The West’s record of genocide

While Continental Europe – the cradle of Western civilization – spares no one in preaching human rights and democracy, it has repeatedly demonstrated that this moral crusade has rarely gone beyond rhetoric when viewed against its role in the colonization of much of the world and the atrocities committed in the aftermath. In this respect, Continental Europe’s record is a heavy one. Yet, this is not a new phenomenon; a look at its past reveals that its record was far worse than it is today. It is precisely this past that renowned Turkish academic Şener Aktürk’s book "The Origins of the Modern World: The Destruction of Muslims and Jews in Western Europe" sheds light on. In the book, Aktürk offers a comprehensive analysis of how Muslims and Jews were systematically subjected to genocide in medieval Europe in the process of creating a homogeneous Continental Europe, as well as the underlying dynamics behind this process.

Aktürk examines a 470-year period between 1059 and 1529 in his study. Placing at the center of the systematic genocide directed against Muslims and Jews the clerical establishment led by the papacy, which rose during this period as a supranational power, Aktürk explains through concrete examples how the clergy’s step-by-step implementation of exclusionary – and ultimately annihilatory – policies toward non-Christians was facilitated by rivalry among Catholic monarchies.