Modern Macedonia is a Slavic-speaking and peopled region. There has been a war of words between the Greeks and leaders of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) over who should have a right to the name Macedonia. To provide a reasonable clear picture without inviting irreverent debate on ancient Macedonia, I will be brief: The Macedon of Phillip II and Alexander the Great were either ethnically Greek or were perhaps a Greek/Illyrian mix that was highly Hellenized. Slavic tribes did not migrate to the Balkans until the 5th-6th century AD. Having said that, I think that, with the problems that the modern Macedonians have with Albanian Muslims and the Greeks with Turks in Cyprus, the two nations should forgive and forget any bad feelings about the use of a name and concentrate on real problems.
What, as usual, gets written off by the Press as "ethnic tensions", has actually been a war of terror by Albanian Muslims who reside in Macedonia on Christian Macedonians, Many Churches, some hundreds to several hundred years-old, have been burned. In addition to the destruction of the actual edifices, irreplaceable religious artwork, such as Icons, were lost. One of my hobbies is Orthodox Church artwork, and the types of icons that are commonly found in Macedonian Churches are clear favorites of mine. One of the Churches were burned after Macedonian Christians reportedly mocked the Koran and Islam at a carnival. You, know tit-for-tat, Muslims mock the Bible and Christians are supposed to do nothing, Christians mock Islam, and Churches are burned.
It appears that the Islam-mocking was preceded by the burring of a Macedonian flag by Muslims.
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2012/02/03/feature-04
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/20247/2/
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0d1_1328444739&comments=1
A destroyed Church for a mocked religion - that's a pretty fair trade.
One of the more recent "ethnic tensions", from which Christians constitute the heavily disproportionate amount of victims, was the murder of five Macedonian Christians who were fishing on Good Friday (Christian Holy Days are big for Muslim-on-Christian violence). A few days ago, arrests were made. In response to the arrest, Albanian Muslims took to the streets demanding the release of the suspects, shouting "Death to Christians" and "War on Christians", displaying Al-Qaeda symbols, and performing other sundry feats of Islamic tolerance.
Video of the protests on the link below:
http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=47830
Post on the protest below. Note the clothing (and lack thereof) of some of the protesters. I have no doubt that, once Islamic rule is consolidated in that region, Muslims will still be allowed to go out in public similarly attired.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-macedonia-supporters-of-killers.html
For the record, the Balkans conflict that kicked off in the early 90's was not one in which the good guys could be easily discerned. There were atrocities being committed by all sides. The Serbs, Croats, Albanians, etc, all had grievances that went back centuries and these people have long memories. I will note, though, that the Serbs by far got the raw deal as far as bad press was concerned; their atrocities were magnified and they were depicted as almost the sole perpetrators of war crimes. The Albanians of Kosovo were for the most part painted in the West (Including in the US) as innocent and oppressed victims. So, NATO, with a large US contingent, was put to work in an action that effectively established a Muslim State in Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War
The success of the Albanian Kosovars no doubt inspired ethnic Albanian Muslims in Macedonia to take their shot at creating a Greater Albania. I also suspect that the continued US support for anything Muslim versus Christian, as seen in our continued pressure on Middle East regimes*, has provided sufficient cause for Macedonian Albanians to assume that the West will put pressure on Macedonia to cave in to their demands.
* I have noted in previous posts that the autocratic regimes such as those of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria at least provided some measure of protection to Christians. This protection has proven to be the first thing to go in each and very instance of "Arab Spring" harvests. In Iraq, we did not even need an Arab Spring for the ceiling to collapse on Christians, the US-lead invasion was enough by itself.
For those who are a bit confused as to how so many Muslims wound up in that region of the Balkans centuries ago, a quick summary will bring you up to speed. It's all about Islamic, (In this case of the Ottoman Empire-type) tolerance. The Ottomans had conquered most of the Balkans (One of the major battles was that of Kosovo in 1389-Serbian Prince Lazar's forces suffered tremendous casualties in a courageous struggle) even before Constantinople fell in 1453. Islamic tolerance includes the payment of the Jizya, the head tax levied on all Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and the few others whose religious beliefs are OK enough to escape immediate death or slavery. Those who are subject to the Jizya are referred to as Dhimmi**, which literally translated means "protected peoples" but in intention and practice ensures a second-class level of citizenship.
For those who have been fed a steady diet of anti-Christian Crusades propaganda, the following will give you an idea of how different it was for Muslims under Christian rule in the Crusaders States. The quote from Ibn-Jubayr is rock-solid as far as credibility goes and has never, to my knowledge, been contradicted by any historian.
http://www.frontline.org.za/articles/JihadAndCrusades.htm
"Even Maalouf in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, reports the observations of Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr who traversed the Mediterranean on his way to Mecca in the early 1180’s and found that the Muslims were far better off in those lands controlled by the Crusaders than they were in Muslim ruled lands. And that Muslims preferred to live in the Crusader realms as those lands were more orderly and better managed.
Ibn Jubayr wrote: “Whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims. They live in comfort with the Franks – may God preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All their regions, patrolled by the Crusaders in Syria are subject to the same system: The land that remains, the villages and farms, have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the hearts of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territories. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustices of their co-religionists, whereas the Franks act with equity.' "
"Even Maalouf in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, reports the observations of Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr who traversed the Mediterranean on his way to Mecca in the early 1180’s and found that the Muslims were far better off in those lands controlled by the Crusaders than they were in Muslim ruled lands. And that Muslims preferred to live in the Crusader realms as those lands were more orderly and better managed.
Ibn Jubayr wrote: “Whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims. They live in comfort with the Franks – may God preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All their regions, patrolled by the Crusaders in Syria are subject to the same system: The land that remains, the villages and farms, have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the hearts of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territories. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustices of their co-religionists, whereas the Franks act with equity.' "
Ibn-Jubayr goes on in the longer version of the quote to call for Allah to put an end to this situation in which Muslims prefer to remain under Frankish rule.
In the case of the Ottomans, the darlings of the Left who held many potentially free nations under their rule (Leftists detest sovereign nations so they hold up the example of the Ottoman Empire as a sort of pattern to be emulated politically), Islamic Tolerance reached new highs. The Jizya, while at least not crushing most of the time, paled in comparison to the Devshirme. This was the collection of the best and strongest boys under Ottoman rule. These were taken from their parents to be raised as slave-soldiers and Muslims to fight for the Sultan. They were often employed as elite shock-troops against other Christian nations. In a classic example of the Stockholm Syndrome, (And of late seen with the child-soldiers in Africa), the products of the Devshirme, the Janissaries, were fanatically loyal to their abductors and were rarely surpassed by other Muslims in their ardor to attack their former coreligionists and people. The most beautiful girls of the conquered Christians were also regularly taken from their families to be members of the Sultan's Harem.
To avoid the payment of the Jizya and the enslavement of their children, some took the preventative measure of conversion to Islam. This was more common among the Albanians than other Balkan peoples.
In short, what we are looking at right now are the descendants of those who submitted to the Muslim yoke to obtain a better deal. They have rediscovered the joys of the religion of their Ottoman oppressors and have begun meting out the same treatment to the Balkan Christians of today.
In the case of the Ottomans, the darlings of the Left who held many potentially free nations under their rule (Leftists detest sovereign nations so they hold up the example of the Ottoman Empire as a sort of pattern to be emulated politically), Islamic Tolerance reached new highs. The Jizya, while at least not crushing most of the time, paled in comparison to the Devshirme. This was the collection of the best and strongest boys under Ottoman rule. These were taken from their parents to be raised as slave-soldiers and Muslims to fight for the Sultan. They were often employed as elite shock-troops against other Christian nations. In a classic example of the Stockholm Syndrome, (And of late seen with the child-soldiers in Africa), the products of the Devshirme, the Janissaries, were fanatically loyal to their abductors and were rarely surpassed by other Muslims in their ardor to attack their former coreligionists and people. The most beautiful girls of the conquered Christians were also regularly taken from their families to be members of the Sultan's Harem.
To avoid the payment of the Jizya and the enslavement of their children, some took the preventative measure of conversion to Islam. This was more common among the Albanians than other Balkan peoples.
In short, what we are looking at right now are the descendants of those who submitted to the Muslim yoke to obtain a better deal. They have rediscovered the joys of the religion of their Ottoman oppressors and have begun meting out the same treatment to the Balkan Christians of today.
**http://www.jewishmag.com/57mag/dhimmi/dhimmi.htm
"The manner in which the rules of dhimmitude were applied varied according to the political circumstances and the disposition of the ruler. There were periods of tolerance which gave a small degree of security to the dhimmis. However the fanaticism which could be riled up by the clergy could change the situation in small time. If the local Muslim population became intolerant or jealous of the successes of the dhimmi, then a pogrom would ensue. Communities could find themselves evicted, women raped, exorbitant ransoms placed on them, children abducted and forced to convert, and in other cases mass murders of the dhimmipopulation was condoned.
Rules would be formulated to deny the dhimmi due process of the law. Discriminatory and restrictive dress and behavior codes would be enacted and severely enforced to reduce the dhimmi into a state of despair and poverty. Dehumanization of the dhimmi was not uncommon, and generally the rule. Various forms of physical abuse were common.
Many times distinctive dress was specified to identify a dhimmi that he would be unable to either mix with a Muslim or even walk in a Muslim area of a city. Other rules specified such demeaning dress codes as not wearing shoes or sandals, not using certain colors, wearing stars on their clothing. Dhimmis were often prohibited from working in many occupations. Even rules were made as to how adhimmi could ride a mule to distinguish him from a Muslim.
The non-observance of these rules would entail a severe beating. Often passing a Muslim on the wrong side would begin a beating that could leave a dhimmi mortally wounded. Since the dhimmis were denied the ability to testify against a Muslim, there was absolutely no recourse"
l
"The manner in which the rules of dhimmitude were applied varied according to the political circumstances and the disposition of the ruler. There were periods of tolerance which gave a small degree of security to the dhimmis. However the fanaticism which could be riled up by the clergy could change the situation in small time. If the local Muslim population became intolerant or jealous of the successes of the dhimmi, then a pogrom would ensue. Communities could find themselves evicted, women raped, exorbitant ransoms placed on them, children abducted and forced to convert, and in other cases mass murders of the dhimmipopulation was condoned.
Rules would be formulated to deny the dhimmi due process of the law. Discriminatory and restrictive dress and behavior codes would be enacted and severely enforced to reduce the dhimmi into a state of despair and poverty. Dehumanization of the dhimmi was not uncommon, and generally the rule. Various forms of physical abuse were common.
Many times distinctive dress was specified to identify a dhimmi that he would be unable to either mix with a Muslim or even walk in a Muslim area of a city. Other rules specified such demeaning dress codes as not wearing shoes or sandals, not using certain colors, wearing stars on their clothing. Dhimmis were often prohibited from working in many occupations. Even rules were made as to how adhimmi could ride a mule to distinguish him from a Muslim.
The non-observance of these rules would entail a severe beating. Often passing a Muslim on the wrong side would begin a beating that could leave a dhimmi mortally wounded. Since the dhimmis were denied the ability to testify against a Muslim, there was absolutely no recourse"
l
Your posts are merely your opinions and don't reflect on the actual truth.
ReplyDelete1) This was an ethnic tension between Macedonians and Albanians who burnt an orthodox church, usually seen as worship places for slavs and Greeks. They consider them their ethnic enemy and thus this act was perpetrated.
2) The Bible or gospel is regarded as holy in Islam along with the Torah and several other scriptures making your above accusations false.
I will restrict my replies to your specific accusations of false opinions.
DeleteFor number one, the ethnic tensions are overwhelmingly a consequence of the religious differences between the two groups and the centuries of oppression that followed the conquests by the Ottomans. I an not aware of any significant or even moderate tensions between Orthodox Christian Albanians and Macedonians or the former with Croats or Serbs. As noted in, for one example, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, Muslim groups constitute an extremely disproportionate amount of participants in what are commonly referred to as "ethic tensions in the world. Comparatively few conflicts referred to as ethnic tensions do not involve one participant that is Muslim.
For number two, Islam holds that both the Old and New Testaments, as well as the teachings of Zoroaster and others have been corrupted by the Jews, Christians, and the followers of the other religions. What Muslims say would actually be the OT and NT are quite different from what Jews and Christians say they would be, therefore nothing that I wrote is false. For one example, the koran has the teachings of Jesus restricted almost solely to making sure that his apostle believed in Elohim. Since they were Jews and thus believed in Elohim anyway, I must admit I am at a loss as to what exactly the koran teaches as the reason for which Jesus was sent in the first place.
If you can locate a false assertion of mine, please feel free to point it out to me.