Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
In this article, two representative cases depicting essentially the same problem are clubbed together: Greece and Spain.
FEED THE POOR
Feeding the poor and needy is an act that draws us closer to Allah. We earn His forgiveness, mercies and blessings through this act of charity.
“Anyone who looks after and works for a widow and a poor person is like a warrior fighting for Allah?s cause, or like a person who fasts during the day and prays all night. (Bukhari)
The Case
of a Temporarily Finished Partition
Hindu nationalists often cite the case of Greece and Turkey
while arguing that India should have finished Partition. While very few argue
that Partition should have been finished, citing the population transfer
between Greece and Turkey as a model case has its own dangers. The population
transfer was completely temporarily between the two countries, but the specters
of radical Islam and Muslim demographic explosion has come to haunt Greece
after many decades. The Partition, it seems now, was only temporary. Greece
is a case of how any Partition with a radical Muslim society will always remain
unfinished, until Islam is fought at a universal level. Greece teaches us that radical
Islam is a global problem; and there are no local solutions to it.
Greece is a Balkan country. In the medieval ages, the
Ottoman Empire with its capital in Istanbul had ruled almost all of Balkan
peninsula along with many other countries of Eastern Europe. During this brutal
Islamic occupation of Europe, many Christians were forcibly converted and
Turkish Muslims were also resettled in all of these lands. The demographics of
many of these countries was fundamentally changed in favor of Muslims.
What is Turkey now, was itself Greece once. The Turkish
tribes are central Asian in origin, and starting from 10th century
they started invading and settling in the Asian part of Greece, called Anatolia
(what is now Turkey; but was then a conglomeration of Greek city-states). By
1923, after the World War I had ended and the Caliphate was about to be
abolished, much of Anatolia had been more than 90% Muslim with hardly any Greeks
left in most of the cities. The Greeks survived in some mountain villages and
in some coastal villages in the Mediterranean.
Greece was a very nationalist country, priding in its
Christian and pagan heritage, and having fought the Balkan Wars of the 19th
century, they knew the real nature of Islam. They had also seen the genocide of
Armenian Christians and many other smaller Greek and other Orthodox Christian
communities of Turkey. The then Prime Minister of Greece, Venizelos, proposed
to the West that the Christian and Muslim populations be exchanged between
Christian Greece and Muslim Turkey. This proposal was accepted and the
population transfer was completed, and it is the only case of a ‘finished
Partition’, where in a Partition between an Islamic and a non-Islamic country,
complete population transfer was done. [1]
Even then Greece lost more than half of its historical land
and became much smaller as a consequence. The Asian Greece was forever lost to
Islam, and became 100% Muslim. Even in Europe, Turkey got a toehold. Istanbul
(former Constantinople) was claimed by Turkey. Along with that, a large part of
Bulgaria, called Eastern Thrace (also in Europe) was also awarded to Turkey.
Turkey had massacred all the Armenian Christians left inside its borders and
expelled the Greek Orthodox Christians to Greece. So the story of Turkey is:
they came, they invaded, they massacred all the Christians, converted Greece
into Turkey and expelled the few Christians that were left.
We shall never forget, that what is now Muslim Turkey,
was once Christian Greece.
But the story doesn’t end here. One would say, that at least
some of Greece was salvaged and the population was transferred completely. But
in 2019, in the intervening period, Muslims have once again infiltrated and
grown in Greece. They are now officially more than 2%, though latest
estimations say they are not less than 4%.
But the story doesn’t end here either. A quick look at all
the neighbors of Greece will quickly make the story more frightening. Greece
has borders with four countries: Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.
Turkey:
The Time Bomb of Exploding Muslim Population
Turkey, as we have discussed is more than 99% Muslim and is
a population time bomb with numbers teeming around 8 crore. Turks are just
swarming all over Eastern Europe once again, exactly like the Middle Ages when
they came along with the Ottoman armies.
Bulgaria:
The Imploding former Communist Country and its attendant Dangers
Bulgaria is a former communist country, one of the most
brutal in its communist dictatorship and one of the poorest. It is, by wide
agreement, one of the worst Eastern European societies, as a consequence of
communist policies. A huge part of its population has already migrated to the
Western countries and the growth rate of the Bulgarians left in Bulgaria is
dismal. The resulting population gap is being filled by Turkey and though
reports vary widely, but by one estimate Bulgaria, ever since 1990, has taken
in a lot of Turks and is between 12%-18% Muslim, with a lot of them gathered
around the border of Greece.
Macedonia:
Reaching the Demographic Point of No Return
Macedonia is even worse. It has the highest percentage of
Muslims in any Christian majority country in Europe. And the Muslim population
is literally exploding there. Muslims are now more than 34% in Macedonia! [2] Until
just 2014, they were around 20%. Macedonia is on its way to become the first
country in Europe to turn Muslim majority from Christian majority. It is
bad news for Macedonia of course, but not so good for Greece either.
Albania:
The Bangladesh of Balkans
The fourth country bordering Greece, Albania, as we all
know, is more than 93% Muslim and just like Bangladesh is sending all its
excess population to Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and also in Greece. Though a lot of
Albanian, carrying their communist legacy declare themselves as atheist, but
whenever it comes to a skirmish with other ethnicities and followers of other
religions, their inner Islam surfaces quickly as the only concrete defining
identity. Using this Muslim brotherhood, they are destroying the demography of
many neighboring countries, including Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia
and Greece.
Greece, meanwhile, is one of the poorest countries of
Europe, with one of the lowest growth rates. Greeks are going DOWN in numbers,
not just percentage, every year. Poor, bankrupt, with one of the highest median
age in Europe and one of the largest dependent population, with a collapsing
welfare state, surrounded by either completely Islamic countries with
burgeoning populations, or with other countries rapidly turning Islamic, Greece
is in a bad shape. Any demographic invasion in future, will be well-nigh
impossible for it to prevent or resist.
What does this grim tale teach us? That even if a Partition
with a radical Muslim country is completed, it won’t be enough. Sooner or
later, the society in the non-Muslim country will take a turn for the worse; the
sympathetic government will fall, and the situation in the neighboring
countries will change and Islam will reinvade and reclaim the non-Muslim lands.
Just like Sita Ram Goel said, it is not enough to defeat
radical Islam in one country. It is necessary to defeat it globally. It is
necessary to defeat radical Islam at the level of ideology. Local solutions
will only be temporary, against the global problem of Islam.
Spain: A
Reconquista Reversed
This morale becomes evident from another tale of another
great European country: Spain. Spain teaches us how the threat of radical Islam
is never dead until it is dealt with globally.
Spain was one of the first European countries to be overrun
by Islam in 8th century. Almost as soon as the Arab conquest of
Spain started in 711 CE, Christian armies started giving resistance and got
first success in 718 CE. This is categorized by the later historians as the
start of Reconquista of Spain, which lasted for around 800 years, ending with
the expulsion of the Moors from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1491. [3]
Spain is the only case where a non-Muslim nation became
successful in rolling back the conquest of Islam completely! It is a unique
case obviously where a country was able to liberate all of its land and its
people from the Islamic occupation after a prolonged occupation. It is a unique
tale of reclamation from radical Islam. But even this story has its loopholes.
Just because the Reconquista of Spain by the Christians was completed once was
no guarantee that it won’t be reversed in future.
In 2016, Muslims were once again 4% in Spain. And the situation
is much worse than their numbers actually reveal. When the US invaded Iraq,
Spain was one of the countries supporting the US. Al-Qaeda retaliated in 2004
with the deadliest Islamic terrorist attack in Europe for decades, the Madrid
train bombings which killed 193 Christians. [4]
What is more sinister is the timing of the attacks. They
were done three days before the general elections. The ruling PP party had
chosen to go with the US against Muslim Iraq. The bombings frightened the
Spaniards so much so that they voted in favor of the opposition party, which
was socialist and appeasing towards Muslims. Since then, Spain is not in a good
shape. Many of its provinces want to secede from Spain and the Islamists and
Muslims support these micro-states, as it is very easy to overtake smaller
chunks of bigger countries, one by one.
After 800 years of Reconquista, just a few decades of
multi-culturalism destroyed the common sense of Spain to let Muslims settle
again and grow to a point where they could orchestrate terrorist attacks and
swing governments to their favor. Spain is one of the ‘unfinished agendas’
of Islam and going by the dictum ‘once an Islamic land, always an Islamic
land’, the country remains a prime target of Muslim immigration and Islamic
conquest.
Spain teaches us that Islam has long memory. Even if
hundreds of years have passed after its defeat locally, it can invade back by
using other neighboring countries as springboards, other countries which were
not successful in resisting the Islamic invasion.
Islam has a millennial approach, global vision and global
action. It has very long end-goals and readymade mechanisms to act in
co-ordination worldwide. This is why it is not just enough to defeat Islam
within our boundaries. It is also necessary to have the global scenario in
mind. You cannot fight global powers with local thinking.
Keeping it local helps the victim narrative of the
Muslims, where the non-Muslims are always evil. Seen globally it becomes
instantly clear that radical Islam is the aggressor; that it is the perpetrator
of violence and genocide and not its victim. That is why both the action and
thinking about Islam has to be global.
REFERENCES
- Shields, Sarah. “The Greek-Turkish
Population Exchange: Internationally Administered Ethnic Cleansing”.
Middle East Report (267): 2–6. 2013. - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/print_mk.html
- Parmelle, Mary Platt. A Short History of Spain.
Cosmio Classics, 2013. - http://www.iiss.org/conferences/counter-terrorism-series/islam-and-terrorism/
Featured Image: Al Jazeera
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the
personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any
responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability,
or validity of any information in this article.
Pankaj Saxena is a scholar of History, Hindu Architecture and Literature. He has visited more than 400 sites of ancient Hindu temples and photographed the evidence. He has been writing articles, research papers and reviews in various print and online newspapers and magazines. He currently works as the Asst. Professor, Centre for Indic Studies, Indus University, Ahmedabad. He has authored three books so far. He maintains a blog at http://literaryfalcon.wordpress.com/