RUTHFULLY YOURS

“This is a policy of forcing Alevis to immigration and dissolving the Alevi population,” said Gani Kaplan, the head of the Pir Sultan Abdal Alevi Cultural Association. “We are not against immigrants but it is impossible for us to live alongside jihadists in the same village.”

The province of Sivas is also a terrible choice by the government to build another container city for “refugees”: Alevis in Sivas have already been exposed to a deadly attack there at the hands of Islamists.

“After the attempt to build a refugee camp in the middle of the Alevi villages… where the [1978] massacre happened — is it a coincidence that you are building yet another refugee camp in the predominantly Alevi town of Divrigi in Sivas — where the [1993] massacre… took place? What is the objective of all of that?” — Zeynep Altiok, an MP from the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The denial of the Alevi faith seems to be an effective way of assimilating Alevis into the Islamic culture or making them “invisible.” There are also other methods — such as trying to change the demographic character of the predominantly Alevi places by building “mysterious” container cities in the middle of Alevi villages.

Since late February, locals from the predominantly-Alevi populated villages in the province of Kahramanmaras, or Maras, have been protesting government plans to build a “container city” (housing made from used shipping containers) in their villages supposedly for the Syrian “refugees.”

There are 16 Alevi villages in the region where the container city for “27 thousand refugees” is being built by the Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

The villagers are deeply concerned that militants might infiltrate, and that the container city “could be turned into a human resources department of jihadists such as ISIS and al-Nusra.”

The Alevis in Turkey are a persecuted religious minority who have been exposed to several massacres and deadly attacks – both in the Ottoman Empire and republican Turkey.

The Alevis in Maras say that they are afraid of being exposed to yet another massacre or forced displacement – this time at the hands of foreign jihadists.

When the plans for building a container city for Syrians first came up, the Alevis sought help from the governor.

When their complaints were mostly met with silence or indifference, the villagers started peaceful protests in which they set up tents and read statements to the press to express their opposition to the camp being built.

On April 3, however, the gendarmerie forces attacked the villagers with pressurized water and gas cartridges, and detained six.

Affected by the police’s tear gas, Mor Ali Kabayel, 82, was taken to hospital where he lost his life.

According to the journalist Gulsen Iseri, the villagers are “scared of being exposed to a new 1915 [genocide] in which Armenians were deported.”

Hasan Huseyin Degirmenci, an Alevi from Maras, said:

“The real project here is to carry out another 1915. Just like Armenians were deported from here, they want to deport us in the same way. I lived through 1978 Maras [massacre]. I was 24 years old back then. I had to go abroad afterwards.”

It’s a hostile world. Global economies are in a funk. Central bankers offer “free” money, yet economies stagnate. The benefits of capitalism and globalization, which have done so much to eradicate poverty and enhance living standards, are debunked. Cyber threats menace our defense systems, electric grid, as well as our aviation and banking industries. Drones, which can be used to carry explosives, threaten commercial airlines. Failed policies in the Middle East have created a refugee crisis in Europe. The Middle East has devolved into two apparently irreconcilable camps – Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. From the Baltic to the South China Sea, Russia and China are testing the United States. Islamic terrorism poses threats on four continents, bringing with it (not unnaturally) xenophobic fears of Muslims. Anti-Semitism is resurgent in Europe. Amidst this fusillade, leading candidates for President of the United States are turning toward protectionism and away from globalization.

Protectionism refers not only to international trade. It was the reason behind Teddy Roosevelt’s dismemberment of “Trusts.” It is manifested in Washington, where cronyism places the interests of politicians (and their business and union counterparts) above that of the people. Protectionism, the antithesis of free trade, inhibits growth, keeps prices high and produces stagnation. Wherever it appears, it fails the long-term economic well-being of the nation. The ghost of Smoot-Hawley should frighten us all, as its signing in 1930 preceded a downward spiral into a world-wide depression. Former Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman once noted: “When America closes its doors, so does everybody else. We are the primary engine of growth in the world; we are the only beacon of free trade and open markets.” Amen!

Robert Kaplan, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, has just published a piece on Islam and the future of Europe. He claims, startlingly, that Europe “was essentially defined by Islam,” by which he means that before Islam swept across North Africa, Europe consisted of a single civilization, on both banks of the Mediterranean — that of the Roman Empire — and that Islam’s arrival severed “the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves.” It is true that Muslim conquerors swept across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries, but not quite true, pace Kaplan, that they “extinguished Christianity there.” Millions of Coptic Christians remained a majority in Egypt until the 14th century (that is, for at least 700 years after the time that Kaplan claims Muslim armies “virtually extinguished Christianity” in North Africa). And while it is true that the Roman Empire was sundered, it was not only by the forces of Islam, as Kaplan appears to believe: before the Arab armies arrived, others had been seizing territory from Roman control, including the Visigoths in Spain and the Vandals, who conquered the Roman province of Africa in 433 and held it till 539.

Kaplan quotes with evident approval Jose Ortega y Gasset that “all European history has been a great migration toward the North.” Is that true? The Roman Empire fell because of a great migration of the Germanic tribes from the north and northeast to the South; it was they, the Barbarians, who beat down the steady Roman legions and seized Rome in 476 A.D., with the Germanic warrior Odoacer placed on the throne. And even before the Fall of Rome, the Roman Empire had divided into Eastern and Western Empires, one ruled from Rome, the other from Constantinople. Surely that split was just as significant, for the future of European civilization, with the Western empire embracing Latin Catholicism, and the Eastern empire Orthodox Christianity, as the loss of North Africa to Islam.

Ibrahim Barda’aya had turned 54 and he was still single so he decided to go out and kill some Jews. But Ibrahim wasn’t just a violent anti-Semitic racist. He was also lonely. According to his Imam, he wanted to die and get his 72 virgins in the afterlife. And he had stayed single to avoid the temptations of earthly women so that he could enjoy the 72 virgins who are 90 feet tall and so “white” that you can see the “marrow of their bones,” who never urinate or menstruate, get pregnant or complain.

In Pakistan, an arrested suicide bomber last year when asked if he wanted to marry, retorted that he wanted to die. “72 virgins are waiting for me in paradise, so why I should prefer only one here?”

Muslim men are encouraged to view their marriages to Muslim women as temporary. A Hadith has the Houri virgin admonishing the Muslim wife, “Do not annoy him, may Allah ruin you. He is with you as a passing guest. Very soon, he will part with you and come to us.” That is what Muslim terrorists strive for.

According to Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, the 90-foot-tall Islamic virgins are vastly preferable to actual Muslim women. “Whereas the women of this world may suffer, for days and nights, from menstruation, from blood for 40 days after childbirth, from vaginal bleeding and from diseases – the women of Paradise are pure, unblemished, menstruation-free, free of feces, urine, phlegm, children.”

Also they are “restricted to tents” and “locked up” so, like the ideal Saudi woman, they never leave the house. They are “hairless” and never get older than their “tender age.” Their skin is so “bright that it causes confusion” and actually doubles as a mirror so that “one can see one’s image in her cheek.”

Unsurprisingly for a death cult, Islamic scholars appear to be obsessed with the bones of these giant women and assure Jihadists that “the marrow of the bones of their legs” of their promised virgin brides “will be seen through the bones and the flesh.”