The Fall of Constantinople

The other day, when talking about how islamofascists (salafist scum and so on) are destroying the French society (and the Syrian, Libanese, Egyptian, Tunisian, British, Belgian... societies) I had to listen once again one of those demented comments coming from "the collaborationist left" that always finds a way to justify whatever atrocity perpetrated by perverted, fundamentalist "muslims". This time the argument was based on the horrors of colonialism, so it seems that the bad doings during colonial times justifies that someone that has been living in France (and taking advantage of some parts of the French system: social aids, heath system... and rejecting others: educational system, cultural centers...) during all his life decides to join a sect of sociopaths and spread their sickness by preaching (and using) hate and violence against anyone that does not adhere to their sickening interpretation of the world.

I am fed up with this view where "the old" Europeans should be blamed for everything, and where the "new Europeans", the people from the old colonies that are now a proud an essential part of our societies should consider themselves as "traitors". The past is the past, and of course it needs to be known and used to understand the present, but not to justify everything.

This said, I'm going to enter the game for a few minutes, I'm going to talk about the horrors of colonialism, but another kind of colonialism, the one that "the collaborationist left" seems to forget or to be ignorant of. Europe has suffered different invasions over centuries, let's name some of them:

• The Arab invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, Southern France and Southern Italy. Ah, yes, Arab societies were more advanced and brought civilization and "good manners" with them, but it was also a key point in the Arab Slave Trade
  
  Periodic Arab raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph, Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.
• The Mongol Invasion devastated good part of Eartern and Central Europe
• The Ottoman invasions. The Ottoman Empire was for sure one of the biggest enemies of Europe and the civilized world (a role continued on by the Young Turks with the Armenian, Greeks and Assyrian genocides, and by the current Turkish Islamo-Nationalist state with their support of Daesh and the ongoing Kurdish and Syrians genocides). The Ottomans behaved in Eastern and Central Europes as badly as Europeans did in Africa of America, but Orthodox Christians don't seem interested in creating ghettos in Turkish cities from which to express their hatred for the descendents of the Ottoman invaders.

Regarding the Ottomans it would be interesting to note that their invasion still continues today. Just think about the city currently known as Istambul, its part lying on European soil used to be known as Constantinople, and during the times of Bizantium it was one of the great (or maybe the greatest) European cities. Then the Turks came, invaded, looted and murdered... and they have never been asked to decolonize and return the city to Greece... the big Turkish city is one of the greatest reminders of to what extent Turkey is not our alley, but just the contrary.

There's an imposing and beautiful painting in Toulouse's Augustins Museum by the Orientalist painter Benjamin Constant, The Entry of Mahomet II into Constantinople that gives us an exceptional glimpse into the tragic and painful day when the Ottoman hordes entered the magnificent Byzantine city.