By: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ] Before 212 years, Turkey controlled an area of almost 8 million km2 in Africa; under its antecedent state form, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, vast African territories from the confines of Algeria to Somalia and the East African coast down to Tanzania were reporting to the Sultan at Istanbul, who was the Caliph of all Muslims worldwide. Ottoman-controlled territories and lands ruled by principalities that recognized the imperial authority of the Sultan totalled no less than one third of Africa.
Ottoman Empire: the Sole African Superpower
If we take into consideration the fact that at those days, the colonial penetration (Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England) had not covered more than narrow coastlands, and if we bear in mind that the other two thirds of Africa were divided into hundreds of small African kingdoms, principalities, and independent realms, we safely conclude that the Ottoman Empire was indeed the sole African Superpower.
Quite unfortunately, the Sultan himself did not realize this geo-strategic evidence, and worse, his administration failed dramatically to conceptualize first and contextualize afterwards the ensuing policy tasks and practices.
Before Napoleon’s arrival in Alexandria (or to put it better, Abuqir), more territories were under the Sultan’s control on African soil than in Asia. The Ottoman dominions throughout the Black Continent were more sizeable than the Asiatic landmass that was under the control of the Sublime Porte.
From Oman’s and Yemen’s coasts to the Mediterranean shores of Phoenicia (criminally re-baptized ‘Lebanon’ as per the evil colonial, Freemasonic interests) and Palestine,
from the Emirati and Kuwaiti coasts of the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Georgia and Abkhazia,
from Basra to the Black Sea shores of Turkey, and
from the Sinai peninsula to the Asiatic coast of Istanbul, the Ottoman territories totalled ca. 5.5 m km2 — only.
The European territories of the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans) were even smaller, although they irreversibly consisted in a very large of the European continent.
But in Africa, either directly or indirectly, the Sultan represented the supreme political and religious authority for populations undeservedly scattered today to so many fake states: Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Abyssinia (the modern fake state of ‘Ethiopia’), Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Certainly, not the entire territory of all the aforementioned modern states reported to the Istanbul Caliphate; but this does not reduce in anything the reality that the Ottoman rule controlled ca. 8 million km2 in Africa.
We have good reason to believe that they were all happy and voluntarily ascribed their lives and fates to a state that they deeply felt as theirs, although — paradoxically — its capital was outside Africa.
African Love for Islam and the Ottoman Empire
Indicatively, I mention here that the Egyptians rejected the French in 1798, and rightfully hated the cruel and criminal soldiers of Napoleon; they decisively opposed them, and when the Freemasonic tyrant of France imposed an Albanian soldier, named Muhammad Ali, as chief ruler of Egypt, the entire body of Egypt’s supreme religious, judiciary and educational institution, Al Azhar, opposed the villainous schemes and plots of the French and their puppet of Muhammad Ali. In one voice, all the sheikhs of Al Azhar denounced the French conspiracy that provided for Egypt’s secession and colonization. And all the sheikhs of Al Azhar were indigenous, Egyptians — not from another continent like the traitor Muhammad Ali…..
The aforementioned situation and the characteristic love of Africans for the civilized, peaceful and benevolent Ottoman rule was attested in dozens and hundreds of cases; in Algiers, indigenous Berbers rejected and actively opposed the French curse of colonialism that befell on them in 1830.
In Somalia, indigenous Somali elders and sheikhs opposed the evil Freemasonic English colonials and called East Africa’s greatest, most civilized and most radiant nation to epic rebellion against the barbaric soldiers and agents of the Satanic queen Victoria. This explains only partly the evil US — UK intentions of revenge carried out against Somalia over the past 20 years.
In the last years of the 19th century, the Russian officer and explorer Bulatovich who visited one of the last Oromo Kings, Aba Jefar, reported the great affection, love, esteem and respect that the faraway King had about the Ottoman Empire to which his faith and allegiance as Muslim was eternally given.
”We renewed our interrupted conversation. The king asked me about Stambul (Turkey) and Mysyr (Egypt). He wanted to know if it was true that Stambul was the most powerful state in the world”. More analytically: ” The Oromos Need Aba Jefar’s Mysticism and Piety, not an Alliance with the Incestuous Amhara” (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-oromos-need-aba-jefars-mysticism-and-piety-not-an-alliance-with-the-incestuous-amhara.html).
This situation is not strange at all; there was no racism and no discrimination under the Ottoman Empire throughout its African territories. Black people moved often to the Ottoman province of Arabia for pilgrimage, and there they were greatly respected; Africans travelled often to Istanbul to study and they were so respected that they were promoted to positions of instructors, professors, scholars and leading academics.
Perverse History and Falsifications: All Due to Anglo-French Freemasonic Colonialism
There is another hidden reality: colonialism in Africa is basically tantamount to a war undertaken by the Freemasonic gangsters of England and France against the Ottoman Empire. This statement would have been wrong, if at the times of the colonization there had been other African states as sizeable as the Ottoman territories on African soil; but there was none.
This hidden reality has indeed a double face; the aforementioned describes only one part of the reality. The rest is summarized as follows: colonialism in Africa is basically tantamount to a war undertaken by the Freemasonic gangsters of England and France against Islam. This statement would have been wrong, if at the times of the colonization there had been other African religions as widespread as Islam in Africa; but there was none.
Added to the number of falsifications diffused by the Anglo-French and American academia is also the false mapping of Ottoman provinces in Africa. Well-prepared in Freemasonic ateliers and Orientalist institutes, these false maps depict the Ottoman provinces of Africa as extending only alongside the Mediterranean and the Red Sea coasts; they thus exclude from the Ottoman control the inland territories that were very wide indeed. The fake Western cartography of the African Ottoman territories helped the Freemasonic vicious plans of discord dissemination, cultural disintegration, and identity loss for the hundreds of millions of people who happen to live on the said territories.
A more crucial fallacy diffused by the Anglo-French colonial authorities among their few, selected and promoted, African subordinates who helped them implement the colonial subordination of Africa is the falsehood that Islam is not an African religion. This was due to the accurate knowledge of the indigenous perception of them, of which the colonials were fully aware; the Anglo-French have always known that they were and still are alien to Africa. They have perfect understanding of the fact that they have no right to exist on African soil, and they feel indeed guilty for the dreadful, criminal and absolutely inhuman deeds they had planned to perform and did actually perform on African soil; simply they manage to hide this feeling of theirs, which is an additional revelation of their evil nature.
Islam is indeed a genuine African religion; contrarily to Islam, Western Christianity is alien in Africa. Only Orthodox Coptic Christianity has a real historicity on African soil; but the Coptic literature is abundant in rejections, refutations and anathemas against Constantinople and Rome. This irrevocable reality concludes the case for the fake missionaries who preached a fake Jesus among Africans.
Even worse for them, their initial preaching was a systematic and evil lie; they promised a moral Christian society in Africa, and they delivered colonization, natural resources’ exploitation and robbery, immorality, cultural disorientation, westernization, Freemasonry and corruption, fallacious Greco-Romano-centrist dogmas, racist Humanities, and anti-African History for Africans.
The coverage was Christian preaching and the end result was the propagation of the Freemasonic incestuous practices in Africa. The Anglo-French criminals targeted at the same time the core of African Identity and the political — religious prevalence of Islam in the African North.
Why the Ottoman Empire Lost Control of its African Provinces?
Before examining the case for a Turkish African Policy, one has to confront a key question; the response to this question is the only criterion to apply on today’s possible Turkish Africa policy making. The question concerns the reasons for which the Ottoman Empire lost control of its most sizeable part — the African provinces.
This subject was never discussed in Modern Turkey; and this reality is part of the problem, because as situation, it contradicts the new ideas and the spirit brought forth by Kemal Ataturk.
In fact, the decadence of the Ottoman Empire had started long before Napoleon anchored at Abuqir. For long historical processes like that of the rise and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it is almost impossible to identify a date — turning point with accuracy. When the Ottoman army besieged Vienna in 1683, Istanbul was still viewed as a powerful and vast state. In reality, it was not. At that very moment, the Ottoman Empire was left behind in many sectors, particularly research and knowledge. In fact, it had already stopped coping with the rising forces of the West.
The reason the African provinces of the Ottoman Empire were lost and the reason Istanbul entered into a long period of decadence are absolutely identical. An anti-Islamic conception of the world, of Islam, and of human life itself, an evil and barbaric pseudo-theological system, and a lewd and coarse behavioural system had gradually risen to prominence.
This process was slow, and in the beginning, it did not concern the Ottoman Court; however, as the system was greatly propagated, it infiltrated the Sublime Porte and imposed its viewpoints on the Sultans, who could not (or rather feared to) oppose it without creating a great schism within Islam. This theological system is totally unrelated to the Seljuk sultanates and the early period Ottoman Empire.
But when the Sultans incorporated Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Yemen, and furthermore expanded in Africa in 1517, the socio-religious milieu of the backward and anti-Islamic theological group became part of the Ottoman Empire and could therefore most easily and almost uninterruptedly spread throughout the vast territory.
This barbaric system was founded by a heretic and ignorant sheikh, named Ibn Taimiya, whose faith was based on an earlier ignorant, heretic, and barbaric sheikh, named Ibn Hanbal.
Both Ibn Hanbal (780 – 855) and Ibn Taimiya (1263 – 1328) were imprisoned in their times respectively, which shows that they were overwhelmingly rejected by the rulers, the intellectuals, the scholars, and the religious leaders of the peak times of Islamic Civilization.
So viciously heretic Ibn Taimiya was that the elite of the then Islamic Scholarship and Philosophy described him as introducing anthropomorphic concepts into Islam which is tantamount to sheer polytheism and reflects an effort to christianize Islam.
For a theoretical offspring of Ibn Hanbal, such darkness could only be normal.
What was even more disastrous for Islam was Ibn Taimiya’s enmity for Knowledge, Research, Erudition, Art, Imperial Power and World Hegemony. Similarly catastrophic was his disregard and ignorance of the others, his admonition for self-focus his call for ignorance of the rising competition with the West, and his behavioural reductionism which is at the origin of today’s idiotic sheikhs who teach that Islam is limited into the Coran, the Hadith, and the so-called five pillars of Islam.
The ideas of Ibn Taimiya are not ideas, and at his times, he was dealt exactly in this way.
Ibn Taimiya’s ‘ideas’ turn empires to dust, Erudition to barbarism, Art to cannibalism, and desecrate any mosque and medressa (religious and academic school of the Islamic times) whereby they happen to be discussed.
It is not mere coincidence that today’s uneducated extremist sheikhs, who have read not a single page of Ibn Sina or Mohyeldin Ibn Arabi, speak with so high esteem of the ignorant and silly sheikh of the 13th century.
The diffusion of Ibn Taimiya’s pseudo-theological school in the expanded Ottoman Empire is the central reason for the Caliphate’s decadence. Although we cannot select a specific date as beginning of the decadence, we can certainly indicate a symbolic date as that of the prevalence of Ibn Taimiya’s school among the ruling elite of the Ottoman Empire.
The destruction of the Istanbul Observatory by the filthy, barbaric and pseudo-Islamic mob is the date of End of Islamic Civilization, and marks the beginning of the End of the Ottoman Empire. This occurred in 1580, just three years after the chief astronomer Taqi al din Effendi had convinced the Sultan to have it erected so that the Caliphate preserves its competitive edge over Western Europe.
The Sultan, despite his great admiration for Taqi al din Effendi, did not dare to use military force and exterminate to the last these barbaric animals, as he should have done. By opting for social peace, the Sultan allowed the flowers of evil propagate further and further until they covered the entire vast empire whose days were unquestionably numbered.
However, so great the empire was that it took more than 340 years to completely disintegrate. In parallel, the Islamic Civilization gradually disappeared, and the interest for knowledge was replaced with the misery and the barbarism of the impoverished mob — all those who limit Islam into five prayers per day, fast during Ramadan, and abstention from alcohol and premarital sex.
With the darkness of Ibn Taimiya spreading overwhelmingly, no correct judgement could be effectuated as regards the possible targets of the French and the English, the internal socio-political and cultural developments in the two countries, and the eventual effective defence line that the Ottoman Empire could adopt against them. The sheikhs of darkness advised the Sultan to stupidly disregard England and France but Allah would save him…….
When the first Orientalists reached India, Iran, Egypt and Africa, it was too late for the Sultan (as well as the Shah and the Great Mogul) to react and preserve their territories from the foreign attack which was fed by the ignorance spread throughout the Caliphate (as well as Safevid / Qajar Iran and Mogul India) by the idiotic followers of Ibn Taimiya. In few decades, the Orientalists collected an enormous amount of data and information about the historical past and the terrible situation of darkness that prevailed over all the territories controlled by Istanbul, Ispahan and Delhi.
It would merely take a few more decades for them and their disciples to setup an environment of total dependence of the undefended and ignorant Muslim populations who were thus exposed to colonialism, further dependence, lack of identity, and impossibility to react due to ignorance.
This situation has prevailed until today; it was only opposed by Kemal Ataturk in the Ottoman territories that he managed to save out of the vicious Freemasonic control of the Anglo-French. But the founder of Modern Turkey ruled peacefully only for ca. 15 years, and dedicated his energy into the rebuilding and the reassessment of the territories under his control.
Unfortunately, his associates, disciples and followers failed to expand his thought and use it as an analytical instrument for understanding what happened in the other Ottoman territories that were under colonial control in 1935 or 1945, and what Turkey’s response to that situation should be.
Conventionalism and conformism prevailed, and convenient modesty became the supreme advisor; subsequently, the Kemalist establishment denied to study how to carry out Kemal Ataturk’s policies on Ottoman territory outside Turkey. Quite unfortunately, this would be badly needed not only for the political establishment of Ankara but also for the colonized populations in Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Sanaa, Medina, Algiers, Tunis and elsewhere.
The Turkish secular establishment, by disregarding Africa, simply betrayed Kemal Ataturk himself; had they made of him the example of modern state founder for the Berbers, the Tuareg, the Hadhramawtis, the Aramaeans of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, the Palestinians, the Egyptians, the Oromos, the Somalis, the Afars and the Sudanese, they would have offered really strong chances for development and independence to those nations whose ancestors shared the same, wealthy, politically independent, highly civilized and human state as theirs.
Today’s Turkey has an obligation to the Black Continent (if not in its entirety, at least for all the Ottoman territories in Africa): to help all these nations achieve identity preservation, cultural integrity, national self-determination, and historical reassessment without the presence of the evil Anglo-French colonials. In this regard, the Turkish government will be an auspicious ally of oppressed nations, persecuted ethno-religious groups, and all those who reject the fake borderlines that currently exist in Africa.
There is only one wish for all the African Muslims whose ancestors lived on Ottoman territory or Ottoman dependencies’ lands: One Secular State for the entire North-eastern Africa that underscores its Hamitic — Kushitic historicity and its Islamic faith. On this subject, I will expand more specifically in a forthcoming article.
Note
Picture: the fake borders of the Ottoman Empire in Africa have been drawn by colonial historiographers in their evil and desperate effort to minimize the unprecedented Ottoman prevalence throughout Africa. From: http://staff.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/~cwalton/World%20Two/ottomanmap.jpg
By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ] Due to orchestrated misinformation which has been overwhelmingly diffused worldwide over many successive decades, the global public opinion has been left in mysteries as regards the root causes of the interminable Middle Eastern conflicts.
For the perpetrators of the misinformation campaign to achieve their targets, the easiest way was to create an entirely fake scene of theater with the opponents plunged in ignorance about their true identity. The introduction of new identities was not a process to be completed in a few years. In fact, it took more than one century to complete the preliminary stage.
Effectively, accurate information can be quickly and easily obtained by anyone seeking to understand the Oriental problem. Above all, it’s a problem of fallacious terms, fake identities, ideas projected on enemies, and prevailing confusion. In fact, the entire problem hinges on the Anglo-French colonialism and expansionism at the prejudice of the Ottoman Empire that before just 212 years controlled the entire are between Morocco and Iran, every territory between Caucasus and the Horn of Africa, and all lands stretching between Oman and Austria.
To destroy the Ottoman Empire, the Freemasonic, Anti-Christian regimes of England and France introduced a wide range of tactics, establishing a link between the academic disciplines of Humanities (mainly specialized in the various provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Iran and Mogul India) and the political – military intelligence. From this successfully financed project emanated many fake terms that did not exist before and are indeed by themselves meaningless.
These terms would subsequently be “exported” (along with the entirely fake interpretation of the past and present, which was coined as “Orientalism” and accommodated in many disciplines) to selected youth, mostly belonging in minorities and /or targeted ethno-religious groups; this colonial policy was geared to make the targeted groups believe a version of History totally opposite to the reality and absolutely unfavorable to the interests of the world Islam and the Ottoman Empire.
Exemplary fake terms are precisely the nonsensical “Middle East,” “Near East” and “Far East” that define vast circumferences as per their position with respect to another area, namely “Western Europe” which is considered — idiotically and discriminatorily — as the “center”. In fact, there is no Middle East; “Middle” as per what? “Near East” is another fake term to describe parts of the Ottoman Empire in Western Asia, and with more frequent use for periods of the Antiquity.
If fake geographical and chronological terms set the stage for chaos and drama, it is sure that fabricated ethnic / national terms make it possible for thunderstorms to gather.
Arabs vs. Israel: Two Fake Terms for a Century of Conflicts and Bloodshed
Most of the people allover the world imagine that all troubles in the so-called area of the Middle East are due to the Arab — Israeli conflict. There is no more inaccurate and more false perception of events and developments than this.
In fact, the so-called Arabs are not Arabs, and the so-called Israelis are totally unrelated from Israel.
This reality has been systematically kept under silence by the Anglo-French Freemasonic academia (the Orientalists) and diplomacy.
Arabs exist only in Hedjaz — There is no Arab outside Arabia.
In fact, throughout the Atlas (Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria and Tunisia), Libya, Niger and Mali, the totality of the local populations are Hamitic Berbers (Amazigh) and Tuaregs. Either they speak both languages, Amazigh and Arabic, or only one of them, they are Berbers who came to (eventually) learn Arabic because they accepted Islam. This phenomenon involved can therefore be described as linguistic arabization, and it has no impact on the ethnic or cultural levels.
Similarly, in Egypt, the bulk of the population are Egyptians, namely Copts who at a certain moment accepted Islam, and have been progressively arabized at the linguistic level.
The Nubians either in Egypt or in Sudan speak Nubian and Arabic, but have never been arabized; Arabic is merely their religious language.
The Sudanese Arabic speaking people (ca. half the country’s population) are not Arabs either; they are Kushites (indigenous in Ancient Sudan, which was called Ethiopia by the Greeks and the Romans) who, after being Christianized (4th — 5th century CE), progressively accepted Islam (9th — 16th century CE), and learned Arabic.
The Yemenites and the Omanis are not Arabic either; they are descendents of the Ancient Yemenites and Omanis, and Mahrani, Soqotri and Dhofari (the latter in Oman) are the surviving forms of the pre-Islamic Yemenite languages that have been mercilessly persecuted by Yemen’s and Oman’s colonial Pan-Arabist regimes in the same way Amazigh has been mosntrously discriminated in NW Africa.
Finally, the central part of the Ottoman provinces, today’s pseudo-states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the Emirates are not inhabited by Arabs but Aramaeans who have been linguistically arabized following their islamization (7th — 18th century CE).
In all these cases, the different modern idioms used (and falsely called as Modern Arabic dialects) are different linguistic amalgamations of the aforementioned (different per area) indigenous languages with Arabic. Furthermore, the official languages used in the administration and the mass media originate from a fabricated form of Modern Arabic that was composed in the 19th and early 20th century in Egypt (the Ottoman province that was under colonial tutelage longer than any other). Useless to add, the various dialects are totally disdained as “slang” by the Pan-Arabist regimes, and consequently all these populations do not truly have a national language of their own.
Useless to add that ethnic amalgamation did not truly take place following the Islamic expansion, as the Freemasonic Anglo-French forgers have long pretended, because the Arabs, who moved out of Hedjaz and settled in various parts of the early Caliphate, were very few if compared with the local populations. The total population of Arabia at the times of Prophet Muhammad was less than the population of just one significant Egyptian, Aramaean, Persian or Roman city.
The so-called State of Israel is a fake; its correct name is Judah
On the other hand, the Jews who returned to Palestine according the Zionist plan have nothing to do with the Ancient Israelites, who after Solomon’s death (930 BCE) formed the Northern Hebrew state Israel with ten (10) tribes and capital at Samaria; the Jews are the descendents of the Southern Hebrew state Judah (with two tribes and capital at Jerusalem) that was taken to exile at Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar (587 BCE), returned to Judea after the Persian invasion of Babylonia (539 BCE), setup a state (named Judah) that was finally annexed by the Romans, who after the suppression of the Jerusalem revolt, dispersed them out of that land.
Contrarily with the Jews, the Israelites, the ten tribes of the Northern state had been taken to exile by the monotheist emperor of Assyria Sharrukin, relocated at the north-easternmost confines of the Assyrian empire (721 BCE) and thence migrated to the northwest (ca. 640 BCE), along with the entire population of the Assyrians, who were the ruling elite of the immense empire. After the end of Assurbanipal’s reign (625 BCE), Assyria soon collapsed (614, 612, 609 BCE), and the invading Babylonian armies found only a few Assyrian garrisons. Assyrian was never written after 612 BCE because simply there were no Assyrian scribes and people in the wider area of Mesopotamia; the same is valid for the Israelites who remained known as the ten lost tribes. According to Biblical prophecies, they will return at the End of Times — but of course this concerns them, not the Jews who never lost their identity, language and religion.
As a matter of fact, the Biblical precision is absolutely sufficient of its own, and one needs vicious religious swindlers and preachers of Satan to manage to have it greatly altered and widely misunderstood.
The prefabricated pseudo-return of the Zionist Jews in Palestine has been totally disregarded by all Biblical prophecies that do not speak of it at all — in striking contrast with what preach today various Evangelicals and other pseudo-Christians who, hiding their evil Freemasonic identity, emphatically pretend that Christians have to be tolerant toward the Jews. Of course, these false prophets are disqualified by 2000 years of genuinely anti-Jewish Christianity, as a matter of fact, they deserve no further effort of refutation.
Freemasonic Trickery “Arabs vs. Israel”: A 19th Century Machination
The Freemasonic Anglo-French plan of decomposition of the Ottoman Empire was the World History’s most execrable, most perverse, and most ominous plan and deed. In fact, it turned the vast area ruled in peace by the Ottoman Empire to an interminable chain of vicious conflicts, hysterical hatred, inhuman rancor, and bestial vindictiveness that will all be taken into account in the forthcoming, merciless dismantlement of the wicked, pseudo-Christian Western world.
The different inhabitants of the targeted and threatened Ottoman provinces, even if these provinces were detached for some time (illegal occupation of Egypt by the French in 1798 — illegal proclamation of vice-royalty by Muhammad Ali who was totally rejected by the entire religious establishment of Al Azhar and all the Egyptians — illegal disembark of the French at Algiers in 1830), would soon make revolution against the French (and their pseudo-enemies, the English who played their role hypocritically pretending to oppose the French but having in mind to further engulf the Ottoman Empire into wrong policies and catastrophic tactics) in order to eliminate the inimical presence from their lands.
To avert an indigenous reaction and revolution that would drive them away, and to plan for hundreds of years of supremacy and exploitation, the Anglo-French had to
a. systematically carry out practices of extensive financial corruption and bribery in order to force individuals with weak personality to deviate and betray their own country, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, and
b. compose a vast cultural — socio-behavioural — educational — academic — intellectual — ideological system of alteration that, without making of the locals true anthropological copies of the Anglo-French citizens (already devious from Christianity due to the already effectuated Freemasonic penetration of the Western European societies), would condemn them to a permanent socio-behavioural — educational — cultural — academic impasse that would later make the local societies explode.
Then started the extensive practice of “Bon pour l’ Orient” which means that for every sector of knowledge in Orientalism there would be three levels of conclusions:
1. the disturbing truth — this would become known to the Anglo-French Freemasonic Orientalists, researchers and explorers but would be kept hidden for all the rest, due to its catastrophic impact for the Freemasonic olans, if publicly and widely admitted.
2. the ordinary falsification of truth — this would be diffused / disclosed by the Freemasonic Orientalist scholars in order to become widely known as an element of academic knowledge, average education and public culture of the Western citizens; and
3. the advanced distortion of the truth — this would be diffused among students originating from the colonized countries, detached provinces of the Ottoman Empire, African territories, Iran, India, China, etc., in order to make of them perfect tools in the hands of their dishonest professors and the respective diplomats back in the students’ countries; the latter would support the students and help them obtain positions in their own pseudo-countries in order to thus continue the “official” diffusion of the Orientalist distortion and associated theoretical falsehood.
The Fabrication of Pan-Arabism
Long before driving Michel Aflaq to the point of preaching Ba’athism and Arab nationalism (for those who were not Arabs), the Anglo-French Orientalists had to and did effectively create the fake “Arab” of theirs, in Alexandria, Algiers and Beirut first.
Before Napoleon’s arrival, no one among the various populations of the Ottoman Empire from Mosul to Khartoum and from Oman to Algiers considered themselves as Arabs, except of course the inhabitants of Hedjaz and the desert Najd; for more than two centuries (17th and 18th), numerous English and French travelers moved throughout the Ottoman Empire and reported about the prevailing situation in the vast territory.
It is not by coincidence that Napoleon traveled to Egypt (1798) secretively and accompanied by an unprecedented number of French scholars, researchers, explorers and engineers. The hit against the Ottoman Empire had been planned to be multifaceted. These same scholars examined the prevailing situation and compared it with the earlier collected data.
Islamic Disintegration and Ottoman Decadence due to Ibn Taimiya
Their conclusion was true; by miracle, Islam did not exist anymore! Certainly, the outright majority of the inhabitants were looking like Muslims, praying five times per day and fasting in Ramadan, but the driving force of the Islamic world, namely the Islamic science, the Islamic philosophy, the Islamic knowledge, the Islamic art had disappeared. In their place, a barbaric pseudo-theological system had become predominant, plunging the entire society into absolute barbarism, ignorance, disregard for the art, philosophy and knowledge, and — worse — hatred for science (even for what Islamic science had been for more than 1100 years). This minimalist, genuinely un-Islamic, system imposed total disrespect for the “Other” and, even more catastrophically, absolute indifference for what Islam had been as a theoretic — intellectual — cultural — academic system.
For the — apparently pseudo-Muslim — sheikhs who were in control of the widely analphabetic masses, this fake Islam was just limited in the Quran and the Hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sermons and admonitions, interpretations and discourses). This paranoid system imposed a catastrophic “model,” namely the tiny and unimportant village of Mecca of the times of the Prophet, and not the greatness of Baghdad of Harun al Rashid or other magnificent centers acknowledged for scientific, cultural, intellectual and political supremacy and prestige at the times of the Islamic Golden Era, such as Seville, Granada, Samarqand, Kairouan, Ghazna, Maragheh, Caesarea, Ganja, Delhi, Cairo, Soltanieh, Bukhara, Shiraz, Esfahan, Konya, Damascus, etc. It was clear that the ignorant and uneducated sheikhs were determined to reduce their audience to absolute imbecility in order to easily control them. They therefore discredited by themselves and with no restrain the quasi-totality of the Islamic phenomenon that they ignored beforehand.
Certainly the environment around the Sultan in Istanbul was different, but the influence of these sheikhs was predominant there too, reducing every interest for science, knowledge, art and philosophy to extreme. It was clear that a very negative theological system had prevailed, eliminated all the rest, and threatened the entire phenomenon of Islamic Civilization with extinction and the imperial elite (the Sublime Porte) with overthrowing. Of course, they would never terminate the Caliphate, but by controlling the key position of Sheikhulislam and by getting involved in the education process of the Sultan’s sons, princes and crown princes, these ignorant, barbaric and virtually un-Islamic sheikhs could almost control the Ottoman Empire from within.
Today we know that this system started with Islam’s most idiotic, execrable and filthy “theologian” Ibn Taimiyah, a crypto-Christian who intentionally attempted to aptly de-Islamize and covertly Christianize Islam. Ibn Taimiyah’s imprisonment (based on accusations for anthropomorphism) is certainly one of the most unfortunate moments of the Islamic History; he should have been lynched in streets and cut to pieces alive as the worst enemy of the Islamic Civilization, and as a determined and accomplished Satanist.
It is questionable whether the early European travelers and Orientalists really identified the origins of the system they were confronted with in the daily life throughout the late 18th – early 19th century Ottoman Empire. But of course, this would matter little to them. What was of primordial importance was the fact that the situation offered them an otherwise unexpected and greatly important tool of decomposition of the Ottoman Empire.
The Projection of the Theory of Nation throughout the Ottoman Empire
To first destabilize and then destroy the Ottoman Empire, the Anglo-French Freemasons used the same tools that they had already used against the “absolutist” monarchies; the replacement of the concept of “subject” with that of “citizen,” and the diffusion of the early form of liberal (John Locke) and/or romantic (Johann Gottfried Herder) nationalism, which was closely associated with the theory of “public sovereignty”.
The imaginative concept of the “nation” was effectively used by the Anglo-French and their agents and puppets in the various targeted parts of the Ottoman Empire in order to create fictional nations that would be (due to their elites who were “educated” in Paris and London) perfect tools of destruction of the Ottoman Empire. In South Balkans, Albanians, Southern Slavs, and Vlachians were suitably described as “Greeks”. A modern Greek language was fabricated on the basis of the Common Alexandrian Greek dialect of the Late Antiquity (New Testament Greek) and brutally imposed on all the unfortunate populations that happened to be enclosed within the borders of the so-called “Greek” state in 1829.
The formation of the concept of ?Arab’ started in Alexandria after Muhammad Ali (an Albanian origin officer from the Macedonian province of the Ottoman Empire) was supported by the Anglo-French to covertly detach from Sultan’s control a land that was not his.
The concept of “Arab” incorporated all the socio-behavioural attributes that the Anglo-French Orientalists (had) attested in the local populations. Indeed, the socio-behavioural parameter of concept of “Arab” is far stronger than the linguistic one. This happens because the socio-behavioural parameter is an absolutely fictional element.
The socio-behavioural attributes of the populations first encountered by the Anglo-French Orientalists in Alexandria, Egypt and the Phoenician coast were
1. neither original (Egyptian or Phoenician)
2. nor Islamic (as attested in many places during the Golden Era of Islam)
3. nor Arab (as attested in Arabia before Prophet Muhammad).
They were merely degenerated attributes and elements of a socio-behavioural system heavily influenced by the diffusion of the barbarizing system of Ibn Taimiya (1263 – 1328).
Here, it is essential to stress two critical points:
1. Due to the preaching of Islam by Prophet Muhammad among the Arabs, the marginal nation of Arabia have been culturally, religiously, spiritually, intellectually, and socio-behaviourally de-arabized and overwhelmingly aramaeanized (in the sense that the Aramaean culture and socio-behavioural system had incorporated Biblical and New Testamentary beliefs, narratives, concepts, ideals and values).
However, Muhammad failed to totally uproot the pre-Islamic barbarism of the Arabs (effectively coined as Jahiliyyah) and when rejection against the Prophet became impossible to utter (after Muhammad’s return to Mecca), the real opponents of Islam went hiding as Muslims and started diffusing (within Islamic theoretical context) various anti-Islamic concepts that were difficult to detect as they evolved around issues pertaining to Arab identity and socio-behavioural system.
2. For many centuries after Islam’s early diffusion, several concepts and elements of Arab identity and socio-behavioural system (considered as explicit barbarism by the true Muslims either they were of Arab or non-Arab origin) survived within Islam because they repeatedly became effective tools at the hands of Muslim theologians who were virtually anti-Islamic but dared not refute Islam in public. Amalgamated with a strong dose of conservatism, tribalism, and excessive anti-dialectical (kalam) theorizing, Ahmed ibn Hanbal’s system became the recipient of all anterior forms and surviving concepts of Arab socio-behavioural system.
Ahmed ibn Hanbal (780 – 855) was never considered as an important theologian while alive, back at the times of Islam’s Golden Era; he was marginal and despised as of extremely poor skills in philosophy; this was the reason of his anti-dialectical diatribes. He was imprisoned as he was considered as threat against the progress and the prosperity of the Islamic Caliphate, and as a menace for the Islamic Civilization. If he is today considered as the founder of one of the four important schools of Islamic Jurisprudence, this is due to the fact that Ibn Taimiya himself was a Hanbalite, and the diffusion of Ibn Taimiya theological doctrine strengthened the system from which it originated.
The aforementioned makes it clear that the socio-behavioural attributes of the populations that the Anglo-French Orientalists first encountered in 18th — 19th century Alexandria, Egypt and Phoenician coast were degenerated and perverted elements that constituted a dramatic drawback for the Islamic Civilization, an unstoppable decadence for the Ottoman Empire, and an inevitable destruction for the nation whose profile would be composed around them.
The nationalist concept of the “Arab”
This was precisely what the Anglo-French Orientalists, researchers and diplomats managed to carry out; they cultivated these socio-behavioural attributes that clearly belong to nomadic people of the pre-Islamic era. The most uneducated aspect of Arab Bedouin was therefore promoted to “expression of identity” for the Aramaeans of Damascus and Baghdad, the Phoenicians of Beirut and Lattakiyeh, the Egyptians of Alexandria, and the Berbers of Algiers. This was the epitome of the Anglo-French evildoing.
The formation of the nationalist concept of the “Arab” evolved around the following axes that had been elaborated by the Anglo-French Orientalists and diplomats:
1 – Accentuated disregard for the pre-Islamic past of their native lands — for all populations targeted with the “Arab national identity projection” plan.
This occurred of course in striking contrast with the Anglo-French attitude toward “nations” that they planned to promote and help expand, such as Greeks, Serbs, Armenians, Persians, Abyssinians; among these “nations,” the Anglo-French Orientalists promoted an excessive interest for the falsified past, a real archaeolatry, and diffused falsified versions of History that intentionally and distortedly over-magnify the said nations’ past.
Indicatively, suffice it to state here that the disregard of the Egyptian past, which was triggered in Egypt by the Angklo-French, had as result that for more than 100 years after Champollion deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphics, there was not a single Egyptian scholar able to read Classical Egyptian.
2 – Advanced dissociation from their native but forgotten tongue (Aramaean, Mahrani, Socotri, Kushitic, Coptic, Berber — as per the respective geographic area); to this measure were later added the “needed” arabization campaigns that prove by themselves that the targeted populations were not Arab of origin.
3 – Weak and discredited educational system
4 – Indifference for reading, wide culture, encyclopedic education, cultural activities, intellectual life, personal improvement
5 – Servile admiration of the technological achievements of the Western world
6 – Slavish attitude toward the colonial diplomats, military and academics, combined with a parallel but disproportionate egoism and arrogance toward indigenous people of lower classes
7 – Absolute lack of civic sense
8 – Absence of any familiarity with (daily) life in urban centers
9 – Indifference for the ?outer world’ which means inability to demonstrate interest for anything beyond the narrow circle of life (the community in which every ?Arab’ lives). Here I have to stress that I mainly refer to the formation period which is the 19th century; inability to cope with movements like that of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey underscored this attitude among ?Syrians’, ?Iraqis’, ?Palestinians’, Arabs, Yemenites and Egyptians during the period 1920 – 1940. The statement may look exaggerated if referring to our global world, but it is still very valid. Who considers possible in today’s Saudi Arabia for a university to offer courses on Pre-Columbian Mexico, Assyrian — Babylonian Cuneiform or Manichaean texts from Central Asia?
10 – Creation of a divide among the local populations’ mindset and attitude: those, who admire and are attracted by the Western lifestyle, mindset and attitude, fail to understand the underlying concepts and principles whereas those, who oppose them, fail to perceive (let alone express) their rejection in terms of concepts, principles and values.
Certainly, the Anglo-French Orientalists and diplomats did not generate this lack of concepts, principles and values in the minds of their victims; these had already been transformed into mere rules during the long period of diffusion of Ibn Taimiya’s system and disintegration of the Islamic Civilization. But the emergence of a socio-behavioural system whereby the subjects of a country act on the basis of rules and prescriptions (and not concepts, principles and critical thinking) is greatly beneficial to those attempting to manipulate that society, as it eliminates unpredictable developments, and thus facilitates the overall game.
11 – Exploitation of the aforementioned divide and the ensued clash between those attracted by the Western lifestyle, mindset and attitude and those opposing them.
A. The former, due to their attitude (as per above), never reached the level of proper evaluation and real understanding of the Western lifestyle and mindset; as they constituted a small social minority, they relied on Western support totally, and because of this, they never put conditions for their readiness to betray their country in order to further ensure the “privileges” that they had due to their cooperation with the Anglo-French Orientalists, diplomats, and businessmen. They thus failed to ever understand the functionality of the Western lifestyle and truly make it work for themselves — the only exception in this regard was Kemal Ataturk. And this made the great difference between Turkey and the miserable pseudo-Arab states for so many decades.
The Western attitude toward the 19th century Ottoman citizens who were attracted by the Western lifestyle and mindset demonstrates that the colonial powers did not want to “correct” the Islamic world and merely make their model common to all but simply intended to infiltrate and destroy, spread chaos and conflicts.
In fact, in not a single part of the colonized Ottoman Empire (between 1798 and 1918) can one detect an effort deployed by the Anglo-French Orientalists, diplomats, and businessmen in order to truly educate the pro-Western elements of the local societies and make of them integral and genuine Western individuals. The Anglo-French interest villainously and perversely evolved around the two axes:
• exploitation of the natural resources and
• destruction of the Ottoman Empire.
That’s why the historical role for the pro-Western elements proved to be calamitous and ominous.
B. The latter, due to their attitude (as per above), never formulated their opposition to the Western lifestyle, on the basis of a pertinent perception and proper evaluation of the Western lifestyle and mindset. Their rejection was not a properly speaking theoretical reaction, based on comparisons between different concepts and principles; it was merely an instinctive reaction that helped only reassert the main elements of their socio-behavioural system, stress their characteristics, and consolidate their barbarism. The phenomenon was repeated very often, and it thus had a disastrous impact on them over the span of two centuries.
As they constituted the majority, they represented the epicenter of the Anglo-French Freemasonic colonial policy making; although deprived of power (which would allow them express their reaction in a disastrous manner mainly for them), they would basically be allowed to shape the developments — according to the wishes of the Anglo-French colonial elites.
The importance of the majority of the depersonalized, ignorant and misguided populations of the Ottoman provinces for the Anglo-French Freemasonic colonial policy making consisted mainly in the need of the colonial powers to avert the true search for identity, conceptual approach to facts and developments, and in general, everything that would make of them a force of Ottoman (and Islamic) renaissance.
Finally, the model of the fabricated “Arab” was ready at around the end of the 19th century. The Anglo-French Orientalists realized that they would consolidate it with a dose of Islamism, which not only would be totally unrelated to the Golden Era of Islam but also form a further step in the degeneration of Islam.
It goes without saying that the situation of the Islamic faith and society further deteriorated during the 19th century because of its own downward dynamics. The rise of the Wahhabism, the absurd barbarism of Abdelwahhab, a heretic Arab of the Nejd desert, was widely accepted among the disoriented masses of the Arabic speaking Aramaeans of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and the southern coastlands of the Persian Gulf. The Anglo-French colonial agents and diplomats did everything they could to help diffuse both, Wahhabism itself and several of its constituent elements among the non Wahhabi populations of Egypt, Atlas and India.
The addition of selected elements taken from the degenerated ?Islamisms’ of Jamal al-din al Afghani (1838 — 1897; Freemason and teacher of the next mentioned), Muhammad Abdu (1849 — 1905; the Freemason Mufti of Egypt!), Hassan al Banna (1906 — 1949, a declared Hanbali of Egypt) and Sayyid Qutb (1906 — 1966) onto the final portrait of the “Arab” helped the Anglo-French Freemasonic Orientalists deliver an extremely inconsistent model that undoubtedly destroys every people on whom it may be projected. With the materialization of this policy and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the path was open for the fake but explosive “Middle East” to be incepted. When Michel Aflaq (1910 — 1989; another Freemason), an Ottoman Christian citizen of Aramaean descent who belonged to the Greek Antiochian Orthodox rite, studied in Paris in the 1930s, the fake tableau of the Middle East was available and ready to accommodate additional pseudo-theories (like Ba’athism). Furthermore, the “Arab” pseudo-states were about to be proclaimed in order to exclusively serve the nefarious interests of the Anglo-French Freemasonry.
Fake State of Israel and Pseudo-Arab States: the Two Faces of the Same Coin
Following the end of WW II, the colonial establishments of France and England set in motion the next major operation, namely the formation of a great number of pseudo-Arab states that were geared to clash with the equally fake state of Israel.
Due to the overwhelming propagation of the Pan-Arabist fallacy, very few people are now able to understand that the fake state of Israel simply could not exist without the parallel existence of the fake “Arab” states.
The reason for which the fake state of Israel expanded in 1948 and 1967 has a name: “Arabs,” i.e. a fake nation composed out of numerous states and ignorant and besotted populations – victims that fail to imagine their true identity, understand the historical realities, and achieve an accurate perception of the current situation. Only “Arab” pseudo-states, administered by blinded, ignorant, idiotic and barbaric magistrates, can fail to identify the plausible solutions that can apply in the case of the fake state of Israel.
The extensive demonization of the “Arabs,” the fallacious identification of Islam with the non existent “Arabs,” the identification of the “Arab” and the (associated) “Muslim” with an unknown but barbaric “Other” and the irritation of the Western and global audiences with vilifying narratives about appalling practices and lifestyles that typify the “villainous other” are all methods of justification of the illegal presence of the non Israelite, and definitely anti-Jewish, Zionist state of fake Israel.
But if the “Arabs” had not been fabricated, all these methods would not have been carried out, and the absurd existence of the all-threatening and none-protecting pseudo-state Israel would not have been justifiable to anybody.
In fact, if a diverse reality of Berbers, Egyptian Copts, Kushites, Yemenites, and Aramaeans, along with the Hedjaz (real) Arabs existed in the wider area between the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, who would prepare the comical and fake maps of a huge threatening Arab League territory with the adjacent minimal portion of the fake state of Israel which becomes thus “justifiable”?
Who could ever attempt to vilify the Phoenicians and portray the Aramaeans as perilous?
How could Egypt be denigrated if Muslims and Christians spoke Coptic?
What possibly negative impression could have a Berber Algeria ever made to people in Europe and America?
Who among the Western nations would not love Sudan if Africa’s largest country were named Ethiopia and included in its modified territory the Oromos who are the Kushitic brethren of today’s Arabic-speaking Sudanese?
And is it not evident that Yemen, divided into Sheba (North) and Hadhramawt (South), would radiate in peace?
Who prevented this peaceful and human situation from coming to existence?
Who disseminated discord and pestilence throughout the united and peaceful Ottoman territory?
Who propagated among the Western nations the ceaselessly repeated arabization plans that have been undertaken by the dictators of all the pseudo-Arab countries?
Le Monde, Le Figaro, Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Economist, New York Times, Time, Los Angeles Times, L’ Orient Le Jour, Daily Telegraph — and all the other Freemasonic mass media that supported the Zionist fabrication pseudo-Israel.
Their fake “Arab” is an inexistent nation born to be the scapegoat of all defamation campaigns, the tool of extermination for so many countries and peoples absorbed within the fake “Arab” melting pot and the fallacious “Israeli” — “Arab” maelstrom.
The arabization projects for the Berbers, the Tuareg, the Copts, the Aramaeans, the Yemenites, the Omanis, the Nubians and the Kushites are the antipodes of the Jewish Holocaust, an unspeakable multi-genocide carried out against more than 230 million people.
In Syria, the arabization project took also the form of persecution of the Aramaic language and eradication of the Aramaean Heritage. Last deplorable measure was the shutting down of the Aramaic Institute in Damascus. I republish herewith an insightful published in the leading Aramaean portal Aram Nahrin, I will further expand in several forthcoming articles.
On 2nd of April 2010 an article was published by the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Easter Sunday: A Syrian bid to resurrect Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ” (see below) on the closing of the Aramaic institute initiated in 2007 at the university of Damascus.
The reasons seem to be the deep-seated hatred and paranoia towards Israel. A newspaper in Syria published an article saying that the used square Aramaic characters resemble the Hebrew alphabet used now in Israel. Because the hatred towards everything which is ?Jews’ or ?Israel’ seem so huge, that the university of Damascus decided to freeze the course for the time being. This is a monumental insanity that goes beyond any imagination!
Most probably this horrendous blind hatred towards Israel will at the end lead not only Syria, but also other Islamic “Arabic” countries to fire and destruction. And probably it is this insanity and blind hatred that finally will lead to the prophecy of Isaiah 17:1-3 to be carried out, “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from [being] a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. 2 The cities of Aroer [are] forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make [them] afraid.
Historians tell that Damascus is the only city which continuously has been inhabited during its existence. In the prophecy of Isaiah we are told about the total annihilation of Damascus resulting in ruinous heap which never will be inhabited. There has been suggested that when a war will start in the Middle-East between Israel and it’s mainly Islamic “Arabic” neighbours (prophecy Psalms 83), Damascus probably will be completely annihilated by nuclear bomb or Scalar weaponry (Amongst those who posses the scalar weaponry are Israel, Russia, China and few other countries. The US posses the less advanced HAARP system).
In the article of Christian Science Monitor David Taylor is being quoted. On the closing of the Aramaic institute he says, “It would also be a travesty for Syria”. Worse, it would be a monumental travesty.
More than 1,5 million Arameans in Syria
Syria is one of the less countries where the Arameans relatively enjoy freedom. Although the Aramean cultural heritage is being oppressed (many of them being assimilated and “Arabised”), yet on the religious level the various Aramean denominations in Syria are able to exercise their faith in freedom in contradiction to for example the situation of the Copts in Egypt who suffer terrible under fanaticism and barbarism (see also our letter to the president of Syria, Bashar Assad on 6-7-2009)
Hafes Assad (president 1971-2000), the father of present president of Syria, Bashar Assad, ruled Syria with discipline and tight hand. Fanaticism, like for example in Egypt, was not tolerated and suppressed mercilessly. The same method of combating fanaticism and intolerance was also applied in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. The power of the both rulers, Saddam and Hafes, was based on the secular Ba’at party, something which opened the way for the Aramean Christians to climb on the political ladder. An example was the East- Aramean Chaldean minister of Iraq Tarreq Aziz.
The various Aramean denominations in Syria always enjoyed certain degree of freedom of religion. To build and to restore of churches, schools and other buildings in Syria is very normal in contrast to some other Islamic countries where even building a wall is forbidden.
There are in Syria more than 1,5 million Arameans of various denominations, namely: Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Syrian Melkite Catholic, Syrian Melkite orthodox, Nestorian Chaldeans, Nestorian Assyrians and Syrian Maronites.
In the West Syria is heavily being criticized and have been put on black list of “rogue” states. The same qualifications was attributed to Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The West would bring so-called “civilization,” ?democracy” and “respect for human rights” to Iraq. Result: bloodbaths, uranium poison, more than million Iraqis killed, malformed children, thousands orphans and widows, million homeless, broken families, destroyed churches, homes and other buildings.
The vast majority of the Iraqi people is looking with outrage and condemnation to the “liberation” and “bringing democracy and human rights” to Iraq by the West. The sympathy for the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe to George Bush during his visit to Iraq, is a vivid proof for the condemnation of the Iraqi people for what in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” has been done to their country. Obviously, the Aramean Christians are not interested to bring similar “democracy” and “human rights” by the West to Syria. Under regime of Saddam Hussein, the Aramean Christians enjoyed respect, honor and occupied high positions in the politics, the army and flourished economically very well. After “civilization,” “human rights” and “democracy” was brought to Iraq by the West, the majority of the Aramean people left Iraq, have lost their social, political positions, are marginalized and are a easy prey for fanatical groups and ordinary criminals. Of course nobody is interested in this kind of “democracy” and “human rights”.
Jesus Christ is remembered on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but the language he spoke is all but forgotten. A controversial new language institute in Syria seeks to save Aramaic.
Malula, Syria
While millions will commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ this Easter Sunday, only a handful of people could discuss his works in the language of his day: Aramaic.
Nearly all of them live in three Syrian villages, the last outposts in a region largely swept by the Arabic of Islam. In a bid to preserve its ancient heritage, Syria launched a series of language courses in 2007 to bolster the fading influence of a 3,000-year-old language that once reigned supreme in the Middle East.
And so it was that an Aramaic institute joined the cluster of buildings that cling to a rocky spine in the village of Malula, about 35 miles northwest of Damascus. But the program ran into trouble recently, when a Syrian newspaper suggested that the alphabet being used to teach written Aramaic bore an uncanny resemblance to the Hebrew characters found in modern-day Israel.
Worried that a flagship heritage scheme might in any way be associated with the country’s neighboring enemy, the government-run University of Damascus, which established the institute, acted quickly to freeze the Aramaic program.
“There were some people in the press trying to cause trouble,” says George Rezkallah, an elderly villager from Malula who runs the institute. He is hopeful that classes will be able to resume this summer.
The origins of Aramaic
Speaking from his flat overlooking the village’s higgledy-piggledy hillside houses, Mr. Rezkallah says that while the two alphabets do have similarities, it is Aramaic which first began using square lettering around the 12th century BC.
The Hebrew now used in Israel, he said, was formulated 700 years later after the restoration of the ancient kingdom of the Jews in the 5th century BC.
“The Persians adopted Aramaic. The Babylonians adopted it and so did the Jews. It then prevailed as the language of the Middle East until 700 AD.”
David Taylor, author of “The Hidden Pearl: Aramaic Heritage of the Syrian Orthodox Church,” adds that the Jewish people adopted the square Aramaic alphabet — which had become the lingua franca of the entire Middle East from about 700 BC — after they were exiled to Babylon in 587 BC, before which they had used a Palaeo-Hebrew script.
The fact that it has survived in Malula today is nothing short of a “miracle,” says Gene Gragg, professor of Near Eastern Languages at the University of Chicago.
“It would be something of a linguistic tragedy if this splendid survivor were allowed to disappear,” he added.
It would also be a travesty for Syria, says Dr. Taylor.
“Aramaic is a constant reminder of the international importance of Syria in the ancient world, when it was a beacon of learning and culture that had a profound impact worldwide,” he says. “It mirrors the cultural, linguistic and religious diversity that has always been of such great importance in Syria and is key to its long-term success.”
A last remnant of Jesus’s language
Modern branches of the language are still spoken across southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran.
But the dialect spoken by its inhabitants — as well as the residents of two nearby, mostly Muslim, villages — is the only survivor of Western Aramaic, the closest modern descendant to the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples.
It would, in all probability, have been spoken by the Christian martyr St. Thecla, a disciple of St. Paul whose tomb in Malula draws pilgrims from around the world.
“It’s quite extraordinary,” says Annyck Wustyn, a 63-year-old visitor from France. “In our country, where we are mostly Catholic, Aramaic is like a myth. Now I know it is a reality.”
Pushing forward with the program
Undeterred by the move to shut down his Aramaic institute, Rezkallah plans to introduce a new course this summer which, for the first time, will include a textbook using Aramaic to English translations — effectively opening up the institute to non-Arabic speaking students for the first time since it was founded.
According to Rezkallah, the dispute over the Hebrew similarities is still “being discussed,” but the institute has trained an extra nine teachers this year in anticipation of an extension of the program. The new textbook will, however, use Syriac script from the second century BC in lieu of square Aramaic lettering.
For the likes of Atallah Shaib, a young man working in his father’s restaurant overlooking the rickety houses of Malula, the fight to secure his language’s future is as important as ever.
“Aramaic is not a normal language,” says Mr. Shaib, his rolled-up sleeves revealing a series of inky blue Aramaic tattoos on his forearms. “It’s Jesus Christ’s language, and that’s the most important reason why we should keep it alive.”
Note — Picture: Muhammad Ali and Freemasonic diplomats in Alexandria ruling a “country” that was not theirs and against the will of the indigenous populations who all wanted to be part of the Ottoman Empire. Painting by David Roberts
Discussion regarding the accession of Macedonia into the European Union was postponed until June 2010. Two countries have delayed this process, the first of course being Greece which cannot accept Macedonia being a member of the EU. Neither can it accept the name ‘Macedonia’ nor the Macedonian idenity or language. In other words, everything that has any connotation to ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Macedonian’ is unacceptable to Greece.
The other country that opposes Macedonia by supporting Greece in this endeavour is France.
Why is France doing this?
Perhaps because Greece has signed a contract to purchase military supplies from France or perhaps because, similar to Greece, France does not recognize minorities in its own territory.
What about indigenous minorities like the Alsatians, Basques, Bretons, Catalans, Corsicans and Occitans (Provencals) who today exist in France? Unfortunately all of these national minorities, and the languages they speak, are not formally recognized by France.
France, like Greece, has “specialized” in signing but not ratifying resolutions for the protection of minorities and their languages. If there is any doubt as to the existence of minority languages in France, let me remind you that all manifestos written just before and after the great French Revolution of 1789-1799 were written in these so-called local languages.
After the Revolution was over authorities withdrew from this linguistic pluralism and took advantage of a single obligatory language and that was ‘French’. The methods used to discourage the use of local languages was to make fun of adults and young children who spoke them, a similar method was used by Greece against the Macedonians.
Greek State-Promoted Terror and Persecutions
In addition to making fun of people, Greek authorities also employed terror tacticts, beatings, imprisonment and expulsion to prevent Macedonians from speaking their native language even on their own native Macedonian territories.
[Enlarge Pic][Buy Book][Back Cover] This is why these two so-called ‘democratic’ countries allied themselves to block Macedonia’s accession into the European Union. Thus the paradox; if other countries are willing to accept Macedonia into the Union they cannot because current EU law allows any single member country to veto and block the other 26. This shows how fragile and abnormal the foundation of this Union is.
Can this be called democracy? No, definitely not!
This is a dictate of one, or in this case, of two countries dictating to the rest. Also there is little logic in this. In this situation we cannot say all countries are treated equally.
This is nothing more than a European circus.
The European Union, which does not hesitate to mentor and teach others about democracy and human rights, harbours two countries which care nothing about human rights or democracy, worse, they can’t even be punished for this. New countries with aspirations of joining the European Union and have fulfilled all requirements put before them, for ‘some reason’ are being blocked while ‘old’ European Union countries, like France and Greece, which have broken every minority law, are not only allowed in, but are treated like the proverbial ‘holy cows’.
Macedonia
Macedonia, the only ex-Yugoslav country in the Balkans able to meet all European standards since 1991, has not been allowed entry into the EU. Macedonia comparing to other Western Balkan’s countries is ahead of reforms . Even today, attempt after attempt to gain entry has been obstructed by Greece and all obstructions have been accepted without question by the EU.
Where have we ever seen or heard of a situation where a paranoid country like Greece ‘forcibly imposed’ a name on a normal country like Macedonia? How is it possible for the majority of democratic European countries to accept and come to terms with such dictates from a small economically and morally bankrupt country like Greece?
The Merciless Persecution of Macedonians in Greece
A country which after its unlawful seizure of Macedonian territories in 1913 has issued a number of racist laws against its own citizens. A country which after its Civil War in 1949 exiled both Greeks and Macedonians and in 1982 and 1985 allowed only Greeks by birth to return. How long will the EU allow Greece, which does not recognize the 250 thousand strong Macedonian minority living on its territory, a minority already recognized by international organizations, to break European and international laws? When will the fools of Brussels move their heavy bottom and go to Northern Greece and see and hear for themselves the Macedonians living there?
When will decision-makers from the EU understand that it is not Macedonia but Greece that is a destabilizing factor in the Balkans? It is not Macedonian but Greek nationalism and the Greek Orthodox Church that inflames other Balkan nationalisms.
Fake “Greek History”
Another idiotic idea that inflames hatred and nationalism is Greece’s claims of having 4000 years of cultural continuity and being ethnically pure, which are nothing more than a myth. The Greek nation is an artificial creation invented in the XIX century by the Philhellenic English and German fans of Classical Greece. The Greek language is also an artificial creation which survived only because it was a language of Eastern Christianity and not the language spoken by the Greek people.
In the XIX century the language spoken in Athens, a small Ottoman village, was Albanian, called Arnautian or Arvanitika. The Greek language was revived by academics and taught in schools and in this way it became the official language of the Greek state. These facts are not taught in school.
The so-called ‘Greek studies’ offered to students are no more than fictional concepts promoting an invented continuity and an invented language. It is enough to read the 19 century memoirs of scientists and travelers in order to learn that they were not able to communicate with the people of Greece in Greek. Macedonia was incorporated into Greece in 1913 against the will of the Macedonian nation which dwelt in these territories from times immemorial.
EU support to Turkey’s Kurds – but not to Greece’s Macedonians
Turkey is constantly being accused by the EU for not respecting minority rights, particularly those of the Kurdish people.
• Why has no one in the EU accused Greece of doing the same with regards to the Turkish and Macedonian minorities living there?
• Why isn’t criticism directed at Greece?
Why this anti-Turkish obsession, not justified by the way, because racism is present in the EU and nobody in Brussels is asking questions about that?
There are more liberties for minorities in Turkey than in Greece.
It is a result of the very nature of Turkey which was an empire and was comprised of many nations and religions. While Turkey left all Christian Churches intact in its territory, Greece on the other hand after 1915 destroyed all Turkish minarets in the Greek territory.
Do Turks from Thrace have guaranteed rights as a minority? No, they, as well as the Macedonians have no minority rights and are discriminated against to no end in Greece. But do you see anyone writing about this, particularly in Europe? No, not at all! And why is Turkey presented in such bad light and not Greece?
Greeks living in Istanbul enjoy full religious freedom but not Turks living in Thrace.
These people are called Muslims because Greece forbids them to call themselves Turks. This says a lot about how the EU operates and how much member nations like Greece respect the rights of their citizens who cannot call themselves what they are but need to be called as deigned by governments!
If we are to speak frankly, Turkey, not Greece, is a stabilizing factor in the Balkans even though a small part of Turkey exists in the Balkans.
It seems that political correctness has taken European politicians away from common sense. They look at one thing and call it something else. The EU has taken a dogmatic approach to things like an aparatchik and preposterously dictates instead of using sound logic and reasoning. In theory a EU is a sound idea but it does not practice what it preaches. Instead of being a union governed by citizens, the EU is a union run by nonchalant bureaucrats.
Accepting countries like France and Greece which have committed serious human rights violations and imposing unjust conditions on countries like Macedonia will cause that the EU sooner or later, will get the hiccups which it deserves. It is not a union of equal nations. It seems that some are more equal than others in the EU and that is not right.
Turkey is the key to all of this. If Ankara collaborates with Russia, Georgia’s position is precarious and Azerbaijan’s route to Europe is blocked. If it cooperates with the United States and also manages to reach a stable treaty with Armenia under U.S. auspices, the Russian position in the Caucasus is weakened and an alternative route for natural gas to Europe opens up, decreasing Russian leverage against Europe.
The reality, however, is that the meetings ended in apparent unity because the United States accepted European unwillingness to compromise on key issues. U.S. President Barack Obama wanted the week to appear successful, and therefore backed off on key issues; the Europeans did the same. Moreover, Obama appears to have set a process in motion that bypasses Europe to focus on his last stop: Turkey.
Berlin, Washington and the G-20
Let’s begin with the G-20 meeting, which focused on the global financial crisis. As we said last year, there were many European positions, but the United States was reacting to Germany’s. Not only is Germany the largest economy in Europe, it is the largest exporter in the world. Any agreement that did not include Germany would be useless, whereas an agreement excluding the rest of Europe but including Germany would still be useful.
Two fundamental issues divided the United States and Germany. The first was whether Germany would match or come close to the U.S. stimulus package. The United States wanted Germany to stimulate its own domestic demand. Obama feared that if the United States put a stimulus plan into place, Germany would use increased demand in the U.S. market to expand its exports. The United States would wind up with massive deficits while the Germans took advantage of U.S. spending, thus letting Berlin enjoy the best of both worlds. Washington felt it had to stimulate its economy, and that this would inevitably benefit the rest of the world. But Washington wanted burden sharing. Berlin, quite rationally, did not. Even before the meetings, the United States dropped the demand — Germany was not going to cooperate.
The second issue was the financing of the bailout of the Central European banking system, heavily controlled by eurozone banks and part of the EU financial system. The Germans did not want an EU effort to bail out the banks. They wanted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out a substantial part of the EU financial system instead. The reason was simple: The IMF receives loans from the United States, as well as China and Japan, meaning the Europeans would be joined by others in underwriting the bailout. The United States has signaled it would be willing to contribute $100 billion to the IMF, of which a substantial portion would go to Central Europe. (Of the current loans given by the IMF, roughly 80 percent have gone to the struggling economies in Central Europe.) The United States therefore essentially has agreed to the German position.
Later at the NATO meeting, the Europeans — including Germany — declined to send substantial forces to Afghanistan. Instead, they designated a token force of 5,000, most of whom are scheduled to be in Afghanistan only until the August elections there, and few of whom actually would be engaged in combat operations. This is far below what Obama had been hoping for when he began his presidency.
Agreement was reached on collaboration in detecting international tax fraud and on further collaboration in managing the international crisis, however. But what that means remains extremely vague — as it was meant to be, since there was no consensus on what was to be done. In fact, the actual guidelines will still have to be hashed out at the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting in Scotland in November. Intriguingly, after insisting on the creation of a global regulatory regime — and with the vague U.S. assent — the European Union failed to agree on European regulations. In a meeting in Prague on April 4, the United Kingdom rejected the regulatory regime being proposed by Germany and France, saying it would leave the British banking system at a disadvantage.
Overall, the G-20 and the NATO meetings did not produce significant breakthroughs. Rather than pushing hard on issues or trading concessions — such as accepting Germany’s unwillingness to increase its stimulus package in return for more troops in Afghanistan — the United States failed to press or bargain. It preferred to appear as part of a consensus rather than appear isolated. The United States systematically avoided any appearance of disagreement.
The reason there was no bargaining was fairly simple: The Germans were not prepared to bargain. They came to the meetings with prepared positions, and the United States had no levers with which to move them. The only option was to withhold funding for the IMF, and that would have been a political disaster (not to mention economically rather unwise). The United States would have been seen as unwilling to participate in multilateral solutions rather than Germany being seen as trying to foist its economic problems on others. Obama has positioned himself as a multilateralist and can’t afford the political consequences of deviating from this perception. Contributing to the IMF, in these days of trillion-dollar bailouts, was the lower-cost alternative. Thus, the Germans have the U.S. boxed in.
The political aspect of this should not be underestimated. George W. Bush had extremely bad relations with the Europeans (in large part because he was prepared to confront them). This was Obama’s first major international foray, and he could not let it end in acrimony or wind up being seen as unable to move the Europeans after running a campaign based on his ability to manage the Western coalition. It was important that he come home having reached consensus with the Europeans. Backing off on key economic and military demands gave him that “consensus.”
Turkey and Obama’s Deeper Game
But it was not simply a matter of domestic politics. It is becoming clear that Obama is playing a deeper game. A couple of weeks before the meetings, when it had become obvious that the Europeans were not going to bend on the issues that concerned the United States,Obama scheduled a trip to Turkey. During the EU meetings in Prague, Obama vigorously supported the Turkish application for EU membership, which several members are blocking on grounds of concerns over human rights and the role of the military in Turkey. But the real reason is that full membership would open European borders to Turkish migration, and the Europeans do not want free Turkish migration. The United States directly confronted the Europeans on this matter.
During the NATO meeting, a key item on the agenda was the selection of a new alliance secretary-general. The favorite was former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Turkey opposed his candidacy because of his defense on grounds of free speech of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish magazine. NATO operates on consensus, so any one member can block just about anything. The Turks backed off the veto, but won two key positions in NATO, including that of deputy secretary-general.
So while the Germans won their way at the meetings, it was the Turks who came back with the most. Not only did they boost their standing in NATO, they got Obama to come to a vigorous defense of the Turkish application for membership in the European Union, which of course the United States does not belong to. Obama then flew to Turkey for meetings and to attend a key international meeting that will allow him to further position the United States in relation to Islam.
The Russian Dimension
Let’s diverge to another dimension of these talks, which still concerns Turkey, but also concerns the Russians. While atmospherics after the last week’s meetings might have improved, there was certainly no fundamental shift in U.S.-Russian relations. The Russians have rejected the idea of pressuring Iran over its nuclear program in return for the United States abandoning its planned ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The United States simultaneously downplayed the importance of a Russian route to Afghanistan. Washington said there were sufficient supplies in Afghanistan and enough security on the Pakistani route such that the Russians weren’t essential for supplying Western operations in Afghanistan. At the same time, the United States reached an agreement with Ukraine for the transshipment of supplies — a mostly symbolic gesture, but one guaranteed to infuriate the Russians at both the United States and Ukraine. Moreover, the NATO communique did not abandon the idea of Ukraine and Georgia being admitted to NATO, although the German position on unspecified delays to such membership was there as well. When Obama looks at the chessboard, the key emerging challenge remains Russia.
The Germans are not going to be joining the United States in blocking Russia. Between dependence on Russia for energy supplies and little appetite for confronting a Russia that Berlin sees as no real immediate threat to Germany, the Germans are not going to address the Russian question. At the same time, the United States does not want to push the Germans toward Russia, particularly in confrontations ultimately of secondary importance and on which Germany has no give anyway. Obama is aware that the German left is viscerally anti-American, while Merkel is only pragmatically anti-American — a small distinction, but significant enough for Washington not to press Berlin.
At the same time, an extremely important event between Turkey and Armenia looks to be on the horizon. Armenians had long held Turkey responsible for the mass murder of Armenians during and after World War I, a charge the Turks have denied. The U.S. Congress for several years has threatened to pass a resolution condemning Turkish genocide against Armenians. The Turks are extraordinarily sensitive to this charge, and passage would have meant a break with the United States. Last week, they publicly began to discuss an agreement with the Armenians, including diplomatic recognition, which essentially disarms the danger from any U.S. resolution on genocide. Although an actual agreement hasn’t been signed just yet, anticipation is building on all sides.
The Turkish opening to Armenia has potentially significant implications for the balance of power in the Caucasus. The August 2008 Russo-Georgian war created an unstable situation in an area of vital importance to Russia. Russian troops remain deployed, and NATO has called for their withdrawal from the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. There are Russian troops in Armenia, meaning Russia has Georgia surrounded. In addition, there is talk of an alternative natural gas pipeline network from Azerbaijan to Europe.
Turkey is the key to all of this. If Ankara collaborates with Russia, Georgia’s position is precarious and Azerbaijan’s route to Europe is blocked. If it cooperates with the United States and also manages to reach a stable treaty with Armenia under U.S. auspices, the Russian position in the Caucasus is weakened and an alternative route for natural gas to Europe opens up, decreasing Russian leverage against Europe.
From the American point of view, Europe is a lost cause since internally it cannot find a common position and its heavyweights are bound by their relationship with Russia. It cannot agree on economic policy, nor do its economic interests coincide with those of the United States, at least insofar as Germany is concerned. As far as Russia is concerned, Germany and Europe are locked in by their dependence on Russian natural gas. The U.S.-European relationship thus is torn apart not by personalities, but by fundamental economic and military realities. No amount of talking will solve that problem.
The key to sustaining the U.S.-German alliance is reducing Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas and putting Russia on the defensive rather than the offensive. The key to that now is Turkey, since it is one of the only routes energy from new sources can cross to get to Europe from the Middle East, Central Asia or the Caucasus. If Turkey — which has deep influence in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Ukraine, the Middle East and the Balkans — is prepared to ally with the United States, Russia is on the defensive and a long-term solution to Germany’s energy problem can be found. On the other hand, if Turkey decides to take a defensive position and moves to cooperate with Russia instead, Russia retains the initiative and Germany is locked into Russian-controlled energy for a generation.
Therefore, having sat through fruitless meetings with the Europeans, Obama chose not to cause a pointless confrontation with a Europe that is out of options. Instead, Obama completed his trip by going to Turkey to discuss what the treaty with Armenia means and to try to convince the Turks to play for high stakes by challenging Russia in the Caucasus, rather than playing Russia’s junior partner.
This is why Obama’s most important speech in Europe was his last one, following Turkey’s emergence as a major player in NATO’s political structure. In that speech, he sided with the Turks against Europe, and extracted some minor concessions from the Europeans on the process for considering Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Why Turkey wants to be an EU member is not always obvious to us, but they do want membership. Obama is trying to show the Turks that he can deliver for them. He reiterated — if not laid it on even more heavily — all of this in his speech in Ankara. Obama laid out the U.S. position as one that recognized the tough geopolitical position Turkey is in and the leader that Turkey is becoming, and also recognized the commonalities between Washington and Ankara. This was exactly what Turkey wanted to hear.
The Caucasus is far from the only area to discuss. Talks will be held about blocking Iran in Iraq, U.S. relations with Syria and Syrian talks with Israel, and Central Asia, where both countries have interests. But the most important message to the Europeans will be that Europe is where you go for photo opportunities, but Turkey is where you go to do the business of geopolitics. It is unlikely that the Germans and French will get it. Their sense of what is happening in the world is utterly Eurocentric. But the Central Europeans, on the frontier with Russia and feeling quite put out by the German position on their banks, certainly do get it.
Obama gave the Europeans a pass for political reasons, and because arguing with the Europeans simply won’t yield benefits. But the key to the trip is what he gets out of Turkey — and whether in his speech to the civilizations, he can draw some of the venom out of the Islamic world by showing alignment with the largest economy among Muslim states, Turkey.
JOE GANDELMAN: Can President Barack Obama’s ability to hold an impressive town hall meeting in spots throughout the world become a valuable international-clout producing tool? It’s far too early to judge that.
But just as in the case of his town hall meetings in the United States, his huddle yesterday with Turkish students was again framed in an advantageous setting where he engaged those in the audience and used the setting and its media coverage to address a larger audience. In this case: Turkey and the Muslim world. Among other things, he discussed how Turkey and the U.S. have mutual interests and he defended the U.S. image. — [ READ MORE ]
Before 212 years, Turkey controlled an area of almost 8 million km2 in Africa; under its antecedent state form, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, vast African territories from the confines of Algeria to Somalia and the East African coast down to Tanzania were reporting to the Sultan at Istanbul, who was the Caliph of all Muslims worldwide. Ottoman-controlled territories and lands ruled by principalities that recognized the imperial authority of the Sultan totalled no less than one third of Africa. 
