Ottomans saved Hungarian PM Orban’s Ancestors; now he says Islam never part of Europe

Ottomans saved Hungarian PM Orban’s Ancestors; now he says Islam never part of Europe



Ottomans saved Hungarian PM Orban’s Ancestors; now he says Islam never part of Europe
By Juan Cole | Oct. 17, 2015

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban not only continued to defend his anti-immigrant bigotry but went on to say that Islam has never been part of Europe.

Mr. Orban not only is increasing the misery of largely Muslim refugees, but now he has erased 1300 years of European culture and politics, committing a sort of cliocide or mass killing of history.

The European “continent” is a little bit of an invented construct, but in any case it has been powerfully shaped by peoples who “came to us,” as Orban said of the Muslims. The Indo-European speaking peoples appear to have begun coming in from Syria and Turkey around 9,000 years ago. Hungarian as a language is probably Siberian from beyond the Urals, and its older forms show heavy Persian and Turkic influences. People in what is now Hungary did not speak Hungarian until well after people in southern Spain were speaking Arabic. Orban is clinging to a European nativism that has less historical grounding than that of European Arabs.

There isn’t a good way to exclude Spain or the Balkans from Europe. No history of either region could omit a heavy Muslim heritage. While it is true that Islam “came into” these areas from elsewhere, how is that different from everything else in Europe?