Truth Within History; Janissary Characteristics

I'll admit that for my first blog primarily relating to my Ottoman Empire class, I desperately needed some form of inspiration, a spark of some sort. I like to work with small sparks of excitement in history, i'm good with that. I began this journey for my spark by reading, and rereading, and rereading again The Janissaries, my class notes, and bits and pieces from a handful of other books. I didn't really succeed until I got a little creative. I decided to search some news sites for anything relating to "ottoman" "sultan" and "the janissaries." Granted the articles I came across were either incredibly old, or much of the articles were actually lost. Considering this is a history blog, I didn't see how old articles could be apt for exclusion, so I continued with my search and was at last intriqued; my spark was found!
From our class discussions I have found that with being a Janissary comes a sense of pride. With the knowledge that I have gained of the Janissaries, they had a high living standard and a respected social status. But the more I learn the more I come to realize that even with respected social status their morale was often not to be trusted. As Misha Glenny proposes in his book "The Balkans," "these janissaries eschewed loyalty...in favour of their local masters."
This raises a conflict for me; the idea of these Janissaries with such a respected position versus the idea of these Janissaries with untrusted loyalty. Also, with so many different sources exclaiming different characteristics of these "new soldiers" I am weary of what I should believe when researching on my own; I thought this went nicely along with our class discussion this week on trusted sources, truth within history, et cetera.
This idea for my blog first came about when I was rereading (or yet again attempting to read) David Nicolle's "The Janissaries." Though it's difficult for someone so new to this part of history to read, I enjoyed his style of writing nonetheless. He puts things nicely into perspective. He states his facts, as facts, and allows the reader to interpret how they choose.
Next, I moved on to wikipedia, to get a quicker, and much more basic understanding of what it was I was reading. I know wikipedia is as untrustworthy as some believe the Janissaries were :) (Ha!) But let's be honest, what college student doesn't refer to wikipedia? It's a great way to get a quick grip on something you might previously had no knowledge of. Wikipedia agreed that the Janissaries were not always to be trusted. Without taking this information too seriously, my next source was a document published in The New York Times August 23, 1896. Much of this document was difficult to read, and some parts were missing, yet the main ideas were all still there. "Even at the height of their power, never ceased to be soldiers." This document gave the idea the the Janissaries were no such thing as untrusted.
I continued to search other documents and came across much of the same things, for now I think i'll let our future class discussions clear up the reality of the characteristics of the Janissaries..

On "Ramadi With a Swagger"

I generally check out the worlds news within the NYTimes, mostly because the NYTimes is so easy to read, very basic English, and many of their articles have a blog-ish, if you will, sense to them; I like that. Silly to say, but true, what attracted me to this article was the term "swagger" in it's title. Who isn't intrigued by that word, especially after Celebrity Britney Spears made it wildly crazed in her newest come-back of a song, "Womanizer."
As I understand, through the conviently placed map shown in the article, Ramadi is a major city is Iraq, not far outside of Baghdad; this I'll admit I was unaware of. It's not that I haven't heard of Ramadi before, just haven't heard enough about the city or in context that would make me research the city. So, incase my readers were also unaware, now we all know. Firstly, when the writer exclaims "[he] lead us into the streets of a city once engulfed in a raging insurgency against the Americans," that got me thinking.. Isn't this city still raging towards us? I mean, the war isn't over, and even if it was, all wouldn't be forgotten. I've always understood that this is a war between governments more so than between peoples, but as far as I know when in war, you support your country. After 9/11, nationalism soared throughout the United States, but a war like the one we've gotten ourselves into was by no means what Americans were hoping for, hense this is a war between governments. And while the attacks on us were not done by the govenment of Iraq, it was neither done by the people. The attacks were by a terrorist organization, which leads me to believe the people of Iraq couldn't be all that happy with America. Accordingly, the terms on which the US, UK, and Spain invaded Iraq were wrongly justified. Actually, they were never justified. We never found those weapons of mass destruction we claimed Iraq had; and now we Americans are seen even more unintelligent than before. Awesome.
On a lighter note, when the author described General Youssef with a "moustache neatly trimmed in what [I] think of as the high Iraqi style," I couldn't help but utterly agree with him! That's exactly how I picture most Iraqis!
To continue with the main ideas of the article though, the author addresses many circumstances in which Iraq has made substantial progress. When war broke out in the streets of Ramadi, stores were forced to close, business was bad for many. Things since have changed. Three months ago 23 year old Abdul Fattah reopened his family owned store and business has been good since. Many people of Iraq feel comfortable enough to state their political positions and ideals freely and in this case in front of the police chief, without fear.
Alas, Bush did something right with choosing to create a surge in order to provide security for Baghdad and Al Anbar Province, or so I believe much of the credit for the newly safe-ish and calm Iraq, and region, can be given to the 2007 surge.

Quick Thinking..

Why is it that Americans so quickly associate Islam with violence, terrorism, etc., but the Catholic church is rarely associated with pedophilia? After all, pedophilia was just as huge of a scandal for the Catholic church as terrorism has been for Islam.

Militant Islam

"Why is Islam such a violent tradition? Does the Qur'an condone acts of terrorism?"

Questions like these are often raised throughout America with most assuming that Muslims are typically violent people and that the Qur'an does in fact condone acts of terrorism. The opposite is true though; the Qur'an fully supports peace and non-violence, and rejects terrorism. Also, "Sunni and Shii Muslims have generally forbidden 'sacrificial religious suicide' and acts of terrorism." While the attacks of 9/11 were done by al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda, Islam is not a violent religion. Americans and others often confuse Islam with Militant Islam and now primarily associate Muslims with terrorism because of the 9/11 attacks. Militant Islam, or Islamism is a twentieth century form of Islam that is so distorted from the religion of Islam, "so extreme, so radical, and so megalomaniacal, " that many Muslims refuse to associate it with their religion. Critics and religious extremists often takes bits and pieces of texts from the Qur'an and place them out of context to distort the meaning to something violent. Esposito gives numerous examples of exactly this in his "What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam," page 121. 

"Anyone who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole of mankind and anyone who has killed another person it is as if he has killed the whole of mankind." (Qur'an)

Related Articles:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/john_esposito/2007/07/why_is_islam_such_a.html

http://www.danielpipes.org/79/fighting-militant-islam-without-bias