp. 395-433.
18. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of
theArmenians’ , Pp.61-62, with specific primary source documentation,
p.79 n.14.
19. Dadrian V., `The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of
theArmenians’ , Pp.61-62, with specific primary source documentation,
p.79 n.15.
20. Davison R, “The Armenian Crisis, 1912-1914”, The American
Historical Review, (1948) Vol. 53, Pp. 482-483.
21. Dadrian V., The History of the Armenian Genocide, (Providence, RI:
Bergahn Books, 1997), Pp. 155, 182, 225, 233 n.44; Auron Y., The
Banality of Indifference, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2000), p. 44.
22. Dadrian V., The History of the Armenian Genocide, Pp. 113-184.
23. Dadrian V., The History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 147, with
primary source documentation p. 168 n.199.
24. Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, (Cranbury,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985) Pp. 48,67, 101.
25. Gabrielan M.C., Armenia: A Martyr Nation, (New York, Chicago:
Fleming H. Revell, Co., 1918), p. 269.
26. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam,
p. 197.
27. Kundera M., The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, (New York, NY:
Harper Collins, 1999)
28. Auron Y., The Banality of Indifference, p. 56.
Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at
Brown University, and freelance writer on the history of jihad and
dhimmitude.