Armenians urge Jews to take moral high ground | Jerusalem Post
Historians estimate that as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Muslim Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1923, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Hrm ... this made me wonder ....
I pay attention to words. Word order. Specific usage. This struck me and I had to think about it. Write about it.
The base word, in a phrase, comes last. Its modifiers come first. "A red wagon" is a wagon, but more than that, it is red. "A tall tree" or "a mean man." The object is last, the adjectives first.
In this sentence, I see several things. Just because I see them, I don't know that they are right. Its just a way of reading it. Maybe the author didn't mean it this way.
First, those who were killed were Christians. Armenian is an adjective. They were Christians who happened to be of Armenian heritage. 1.5 million Christians. I'm not sure the Romans in the first couple of centuries managed that many.
The second group of people in this sentence are Ottoman Turks, modified by the word "Muslim." So, it was the Turks killing Christians, and they just happened to be Muslims.
This raises lots of questions: First and foremost, am I reading more into this than was meant. Or was this a careful piece of editing.
Christians were killed by Ottomans. It wasn't so much a racial thing as a religious thing. The Ottomans were killing Christians. One slight change in phrasing, and it would be racial. "Turkish Muslims" killing Christians would be religious persecution on a grand scale. Is there a reason the author of this article didn't write it this way? Or was it just an accident of phraseology. Or careful editing so it didn't appear that Christians were being killed by Muslims.
Of course, Armenians killed enmass by Turks isn't any better, but at least it removes the religious aspects of the event. Was it racial? Was it religious? At this time in history, could the two really be divided?
One more question? If 1.5 million Christians were killed today, would the papers make it a regional/racial thing, or would they dig deeper and see the religious roots of the event?
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