M Chesney-Stroak

65 years after the Fall of Constantinople, Sultan Selim I Yavuz, grandson of Mehmed "the Conqueror" and father of Suleiman, decided to definitively abolish the Patriarchate of Constantinople during the patriarchate of Theoleptos I, and to slaughter all the subjugated Christians (rayah) of the empire who refused to convert to Mohammedanism and Islam. The highest religious authority in the Ottoman Empire, Zenbilli Ali Efendi, opposed the Sultan’s decree. He issued a fatwa (legal ruling) stating that according to Islamic law (Sharia), forced conversion is strictly forbidden for non-Muslims who submit to Islamic rule and pay the protection tax (jizya). But as we know, the Ottomans didn't really care about the taxes. All they wanted was to convert every Greek Christian to Islam, and their actions, according to our primary sources from the last 500 years, are the biggest proof. All you have to do is to read my posts. The Sultan ordered and implemented the violent Islamization of the Christian Greeks. Just 65 years after the Fall of Constantinople, the Greeks of Thrace were collectively placed before the forced dilemma of either converting or being wiped off the face of the earth, that is, to suffer ethnic cleansing and genocide. Between those two barbaric options, the Greeks of Thrace (the ancestors of today’s Muslim Greeks of Thrace) chose ethnic cleansing at their own expense; that is, they chose to convert in order to survive as an ancient indigenous people, in the hope that at some point in the future their descendants would regain their national self-awareness and their religious independence, and would then voluntarily return to the bosom of the Greek Nation and of Greek Orthodoxy. Ottoman expansion was primarily a result of racial and religious grand plan. Just like the genocide of the Christian population of Anatolia (Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians) 100 years ago by the muslim Turks. A genocide and expulsion motivated by racial and religious hatred. Greece experienced almost 400 years of Ottoman slavery, during which Muslim Turks tortured, murdered, and raped countless thousands of Greeks, targeting them solely for their religion and ethnicity, with the sole aim of forcing them to change their faith and convert to Islam. The entire modern history of Greece, from the fall of Constantinople until 1822, is filled with events of hatred by Islam toward Christianity and Greeks. And I have not even mentioned the Janissaries. After the failure of Daskalogiannis’s uprising in Sfakia (1770), whom the Turks flayed alive as I wrote you in my previous post, the life of the rayah (Christian subjects) in Crete became a constant torment. The Janissaries rebelled constantly and imposed their will even on the Pasha. Not only did they seize all the Christians’ belongings, but they also exterminated them without any reason, simply because they were Christians. Sometimes they executed them in cold blood in the middle of the road, just to test the accuracy of their weapons; other times to watch them writhe in their own blood; sometimes to make the abduction of a bride, right after her wedding, more dramatic; other times simply because the Christians were manly-looking, relatively well-dressed, or on horseback. In the latter case, the rayah would hurry to dismount upon seeing a Janissary, but the latter would draw his pistol and say: "Why did you dismount, you infidel dog? So you could make me ride instead?" And the rayah, the Greek Christian, would fall dead. When bloodthirsty Janissaries held the upper hand, the murder of a Turk was punished extremely harshly by them. Many times it led to the extermination of entire families in the area where the murder had taken place. A characteristic example of their vengeful fury is the fact that, for the murder of one powerful Turk in the Selino region of Crete, 40 Greeks who bore the name Yannis (John) were killed. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the situation in Crete was grim. The Janissaries faced no restraint in their behavior toward the Christians. They would even enter churches and desecrate them. And if they discovered a beautiful Greek girl, they would seize her from her parents in order to satisfy their lewd desires. For this reason, anyone who had a pretty daughter was forced to keep her locked inside the house, while most Greek women who lived in towns would wear a burqa when they went out, just like Muslim women. That's why today in Greece, we call the traitors Janissaries which is the ultimate insult for a Greek who acts against his people. The Greeks suffered so much for 400 years that when they finally fell upon the Turks with rage, there were moments that they would shoot with their rifles, and without waiting to reload the rifles (because it takes time), they would smash the Turks’ heads with their pistols. There are eyewitness, historical accounts, describing how they beat the Turkish occupier with such hatred for what he had done to the Greeks that the iron of the weapons literally melted on the Turks’ heads from the force of the blows. In Anogeia, Crete, out of the 800 dead Turks, two-thirds had their skulls completely crushed from the blows. If you want to support me in the effort I’m making, please consider becoming a subscriber to my X account for only $2. I write about the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Greece and what Christians went through because of Islam. Always with primary sources and historical facts. - Homer Pavlos