Why Are Islamists Claiming Non-Muslim Land?

by Uzay Bulut

• The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years.
• [T]he Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly to claim that "152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey". These islands historically and legally... belong to Greece.
• Since its inception in Arabia in the seventh century, Islam has been spread throughout the world by means of the sword. According to the Islamic law, the entire world is divided into the "dar al-Islam" (territory of submission to Allah -- the word "Islam" is Arabic for "submission"), which denotes regions where Islam prevails, and the "dar al-harb" (territory of war), which refers to non-Muslim lands, yet to be conquered.
• Islamists believe that once a land has come under Islamic occupation and colonialism, the land conquered is forever Islamic... Islamic supremacists such as Erdogan believe that because Thessaloniki was once under the occupation of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, it is a Muslim land eternally and must be returned to its rightful owner.
• Jerusalem was under Ottoman occupation for four centuries (1517-1917). The Jewish people, however, reversing that pattern of Islamic colonialism and imperialism, re-established their homeland, now Israel, in 1948. Islamic supremacists still have not healed from the perceived affront by Israel's indigenous Jewish people to Islamic conquest.
• Islamists therefore say they want to reconquer Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. According to doctrine, the only religion that should rule over these lands -- or any lands, for that matter -- is Islam. Christians and Jews could be only dhimmis, second-class, tolerated subjects of an Islamic state where they are only allowed to stay alive on sufferance by paying a high "protection" tax, the jizya.
• Theologically, according to Islamic scriptures, Judaism and Christianity are merely distorted versions of Islam. In the Islamic view, originally there was only Islam, which the Jews and Christians later distorted into Judaism and Christianity. All history, in this mindset, is therefore originally Islamic history and all major figures of Biblical history, from Adam and Eve, are therefore Muslim. According to Islam, Abraham, David, Moses and Jesus are also Muslim. So, any place related to them, in that view, is Muslim territory.
• Many others see these events as the Jews, who were the indigenous population of what is now Israel, having had their land "stolen" by the Ottomans, similarly to how the Turkish military invaded the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974, or how the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire was "stolen" by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and his troops on May 29, 1453 when they stormed Constantinople and triumphantly entered the Cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, after besieging the city for 55 days.
• Many Islamists are therefore obsessed with conquering Israel, Spain and Portugal (Muslim-occupied al-Andalus), Greece, Cyprus and India for Allah -- then the rest of the non-Muslim world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps increasingly referring to places outside Turkey as "our lands." The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years. Pictured: Erdogan speaks at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara on November 29, 2023. (Photo by Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps increasingly referring to places outside Turkey as "our lands." In his statement following the presidential cabinet meeting on November 20, Erdogan said:

"Karabakh [in the South Caucasus] has the same place in our hearts as Gaza. Just as we do not distinguish between Bosnia and Aleppo [in Syria]; Tripoli [in Libya]; Balkh [in Afghanistan]; Thessaloniki [in Greece] and Mosul [in Iraq], we see our own ancient cities and Jerusalem as the same."

"Karabakh" is the Armenian Republic of Artsakh, currently occupied by Azerbaijan after it – with the help of Turkey – seized it in September after a genocide against the indigenous Armenians there, that lasted from 2020-2023.

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