When History Gets Ugly

One of the appeasing themes you hear lately in discussion of middle eastern troubles has been the notion that if we just didn’t involve ourselves in Israel’s defense, or foreign policy, we would have peace with the Islamic world.

As a student of history, I always have to chuckle whenever anyone seriously puts this one forward.   From the Saracen raids on Europe to the Barbary pirates and beyond, Islamic aggression has been a problem for the west, with or without a modern Jewish state.

In the American colonial era the word “Turk” was used as a kind of acid test for evil and cruelty, as in “not even a Turk would do that.”

The following extract, reproduced in its entirety was published in the New Hampshire Gazette on April 5, 1771.    It purports to be a letter sent to Rodolph, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1593 by servants of the Turkish emperor Amurath.     It speaks for itself, but in the event 18th century typography is too burdensome for you, here’s a glassy shard of cruelty promised the west by its Islamic enemies:

“..[we promise] to besiege you..and with fire and sword to destroy you and all yours, and whosoever shall give you any aid or assistance; to burn, destroy and kill, and with the most exquisite torments we can devise torture to death all Christian captives that may fall into our hands, or else to keep them as dogs in perpetual misery, and to empale alive upon stakes your fairest sons and daughters..”

Believe it or not, it gets worse..