Worse Turks than Turks

During the heyday of the Ottoman rule in Europe the Bosnian Muslims played an important part in administration of the empire, one of them, Mehmet Sokolovic, rising to be grand vizier to the sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, in the sixteenth century. Bosnian Muslims also provided the Ottoman bureaucracy in Hungary after the battle of Mohacs in 1526. At lower level of administration, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christian peasants of the raya were governed by Slav Muslim landowners, who, whilst retaining their Slavonic speech, adopted the manners and dress of the Turkish court. Like many converts, they often 'out-Ottomaned the Ottomans in their religious zeal'.

The above quote is from: " A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples" by Professor Fred Singleton, Cambridge University Press, Edition 1985, page 75

The janissaries, who were once the elite corps of the sultan army, had degenerated by the end of the eighteenth century into an unrully and lawless rabble, who were at best an embarrassment and at worst threat to their rulers... Sultan Mahmud I (1730-54) attempted to disband the janissaries and to put in their place a modern force, modelled on the standing armies of his European enemies. Unfortunately for the Serbs, he was only partly successful. In an attempt to remove the influence of the janissaries from Istanbul, where they naturally formed a powerful opposition to his reforms, Mahmud tried to buy them off by offering them a virtually free hand in garrisoning the remote provinces of the empire [like Bosnia and Hercegovina]. There they could plunder and abuse the local peasantry with impunity, even dispossessing them from their lands.... Mahmud may have bought time for himself, but he stored up trouble for his successors.

From: Encyclopedia Britannica, Edition 1910, Volume 4, page 284

The reform of the Ottoman government contemplated by the sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) was BITTERLY RESENTED in Bosnia... Many of the janissaries had married and settled on the land, forming a strongly conservative and FANATICAL caste, friendly to the Moslem nobles, who now dreaded the curtailment of their own privileges. Their opportunity came in 1820, when the Porte [the Turkish government] was striving to repress the insurrection in Moldavia, Albania and Greece. A first Bosnian revolt was crushed in 1821, a second, due principally to the massacres of the jannissaries, was quelled with much bloodshed in 1827. After Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, a further attempt at reform was initiated by the sultan and his grand vizier, Reshid Pasha. Two years later came a most formidable outbreak: the sultan was denounced as false to Islam, and the Bosnian nobles gathered in Banjaluka (Bosnia), determined to march to Constantinople, and reconquer the Ottoman Empire for the true [Islam] faith.

A Jihad was preached by their leader, Hussein Aga Berberi, a brilliant soldier and orator, who called himself “Zmaj Bosanski” [dragon of Bosnia], and was regarded by his followers as a saint. The Moslems of Herzegovina, under Ali Pasha Rizvanbegovic, remained loyal to the Porte, but in Bosnia Hussein Aga encountered little resistance. At Kossovo he was reinforced by 20, 000 Albanians, led by Mustapha Pasha, and within a few weeks the united armies occupied the whole of Bulgaria, and large part of Macedonia. Their career was checked by Reshid Pasha, who persuaded the two victorious commanders to intrigue against one another, secured the division of their forces, and then fell upon each in turn.

The rout of the Albanians at Prilipe and the capture of Mustapha at Scutari were followed by an invasion of Bosnia. After a desperate defence, Hussein Aga fled to Esseg in Croatia-Slavonia, his appeal for pardon was rejected, and in 1832 he was banished for life in Tribizond.

The power of the Bosnian nobles, though shaken by their defeat, remained unbroken, and they resisted vigorously when their kapetanates were abolished in 1837, and again when a measure of equality before the law was conceded to the Christians in 1839.

In Herzegovina, Ali Pasha Rizvanbegovic reaped the reward of his fidelity. He was left free to tyrannise over his Christian subjects, a king in all but name.

Is this not exactly opposite of the current claim the Western media repeatedly promotes? Are they not telling us that " Islam is a tolerant religion? " Since when!? Are we all from Mars? How can anyone delete the horror of Muslim oppression over Christians and Jews which lasted for centuries and stretched over continents?

Where are the roots of the above myth wondered author Bat Ye'Or. She then spent decades studying the issue. Finally she wrote a few books on the subject.