Why didn't the Balkans become muslim?

[A.A. Khan]

I don't care about being Muslim or Christian but we should've definitely used a better Turkification system, we could've at least kept Western Thrace and large parts of Bulgaria today. The same goes for the Middle East as well.

A shame Ottomans didn't care about Turkification back then and not only that they also kicked out & exiled Shia and Alevite Turks out of Eastern Anatolia instead invited Kurdish clans thus today Eastern Turkey today is majority Kurdish and we have a separatist problem.

You forgot to mention how Shia Safavid ruler Tahmasp started a scorched earth policy against Sunni region in the northwest. Kurds suffered the most. Safavids Tahmasp and Shah Abbas both displaced, massacred Kurds in millions.
Google Massacre of Ganja [and Battle of Dimdim] where Shah Abbas after capture manslaughtered the whole village of Ganja incl. children. Safavids followed Russians displacing and destroying KurdishSunnis all over their territory. To this day a community of Kurds live in Nishapur and Khorasan on the border of Afghanistan-Turkmenistan, they were pushed about thousands of miles away from their lands. If Ottomans had not defeated Safavids there would not have been a Kurdistan in Syria or Iraq.


Alevis are different in practices and beliefs from Irani, Azeri Shia. The credit goes to the Turks and Ottomans. If not for Ottomans Iranian Mullahs would've influenced Alevis to give up their traditional practices. Alevis are around 10-15 million population. They continue to follow their practices originating from 16th century. Revering Shah Ismail Safavi [the ruler who converted Iran to Shiism in 1500s], there place of worship called Cem. They resemble Ismailis a lot. They can keep musical instruments in their praying area. Observe certain Taqiyyah. Alevis are actually the successors of the Shia religion introduced in Iran. Over time Arab and African Shia clergy changed religious practices.

 

[rajvoSa]

Islamization of Bosnia is indeed an unique case. Its populations accepted islam in unusually record time. First few years conversion was slow, and acordint to ottomn tefters (ottomans did many thing very good, one of these are keeping records), conversion rates were almost eaqually disturbited betweeen the nobility and common folk. It wasnt conversion from top to down ( as was cristian pratice, you conver the king and nobles and others habe no choice)... It was organic..
Before Ottomans came, Bosnia was an open battleground between Bosnian Church (heretical cult accordinf to Pope, and dominant form of cristianity for much of its christian history) And Chatolic curch, Orthodox church was the least influental. So christianity in Bosnia was already fragmented, and with dominations at odds with each other.
Then came the Ottomans and with their sensible aproach, which I dont have time to go to detail, found fruitfull ground for preaching of islam.

They are also other factors, our not so good relations with Vatican, and Hungarian Empire. Our relationship with the Ottomans before formal takeover ( I forgot the name of the battle in which Ottomans and then Bosnian kingdom fough together agains the hungarians, it didnt end well for Hungarians ...

Fall of the Emipre in the Balkans folllowed with Balkan wars effectivly cut muslim population of the Balkans by more then a half. In some areas muslims were eradicated totally. And those ideas and plans are not dead in these region, bosnian war was its most recent incarnation ( To ulustrate this, When Mladic roll into Srebrenica his first statment to the media was: finally it came a time to take our revenge agains the Turks, they call us turks, cause a turk was for centuries and still is a synonim for a muslims in the region, so in their twisted minds they were taking revenge agains tthe Turks), KAradzic and others member of their elites also talked about it, marketing themself to the islamophobes and turkey haters in the world. Hell they even named one very important front in Bosnian Interiror during the war, the gates of Moscow, the front where the Moscow is defended from the Turks live on serbian TV. Vozuca vas the name of the front. Short story: we took the gates of Moscow not long after that speach, battle lasted not even a full day.

So, the real theme of the debate should be 'How are Balkans muslims still there?'

 

[Borg]

Islamization of Bosnia is indeed an unique case. Its populations except islam in record time. First few years conversion was slow, and acordint to ottomn tefters (ottomans did many thing very good, one of these are keeping records), conversion rates were almost eaqually disturbited betweeen the nobility and common folk. It wasnt conversion from top to down ( as was cristian pratice, you conver the king and nobles and others habe no choice)... It was organic..
Before Ottomans came, Bosnia was an open nattlegrounf between Bosnian Church (heretical cult accordinf to Pope, and dominant form of cristianity for much of its christian history) And Chatolic curch, Orthodox church was the least influental. So christianity in Bosnia was already fragmented, and with dominations at pdds with eah other.
Then came the Ottomans and with their sensible aproach, which I dont have time to go to detail, found fruifull ground for preaching of islam.

They are also other factors, our not so good relations with Vatican, and Hungarian Empire. Our relationship with the Ottomans before formal takeover ( I forgot the name of the battle in which Ottomans and then Bosnian kingdom fough together agains the hungarians, it didnt end well for Hungarians ...

Fall of the Emipre in the Balkans folllowed with Balkan wars effectivly cut muslim population of the Balkans by more then a half. In some areas muslims were eradicated totally. And those ideas and plans are not dead in these region, bosnian war was its most recent incarnation ( To ulustrate this, When Mladic roll into Srebrenica his first statment to the media was: finally it came a time to take our revenge agains the Turks, they call us turks, cause a turk was for centuries and still has in their twisted mind a sznonim for a muslims in the region), KAradzic and others member of their elites also talked about it, marketing themself to the islamophobes and turkey haters in the world. Hell they even named one very important front in Bosnian Interiror during the war, the gates of Moscow, the front where the Moscow is defended from the Turks. Vozuca vas the name of the front. Short story: we took the gates of Moscow not long after that speach, battle lasted not even a full day.

So, the real theme of the debate should be 'How are Balkans muslims still there?'

Dobro poentirano zemljače.
How comes that we're still there when one consider what amount of attacks we had take on us in past 150 years?!

 

[rajvoSa]

Dobro poentirano zemljače.
How comes that we're still there when one consider what amount of attacks we had take on us in past 150 years?!

we are stuborn SOBs.

WHich reminded me on one folk tale originated after the WWI and when bosnian muslims fell under rule of Kindgdom of Yugoslavia. When the peace came authorities were engaging in a attempt to convert remaining muslims to christianity, esspecialy in regions close to Serbia and Montegro and the former bosnian areas now anexed in teriroties of these two countries ( region thats now formaly known as Sandzak)...
So priest will come to the viligges to baptase the ppl acompanied by soldiers or police.. as a tale goes in one vilage priest came and the ppl would line up to get over it pretend to e baptisied.. but the process took longer then planned, so one old man from back of the line shouted: Ey, priest, can you hurry up with it we gonna be late for isha prayer. Of couse no one knows if the story is real, but its existance and popularity are the testament to resiliance of our ppl... dont make us do something by force, Vatican tried to make us bend the knee to the pope, instead we bended the knee to the ottomans and became the first line of the defence against the Christiandom on european front.

RECONQUISTA BALKANICA: Our destiny should have been the same as destiny of spanish muslims. That was the plan.

 

[SALMAN F]

we are stuborn SOBs.

WHich reminded me on one folk tale originated after the WWI and when bosnian muslims fell under rule of Kindgdom of Yugoslavia. When the peace came authorities were engaging in a attempt to convert remaining muslims to christianity, esspecialy in regions close to Serbia and Montegro and the former bosnian areas now anexed in teriroties of these two countries ( region thats now formaly known as Sandzak)...
So priest will come to the viligges to baptase the ppl acompanied by soldiers or police.. as a tale goes in one vilage priest came and the ppl would line up to get over it pretend to e baptisied.. but the process took longer then planned, so one old man from back of the line shouted: Ey, priest, can you hurry up with it we gonna be late for isha prayer. Of couse no one knows if the story is real, but its existance and popularity are the testament to resiliance of our ppl... dont make us do something by force, Vatican tried to make us bend the knee to the pope, instead we bended the knee to the ottomans and became the first line of the defence against the Christiandom on european front.

RECONQUISTA BALKANICA: Our destiny should have been the same as destiny of spanish muslims. That was the plan.

Not just the Balkans but even turkey was about to be divided and it's population would be either convert to Christianity and expelled like the andalusian muslims but ataturk didn't let this happen

 

[rajvoSa]

Insightful, informative, beatifully written long read on history of Islam in Eastern Europe. Strongly recommend for those interested. It touchess the Balkans too, but goes much fruther to the Baltics. I figured its doesnt need a new theread, it may fit here just fine

A Silver Thread: Islam in Eastern Europe


THERE HAS NEVER BEEN an Eastern Europe without Islam. Eastern Europe owes its existence to the intermingling of languages, of cultures, and, perhaps above all, of faiths. It is the meeting place of the Catholic West and the Orthodox East, of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewry, of militant Islam and crusading Christianity, of Byzantine mystics and Sufi saints.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-silver-thread-islam-in-eastern-europe/#!

 

[Talwar e Pakistan]

Hi every one I decided to open this thread in the turkish section to ask this question since it involved the Ottoman Empire and other Turkic folks about why didn't the Balkan and other parts of Europe didn't become muslim like Spain, Portugal and Sicily

A large portion of them did but were forced out through series of ethnic cleansing during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

 

[prashantazazel]

Even Spain and whole of India didn't become muslim. Because there is no compulsion in Islam.
@Zuraib Qasit Khan Deccani

Sure. Forcing to convert for marriage doesn't happen then I guess.

 

[fitpOsitive]

Sure. Forcing to convert for marriage doesn't happen then I guess.

People force their partners, not Islam.

 

[prashantazazel]

People force their partners, not Islam.

When almost all adherents of a practice have similar views, it starts to define the practice.

 

[_Bosniak_]

I don't care about being Muslim or Christian but we should've definitely used a better Turkification system, we could've at least kept Western Thrace and large parts of Bulgaria today. The same goes for the Middle East as well.

A shame Ottomans didn't care about Turkification back then and not only that they also kicked out & exiled Shia and Alevite Turks out of Eastern Anatolia instead invited Kurdish clans thus today Eastern Turkey today is majority Kurdish and we have a separatist problem.

Full turkification couldn't / cannot happen. We do not speak same language and there is many other differences.

Turkification can happen only in Turkey itself and not outside. Logic.

 

[_Bosniak_]

That is also what led to the dissolution of the empire.

Correct. And this is why we had and we still have issue in Bosnia. Before the arrival of Ottomans the orthodox presence in Bosnia was equal to 0.

But then many orthodox where set up in the country due to the "more taxe" policy. But also due to some local governor who engaged orthodox to work for them on their lands. On later stage those orthodox killed them and took possesionh of the land.

As mentioned above before Bosnia became the part of Ottoman Empire the orthodox precessence was equal to 0 and at the end to 43%!

After the Berlin Congress the Bosnia was splitted and lost Sandzak region. A lot of Bosniaks where forced to flied to the East.

During A-U occupation there was a program of massive catholic organized migration. So many cities became with catholic majorities. This was the case even with Sarajevo.
Bosnia was on the way to became a catholic majority country but this was stopped by the WWI.

So we had som luck their.

Between WWI and WWI First Yougoslavia and Turkey signed and tried to organized transfer of muslim population to Turkey. It was signed in 1935. Same prrogram was sign in 1953 betwen second Yougoslavia and Turkey. So dozens of thousands families where moved to Turkey

So there is continous on going project to eliminate muslim population from Balkans.

I would like to point out that the worst executors of this project are comming from Monte-Negro. They are never accused but the worst criminals and executors of muslim population are from their. And this since the beginning till nowadays.

One example

Bajo Pivljanin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajo_Pivljanin

Bajo Pivljanin kills a Turk (1878), by Serbian painter Aksentije Marodić (1838–1909)

In reallty he was a criminal who rapped womans, killed villager, attack supply convoy ect...

Serbian Orthodox Church is at the origin of the muslim extermination project. This is a devil organisation.

Radovan Karadzic
Ratko Mladic
Pavle patriarch

 

[rajvoSa]

Orthodox church was present in Bosnia before the Ottomans its just a fact, but they were the least influental . Bosnian curch and Chatolic church were two most influenta dominations in terms of numbers of followers and church structure, with Bosnian church being overal dominant. Ottoman first tefters clearly show the statistics and numbers and there s no disputing it. We dont need to imitate serbian style myths and history falcifications tactics in our national disscurse. Serbs need to lie, to falcifly, cause its in ther core of their national existance, accepted by their most prominent thinkers like Cosic: who openlu said, We Serbs need to lie, and lie creativly, cause lying is serbbian national interest foundation of out existance. We are not them.

Noel Malcolm does very good roundup on this issue in his book Short history of Bosnia.

 

[rajvoSa]

A Silver Thread: Islam in Eastern Europe


THERE HAS NEVER BEEN an Eastern Europe without Islam. Eastern Europe owes its existence to the intermingling of languages, of cultures, and, perhaps above all, of faiths. It is the meeting place of the Catholic West and the Orthodox East, of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewry, of militant Islam and crusading Christianity, of Byzantine mystics and Sufi saints.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-silver-thread-islam-in-eastern-europe/#!

To add to this topic...


Waning crescent

Meet the Polish-Muslim community settled in the heart of Europe

http://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/9945/polish-muslim-lipka-tatars

 

[_Bosniak_]

Orthodox church was present in Bosnia before the Ottomans .

There is no evidence of orthodox presence in Bosnia before the Ottomans. Only small presence located in Old Herzegovina.Like a secte. Not even like an organisation.

This serbians liars changed the location names, facts and history and trying to persuade at first place them selves and then the others. Everything is fake with them.

Always the same story. They selects location, named it "crkvina" (church place) and the sick pope creating story about the church which was present their since centuries and destroyed by the Turks.

Serbian orthodox so called church is the sicknes itself.