Palestine’s First Martyr: Sultan Abdulhamid (Part I)

It thus becomes evident to us that the deposition of Abdulhamid did not reflect the will of the Muslim community’s upright and trusted figures. Rather, his dethronement was a conspiracy orchestrated by resentful minorities—among them Jews, Armenian Christians, Freemasons, and esoteric, heterodox sects—catching those trusted leaders off their guard, paralyzed as they were by the propaganda of this spiteful faction. This was further achieved by exploiting certain Muslim reformers who had been seduced by Western philosophy and upbringing; yet, the endeavors of these minorities would never have prevailed had it not been for the foreign backing that sustained them.

The British Aid the Traitors

For the British had guaranteed aid to the plotters whenever needed. Prince Sabahaddin entered into negotiations with them through a traitor among his entourage named Ismail Kemal Bey, seized by an opportunity that had presented itself years prior to 1908, yet which they failed to turn to their advantage.

Ramsaur describes their plot, observing:

'The plan devised was straightforward. Contact was made with Field Marshal Recep Pasha, an Albanian who commanded the Turkish forces in the Vilayet of Tripolitania. He agreed to undertake the operation, which called for transferring part of his army to Salonica, from whence he would rally his Albanian compatriots to his aid—or dispatching them to strategic vantage points such as Bolayır on the Gulf of Saros, thereby seizing them and securing command of the Dardanelles. They believed, as Ismail Kemal relates, that this maneuver would capture Europe's attention and bring pressure to bear upon the Sultan, whom they thought easily intimidated, compelling him to accede to whatever terms were dictated to him.'

Ismail Kemal continues his narrative, stating that once he had secured Recep Pasha’s pledge of cooperation, he laid the entire plot before Sir Edmund Monson, the British Ambassador in Paris. After pondering the matter, Monson furnished him with letters of introduction to the British Foreign Office, which he promptly bore to London.

Ramsaur further recounts Ismail Kemal’s success in eliciting a British promise of backing, on the strength of which they directed him to Cairo. There, he conferred over the specifics of this aid with Lord Cromer, an imperialist harboring deep-seated hostility toward Islam.

Commenting on this account to affirm its authenticity, Ramsaur notes:

'The main lines of the story summarized by Ismail Kemal Bey appear to be fundamentally correct,'

and that it: 'seems well-grounded, even though uncorroborated by other sources.'

Such was the extent acknowledged by Ramsaur in his bid to mitigate the cloud of suspicion hanging over the coup plotters—much as he attempted regarding the scale of Masonic complicity. Even so, he directs us to sources alleging far deeper entanglement in this treason, which he himself discounted, attributing to them comparable intrigues with Austria, Italy, and Greece. This he does while freely conceding their receipt of funds—funds subsequently misappropriated by that deceitful conspirator, Ismail Kemal.

In spite of all this, Ramsaur strains in the concluding pages of his book to persuade us that no foreign power stood behind the movement that ultimately toppled Abdulhamid. Yet there was no need for him to go to such pains; imperialist powers intervene solely when occasion demands. Once the ranks of Jews, Freemasons, Armenians, Bektashis, and westernized intellectuals spared the colonial empires the burden of blatant intervention, there remained no pretext for those powers to expose their hand so brazenly.

And what do we truly know of all that transpired? We merely seize upon the inadvertent admissions of Ramsaur and his ilk as testimony, for no documentary study has yet emerged to shed full light upon the complete, unvarnished truth.

Is it conceivable that the colonial powers would, in the final hour, forsake the patronage they had habitually rendered from the very outset?

Colonial backing is an established fact from their very first steps. Indeed, Ramsaur himself verifies that the foreign post offices attached to the embassies—enjoying extraterritorial capitulations that exempted them from inspection—had, from its earliest issues, circulated Ahmed Rıza’s journal Meşveret across the length and breadth of the Ottoman realms.

The Armenian Question Was the Trigger

Ramsaur laid bare the fervor that swept through the crusader colonial powers to depose Abdulhamid in the wake of the Armenian massacres, goaded as they were by deep-seated ancestral prejudice.

Ramsaur remarks:

'Abdulhamid initially made a favorable impression both at home and abroad. For several years, he encountered virtually no opposition to his rule from his subjects, and foreign observers were nearly unanimous in their praise of the new Sultan.'

'Yet these accolades ceased abruptly on account of the Armenian massacres that unfolded during the final decade of the nineteenth century.'

He proceeds to recount how the colonial powers very nearly dethroned him in 1896 following these massacres.

Thus, it was Christian propaganda championing the Armenian cause that served as the trigger for the counter-propaganda campaign. Abdulhamid was not marked for deposition from the outset of his reign; rather, it was what befell the Armenians that made him a prime target for removal. This was so despite Abdulhamid being entirely blameless regarding responsibility for the massacres, which were provoked by unruly mobs. It was the Armenians who struck first by seizing the Ottoman Bank headquarters and killing several of its employees—purportedly in retaliation for the suppression of their revolt, an insurrection that, as historical evidence confirms, they were goaded into by the Russians and the British, rather than arising from ill-treatment as some might imagine.

Indeed, the very reverse holds true: the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire revolted solely because they perceived an atmosphere of tolerance, which spurred them to exploit circumstances in order to embarrass the Sublime Porte and extort ever more privileges.

This is not our own contention; rather, it is asserted by eminent Christian statesmen and historians from abroad, such as 'Djuvara'—one of Romania's foremost statesmen and chroniclers who lived through the reign of Abdulhamid.

This authority observes:

'Among the foremost factors in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was its custom of granting absolute sectarian and educational liberty to the Christian subject peoples under its sway. For through these twin freedoms, these nations propagated their nationalist propaganda, consolidated their ranks, arose, acted in collusion, and marched resolutely along the path of secession from the Ottoman Sultanate.'

This passage is drawn from the conclusion of a work by this very statesman, translated by Shakib Arslan, who incorporated its synopsis into a chapter of The Present World of Islam (Hadir al-Alam al-Islami). Therein, this Romanian chronicler enumerates—complete with names, figures, and dates—precisely one hundred Christian imperialist schemes designed to partition the Ottoman Empire, none of which came to fruition until the hundredth design was enacted during the First World War.

Commenting upon the aforementioned statement, Shakib observes:

'Whether this author proclaimed this truth or kept his peace, it remains an incontrovertible reality beyond shadow of doubt.

Hence, we find the atheists of Ankara citing among their arguments for divesting themselves of Islamic Sharia the claim that, had it not been for adherence to this Sacred Law, the Turkish Sultanate would have maintained its pristine grandeur and been spared the afflictions that beset it across six centuries on account of a Christian populace comprising one-third—or perhaps more—of its inhabitants, and that Sharia was what forbade the sultans from compelling them either to embrace Islam or face expulsion.'

Would it not have been far more fitting for the writer in Al-Arabi to turn his pen in defense of the Muslims of the Philippines, who are being slaughtered like sheep these days by a vengeful crusader spirit, rather than assailing an Islamic sovereign deposed by crusader powers on charges of massacres whereof he was entirely blameless?

Or does that writer fail to perceive that even the most conservative estimates of the victims of Aba Island in Sudan—those pious souls slain while bowing and prostrating before God by the aerial bombardments of secular Arab nationalism—surpass more than twice the highest estimate of Armenian casualties who merely executed the Russian stratagem of provocation?

And where was the conscience of Al-Arabi's writer when the heralds of Arab nationalism gave their blessing to the butcher Abeid Karume's slaughter of twelve thousand Arab Muslims in Zanzibar just a few short years ago, that he should stand today zealous to impugn a Muslim Caliph whose sole pretext for deposition was his inability to rein in mobs that slew fewer than half the casualties of Zanzibar?

Or is it that the eye of favor is blind to every flaw?

We grieve indeed to conclude that the writer in Al-Arabi fell victim to Armenian and Zionist propaganda, and that he was manifestly unjust in the pronouncements he rendered.

To be continued in Part II