Opus 2018-105: One Man’s Suppression Is Another Man’s Genocide

You always need to ask yourself the bias or slant of a source.  One of the books I read this year involved the history of the Arabs.  It was written by a British professor with an Arabic name.  He was born in Lebanon to a Christian family.  I worked with a teacher who had a similar background and, although I enjoyed the spirited discussions we had, he was a total left winger who embraced most of the anti-American and anti-Israel memes of our day.  I would guess Hourani would be similar, a great human being as long as you didn’t cross certain lines.

I say that leading up to his book, A History of the Arab Peoples, and what it had to say about the Armenian Holocaust.  In a word, nothing.  He did mention something that hinted that there might have been a few problems, but genocide or holocaust, no.  Here is how he dealt with the event commemorated today,

“This was shown in the 1890's, when nationalist parties in another Christian community, the Armenians, began to work actively for independence the Ottomans were able to suppress the movement with great loss of life, and without effective European action,...”  p. 280

From his point of view it was just another example of how Muslims have responded to Christians through the ages.  1890 is a bit early.  I would guess that the serious attempts to kill Christians were put off until the world was distracted by World War I.

As with the Jewish Holocaust, never forget.

Hourani, Albert.  A History of the Arab Peoples.  Cambridge:  The Belknap
        Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.

homo unius libri