The English-language news outlet, Russia Today, has an update on the growing immigrant population in Norway. It focuses on one group's threat to carry out violent attacks if they are not allowed to separate their district from Oslo and institute sharia law.
Here in America, we know how to deal with secession. But how real is this? Does an entire community unanimously back this notion? Or is it a loud-mouthed club infatuated with their own bright idea?
ReplyDeleteIf its really widespread, that is how the Ottomans held their polyglot empire together... in every city, there was a Greek quarter, and Armenian quarter, a Jewish quarter, if necessary a Latin quarter... in which indigenous authorities ruled according to tradition of that community. As long as taxes were paid to the Sultan, everything was fine. They may think they are being singled out by NOT being given the traditional privileges Christians and Jews received in classical Islamic civilization.
They're still wrong, of course, but it helps to sort out where they get such a (to us) bizarre idea from.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me you have hit upon the solution. Let's all revert back to the Ottoman empire and elect a sultan. And don't forget the dhimmi system for non-Muslims. That worked so well as you know. Why just look at the Golden Age of Spain...
Except one inconvenient fact: Non-Muslims lived in dhimmi status. 2nd class citizens. Yes, it was worse under the Christians at that time with the Inquisition. But that was centuries ago. Today, non-Muslims are persecuted in virtually every Islamic country.
ReplyDeletedhimmi is a convenient word to toss around, but you have no idea what it means, nor is it universal to all Muslim countries and all centuries. Primarily, it came into use when Islam was the nation of the latest ruling class to conquer the Middle East. They weren't about to share it. Non-dhimmi's were like non-Romans in another empire that had ruled the region. Have you found any evidence the term was used in Umayyad Cordoba?
ReplyDeletePersecution of non-Muslims today is secondary to:
a) Zionist immigration and the foundation of Israel, which inspired anti-Jewish feeling which had not existed prior to 1900 for some centuries,
b) The rise of Islamist parties in the region, supplanting Arab nationalist parties. Both were hostile to Israel, but the Islamists made it a religious crusade (pun intentional) which it had not been before.