www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Purple badge of courage: Iraqi elections

Here's a place to start. It is fine to say that "real" islam would not behave in this way. However, if the oppressors are not Muslims what are they? Actions reflect belief.

http://www.dhimmi.com/

Here's another:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/

Carson Daniel Lauffer

Dear DJS,

Let's take it from a different perspective. What if America was never founded and settled by Europeans. First of all, the only lands in the world that have the climate and soil of producing large quantities of food, is the United States and Western Europe.

If the others places in the world are now capable of producing quantities of food, it is only because we exist with the technology for them to do so. So, if America was never settled, the population in Europe would have been much, much smaller. They would have been killing themselves incessantly in order to acquire more land.

So instead of killing each other in order to have food to eat, this land popped up, and they decided to take it from the Indians.

Okay now another perspective. Do you think that Christianity would have ever reached the Indians, if the Europeans had not settled this nation? Don't you believe that they needed to be evangelized?

And another perspective: What would the world population have been today, had the English and their 'English minds', not formed this country, and the French, Germans, etc. had not helped this land to become developed to the extent it did?

All those lives that would have been killed throughout the world in these past centuries, or never would have had the chance to live because of deseases, should make it clear that the Indians suffering and losing their land was the lesser evil.

That this land was found, and even existed, was certainly within God's plan.

Okay, so some of us were monsters. Isn't that the way of the world? :rolleyes:

Zenovia

Zenovia,
What an interesting post. Overall, if I understand you corectly, you are saying that it is permissible to do actual evil in order to avoid some hypothetical greater evil, or to achieve some other hypothetical good. I am surprised to hear this view advanced. Is this an Orthodox position? Can you recommend relevant Orthodox writings on such moral dilemmas?

What you describe of course is the way of the world. We are not called to way of the world.

Dear DJS,

I didn't state what was right or wrong, I merely stated what has already happened...right or wrong!

Since it has already happened, it must have been within our Lord's knowledge. I'm accepting what our Lord has allowed. Because our Lord has allowed it, and I am accepting it as such, I try to find reasoning in it. That is how I reason. I think, now our Lord has allowed this...so why did He allow this?

So my reasoning tells me, that had it not happened, the amount of lives lost to the truth's of Christianity and our Lord's Word, would have been a lot less.

Zenovia

Dear DJS,

What actual evil are you talking about? The settlers came to this land in order to develop it so their families can eat. The Indians in the mean time, wanted to keep the land so their families can eat. What happened between them was a war. The Indians killed many, many Europeans, and the Europeans killed many, many Indians. The Europeans had more technology and won, here we are. :p

Actually, throughout history, people adapted to the prevalent and dominant culture. I think it's just taking the Indians a longer time, because of 'national' pride. They'll get over it! All of our ancestors did, in some way or other.

Get over your guilt feelings. My gosh! Look what the Romans did to the Gauls.

Zenovia

What evil? Hospodi pomiluj!

You are wrong, btw, to suggest that I feel guilt. I do not, however, let national pride stand in the way of recognizing that gross evil has been committed, and that I do, in fact, benefit from it. At the very least I can be outspoken against those who are in denial.

You mean like the Greeks quickly adapted to the Turks? (Or the Slovaks and Rusyns to the Magyars?)

You mention as a mitigating factor the bringing of Christianity to the native Americans. Of course, this activity included seizing children from their families and forcing them into Christian, English-only boarding schools. Just curious is this reasonable to you?

Dear DJS,

No this wasn't, but they did it with a belief that they were doing the right thing. You know DJS, that one of my great, great grand-aunts was a slave. She was taken by the turks when everyone on the island of my mothers was massacred. She was the lucky one.

Of course the Turks should acknoledge that what they did was wrong, especially what was done to the Armenians. But every evil action is really caused by fear. They were fearful of the Greeks and the Armenians, because the land they lived in really belonged to them. They were in the majority in certain parts of Turkey.

They were also more productive than the Muslim culture. There was aa saying among the Turks, that one Greek was worth two Jews, and one Armenian was worth two Greeks.

Looking at it on the Turkish side, there empire had been broken up. They lost Egypt, Iraz, Syria, etc. in WWI. They wanted to retain something, and unfortunately the land they wanted was inhabited by Greeks and Armenians.

How they did it though was attrocious. They started massacres. They rounded up all the Highly prosperous and educated Armenians in Istambul and killed them first. That way the people would have no leadership. They then had the Kurds attack the unarmed populous.

Remember though, the Turks were very threatened. After all, they knew that these people by retaining their own ethnicity, would want to establish a country that would take away even more land from the Turks...after all, it happened in the Balkans.

As for the Greeks, they were are war. The Greek soldiers overtook the port city of Ismir, and then countinued inland. When approaching Istambul, where the Greeks were in the majority, and had lived there for over two thousand years, they were stopped from going any further by English and French troops.

In the meantime, Attaturk was mobilizing the Turks, and Hemingway, who was a reporter at the time, said the Greeks were not very smart, or else they would have consolidated their position on the Western coast where the Greeks were in the majority. They kept marching to Ankara. In other words, a nation of about 3,000,000 was trying to over take a nation that probably had about 60,000.

When the Greeks were overpowered and had to retreat, they reacted badly on the civilian Turkish population. After all, most of them came from the mountains, and were not too civilized themselves. The Turks retaliated in a very inhumane way , and set fire to Ismir (Smyrna), where all the neighboring townspeople had fled with the hope of finding ships to leave.

The ships in the harbor, consisting of English, French, and Italians watched as the people swam out to them, and literally pushed them back in the water. Talk about 'racism'.

I believe it was the Americans and the Japanese that came to help. See, we're not so bad!

What I'm trying to say, is that in the realm of things, our nation has probably been the most humane nation that has ever existed. Don't be so critical.

Zenovia

Dear DJS,

As for the Greeks adapting to the Turks, or the Moslems as a whole, most of them did. Otherwise, why are the majority of people in those lands, that were predominantly Christian, now Moslem.

Now I know that the Greeks that immigrated to Austria, France, and England in the past, have dissappeared, as they have in this country too with all the other ethnic groups. At the time of Toqueville, he found that there were groups that spoke German, French, and Dutch as well as English. Obviously English dominated.

Actually, the Germans not only spoke German, but conducted business in German too. That was until the First World War, when they were being stoned because of the sinking of the Lusitania. Before that, it was only by one vote in Congress that kept German from becoming an official language.

If there are still Christians in the near and middle east, it is because they wished to retain their religion, as did the Jews throughout the world...and thus, they couldn't intermarry.

Zenovia

CORRECTION;

I said "a nation of about 3,000,000 was trying to take a nation that probably had about 60,000." I meant: 60,000,000.

Zenovia

You are fullof surprises. My understanding had been that the Greek Christians were ultimately driven out by the Turks. Are you really suggesting that Asia Minor is still substantially Greek but Islamic?

djs wrote:

Are you really suggesting that Asia Minor is still substantially Greek but Islamic?


We can assume that many Greek communities with time assimilated with the Turks.

Assimilation is amazing. The only thing you can do to prevent its long-term consequences is to change your physical environment, something I decided to do with my own life.

Turkey has a large colony of Turkish citizens of ethnic Polish background. The colony was established in the 18th century, I believe. Though once as devoted to their religion & language as any emigres, the Poles have gradually assimilated as Turks.

Stojgniev

Dear DJS,

Now let's have a little history lesson. :rolleyes: The Byzantine Empire, which today is Turkey, was comprised of many different people, as was Greece at one time, and as was Europe and the whole world...undoubtably!

They all became culturally Greek, as did southern Italy, Egypt...even Persia, especially after Alexander the Great.

The Eastern part of Turkey was Armenia. Alexandretta, a city established by Alexander was Greek and Syrian, and Ankara was inhabited by one of the four Gallic tribes that did not go into France and Belgium. The town of Byzantium became Constantinople the new Rome of the Emporor Constantine, and that's why the Greeks still refer to themselves as 'Romaii'.

In other words, the Byzantine Empire is what the U.S. is today. The armies fighting the Crusaders, were Northern Europeans fighting Northern Europeans, etc. These people, whether British, Swedish, German, Georgian, Armenian, fought for the Empire and were given land in return.

When the Turks took over, they also took the women into their harems, and in mainland Greece, one boy in each household was taken as a Janissary. He became a Moslem.

Actually, the whole Ottoman Empire was being run by Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, etc. But they all had to become Moslem.

When I said Greek, I meant the one's that were still retaining their culture and religion. Actually what you said, is exactly what the Turks say. That they are the descendants of the Greeks...which of course, were not really Greek in the first place because they were a conglomerate of all the places they colonized.....capisce?

To make it even more so, when the Turks started their ethnic cleansing of Smyrna and it's environs, they made the girls pregnant, kept the babies, and sent them packing to Greece. Now they felt, they were even more Greek, and therefore the original inhabitants. Strange reasoning, isn't it?

So back to the Indians. It's time they started adapting to the prevailing culture, don't you think? And you know something, we're not so bad now are we?

Zenovia