History sometimes has a cruel way of repeating its worst episodes. One of the most horrendous that is happening now is the obliteration of Christians, Yezidis, Shia Muslims and Alawites by the Islamic State. This is a repeat of what happened a century ago, Ina Fay Manly said in an article published at The Daily Citizen.

“Toward the end of the Ottoman caliphate (1299-1922), Muslims began a systematic slaughter of Armenians, Syriac Orthodox Christians and Assyrians with unspeakably cruel brutality, the worst carried out against children. U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau wrote in his memoirs that Turkish officials bragged to him about their nightly meetings where they would enthusiastically share their latest torture techniques used on the Armenians.

That Genocide (1915-1919) claimed more than a million Armenians plus more than 250,000 others. By 1923 more than two million Armenians that once lived in the Turkish caliphate were gone. Gruesome slaughter and forced evacuation marches into the desert claimed many, but some survived to tell the story.

During the reign of Caliph Abdul Hamid II, ethnic cleansing was the order of the day. At a meeting of Christian ministers, laymen and a few of their wives, Turkish soldiers arrived and told them to convert to Islam or die. After a brief discussion, all 70 refused so they were murdered and their bodies dumped in a ravine. One miraculously survived to describe the massacre,” the article said.

“The jihad Genocide of the Armenians was carried out by Muslims. Not all Muslim Turks and Arabs approved or participated, but the jihadists who did were awarded all the property of their victims and took any remaining women and children as slaves.

This may seem like ancient history, but there is a present-day connection. A brief mention in a news article in The Daily Citizen brings the story full circle. Recently, Islamic State fighters destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der Zor, Syria. This church had sheltered the remains of Armenian genocide victims.

Andrew Bostom, a noted Islam scholar, wrote, “Modern genocide historians ... often cite a comment by Hitler that the mass killings of the Armenians served the Nazi leader as an ‘inspirational’ precedent for predictable impunity.” No one had gone to the aid of the Armenians either.

The present Islamic State has role models and heroes - some monstrously evil Ottoman Turkish Muslims of a century ago,” the article concludes.