Mustafa Kemal Pasha's jihad

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 6, 2008 at 15:08

sims1 wrote : "I think this is getting pretty futile as you really have only a superficial understanding of Turkish politics back then and now. First, Ataturk was not a jihadist. He did everything he could to push religion away from public life later in his career."

Of course , he was a jihadist and a major one at that! The Kemalist war of 1919-1922 was essentially an Islamic war of religion to exterminate the Christians in which he succeeded more than any of his Ottoman or Seljuk predecessors. Or what does his title "ghazi" stand for? "A holy secularist" perhaps? Anyway, the crucial point in your reply is "later" as what he did later had little to do with his earlier acts and words. Kemal himself LATER did much to suppress the overwhelming evidence of his jihadist past and exploits.

Beside being a bloody military dictator he was also the bossy head of the 'Turkish Historical Society' and so he could manipulate not just the present but also to a large extent the past. So now something which is obvious and historically irrefutable looks paradoxical, incredible and overstretched. "No, it's impossible! How could this "staunch father and prophet of Turkishness and of Turkish secularism be denigrated as a pure Moslem and a bloody warrior in Allah's path?" -someone may exclaim.

And yet, he did save the Turkish dar-al-Islam from the kafiri threat. He entered the path of Allah that made him "gazi"- a proud arch-jihadist, the Destroyer of Christians , the one who conducts "gazw" - the prophet's war" (="jihad"). Even a superficial analysis of the extant materials shows that the cheap slogans so eagerly bought and spread by some gullible Western "experts" on his innate secularism just mislead the historical lineage of Kemalism. a/ The whole Kemalist movement started as a strictly Islamic movement.

Kemal relied on the most backward, conservative, fanatical illiterate elements in Eastern Anatolia. The Grand National Assemby was opened on Friday with solemn prayers in the Grand Mosque in Ankara with turbans, ramadhan fasting, pan-Islamic slogans, with envoys to and from the Islamic lands, particularly Bristish India and Northy Africa where Islamic Kemalism gained much support and sympathy at its early stage. After all pious Kemal waged a war against the powerful and so hated Christians, the traditional mortal enemies of Islam. A remarkable contemporary report from NYT of November 25, 1920 "Kemal and Soviet plan to free Islam" available on the net sheds some light on the obscure and so important issue : http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A01E6DC163CE533A25756C2A9679D946195D6CF&oref=slogin b/

Now let's look at some old Turkish pictures now. http://www.ataturktoday.com/Resim/Album/Fotograflar.htm

The one that reads in Turkish "Atatürk Türk Ordusuna destek olan Sivas Kadısı Hasbi Efendi ve Şeyh Fevzi Efendilerle" is particularly intreresting as it means : "the Buttress (‘destek') of the Turkish troops of Ataturk(sic!) were the qadi of Sivas Hasbi effendi and Sheikh Fevzi effendi." The two don't look quite secular, do they? Or how about the one "Atatürk (sic!) attends a prayer ceremony in front of the Governor's residence" or this one "Mustafa Kemal praying in front of the Grand National Assembly building"?

[ This picture is better visible at http://www.ataturktoday.com/Resim/Foto1/r34.jpg

Such arresting poses of the great and staunch "secularist" are hardly known in the West , let alone in Turkey. The head of the Turkish Historical Society was careful enough to mould the past in his own later image. c/ Let's quote the Turkish National anthem written by Mehmet Akif Ersoy , a Kemalist from the beginning of the movement and a Quranic scholar who later , when the unexpected winds of "secularism" commenced blowing across Anatolia, had to flee Turkey and settled down in less secular Cairo.

His "Independence March" ("İstiklâl Marşı") was officially adopted on March 12, 1921 – long before Kemal's love-affair with secularism - as the Turkish National Anthem. What does this anthem say? Even though the Turks tend to sing just the two first stanzas the most useful part starts with the thrid one! It is as with everything a Turk says. The most interesting part is that a Turk keeps silent about. But we can't do him a favour if we want to learn anything relevant:

The Turkish National Anthem teaches us i.al. that "The lands of the West may be armored with walls of steel, But I have borders guarded by the mighty chest of a believer. Recognize your innate strength, my friend! And think: how can this fiery faith ever be killed, By that battered, single-fanged monster you call "civilization"? (...) You're the noble son of a martyr (şüheda=shahid) , take shame, hurt not your ancestor! Unhand not, even when you're promised worlds, this paradise of a homeland. What man would not die for this heavenly piece of land? Martyrs would gush out were one to just squeeze the soil! Martyrs May Allah take all my loved ones and possessions from me if He will, But may He not deprive me of my one true homeland for the world. Oh glorious Allah, the sole wish of my pain-stricken heart is that, No kafir's hand should ever touch the bosom of my sacred mosques.

These adhans, whose shahadahs are the foundations of my religion, And may their noble sound last loud and wide over my eternal homeland. For only then, shall my fatigued tombstone, if there is one, prostrate a thousand times in ecstasy, And tears of fiery blood shall flow out of my every wound, And my lifeless body shall gush out from the earth like an eternal spirit, Perhaps only then, shall I peacefully ascend and at long last reach the heavens. So flap and wave like the bright dawning sky, oh thou glorious crescent, So that our every last drop of blood may finally be worthy! Neither you nor my race shall ever be extinguished! For freedom is the absolute right of my ever-free flag; For freedom is the absolute right of my Allah-worshiping nation!"

All sounds quite so unambiguously Islamic - Allah, shahids, going to Allah's heaven, hatred of the West, contempt for the kafirs ...All sounds as if published in Saudi Arabia or in the Palestinian Autonomy today, doesn't it ? d/ As to the Kemalist flag, it is identical with the old jihadist flag of the Ottomans. The reason for the presrvation of this flag seems obvious. e/ Whenever the Turks attacked in this war, their battle cry was : "Allah! Allah!" It is what they fought for and what inspired them!

The army had imams, daily prayers, ablutions and all Islamic characteritics. e/ Also the destruction of Smyrna looks like a 100% jihadist tradition – three days' looting, raping, decapitating, torturing in a conquered kafiri city. Otherwise what logic did our Gazi or Allah's warrior pursue destroying a prosperous and intact city while the inland lay in ruins, most elementary commodities were scarce or unavailable? If it had been no jihad, why wasn't Smyrna just occupied, the inhabitants shipped and expelled?

But mass slaughters, bestialities, burning alive people in their churches, desecrating with particular rage Christian symbols and priests, martyrdom of the Metropolitan bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos all fit in the logic of jihad. Yes, it all looks too much like Constantinople in 1453 , doesn't it? In short as the Russian historian A. Lyalkina put it : "Whatever Kema's views on religion, his war was a war of religion , a jihad". Hence what our sims1 in his holy ignorance writes: "You won't find a serious historian who would claim him to be a jihadist." is really funny. If he means "a Turkish historian", he is right. Any Turkish paper which would publish the above, any historian in Turkey who would expose Kemal's jihadism, would be at once prosecuted and the rage of Turkish thought police would smash him.

The truth is that though not a single serious and honest historian of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha can overlook this funny and yet so instructive story of how a holy warrior of Allah turned the apostle of "secularism". It's one of the Big Lies that modern Turkey is founded upon.

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