CHAPTER XVI.
THE CURSE OF ISLAM.
Dr. M. S. Gabriel.
In Europe and America there is very little, if any, exact knowledge of what Mohammedanism means and who the Turks are. The Christian subjects of Turkey alone have the unfortunate opportunity of knowing well both the Turk and his religion. And of all the Christian subjects of the Porte the Armenians have the profoundest understanding in this matter. In the case of the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Christian, Turkish oppression has more or less been alleviated by the sympathy and protection of some one or the other of European Powers, while the Armenians, related to none of the great nations by close ties of either church or race, are absolutely friendless and have known the virulence of Moslem hatred in its utmost intensity.
This remark, I hope, will caution those of my readers who, having heard of the “tolerant spirit” of Islam and “the benign rule” of the Sultan, might think my description of them to be rather exaggerated.
Of “the benign rule” of the Ottomans and the spirit of Islam I can speak from personal and intimate acquaintance. There can be no curse for a Christian nation as great as that of bearing the yoke of Moslem tyranny. Armenia has many times during her long national life seen foreign rule or supremacy, that, for instance, of the Romans, but not without some consoling advantage. The British, called the true Romans of modern times, carry some blessing to the countries they conquer or rule, although they conquer or rule in the commercial interests of their own. They are like butterflies which fly from flower to flower in order to suck the honey, but, in so doing, they transfer to them the fertilizing pollen attached to their wings.
What have the Turks brought into the Greek and Armenian centers of civilization in the Orient? Any commerce, or industry, or literature, or art, or science? No, not a bit. They have come, sword in hand, bringing with them new vices and novel methods of torture. Since they established their rule in the East, Italy, in the West, had her literary Renaissance, Germany her religious Reformation, France her great Revolution, each contributing to the cause of general civilization, and all Europe and America appear to-day gloriously transfigured, thanks to modern science and industry and art, while Turkey remains where she was five centuries ago. The task of the Turk has been not to enter himself and not to allow his Christian subjects to enter into the path of progress. Whatever progress has been realized by the Armenians has been despite the systematic opposition of the Turkish government. They have smuggled, so to say, European elements of civilization into Armenia. But Armenian experience proved that it is vain, it is even dangerous, for Christians under Moslem rule to try to progress, to multiply schools and churches and colleges, to educate the children, to send the young men to the Universities of Europe and America, to be economical and industrious, to grow rich and to be influential or merely to be born beautiful under the Turkish flag. The destruction of Armenia, after the general massacres of October and November last, is going on by starvation and exposure and sickness. Armenian progress is buried by Islam in the heaps of slaughtered bodies and under the ashes that cover her ruined and deserted villages.
Why is the Turk so fiercely opposed to progress? Why does he so bitterly hate the progressive Armenians? Because, in the first place, he is Turkish; and because, in the second place, he is Mohammedan.
The Turk is not a member of the best human race—the Indo-European or Arian, like the Armenians. The Turk does not belong even to the next best of races, the Semitic, like the Jews and the Arabs. He is a branch of the Mongolian race, and, as such, incapable of assimilating complex ideas and higher forms of civilization.