>>1492805What do you think is more likely, that turks, the descendants of the greatest muslim empire to have ever existed, would not know what islam is, or that someone made that shit up at worst or misinterpreted it at best? Never underestimate people's capacity to bullshit for the sake of selling a story, for fame or money or both, but let's give the man who made the report the benefit of the doubt, what do I mean by misinterpreting? That the reporter took the words of his interviewees at face value, maybe when the reporter asked "what is islam" they gave him sarcastic answers as a mockery to such a stupid question. Maybe they just didn't like him and refused to be truthful to him.
But there's also the fact that the Ottoman Empire was a massive entity, with several peoples and tribes, not all of them as well connected as we give for granted today with our modern means of travel and communication, some lesser groups could have slipped through the cracks of the empire's cultural influence, in that case it's not unlikely that some guy in the farthest most remote reaches of the empire would not know about islam. Still unlikely if you ask me, but considering WW1 was at the height of the empire's decadence, where maybe before there was greater religious propaganda but by then not so much anymore, it's not so far fetched after all. It could even explain the empire's collapse, as religion acts as a cultural adhesive for several different peoples to band around, with it gone so disappears a crucial tool in the maintenance of an empire
