Page 157 - Islam Denounces Terrorism

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) 155

King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella of
Spain (on the left).
The Catholic mon-
archs who ruled
much of Spain at the
time brought grave
pressure to bear on
the Jews who had for-
merly lived in peace
under Muslim rule in
Andalusia.

Ottoman fleet, under the command of Kemal Reis, brought the exiled
Jews, and those Muslims who had survived the slaughter, to the land
of the Ottomans.

Sultan Beyazid II has gone down in history as a most pious believ-
er, and in the spring of 1492 he settled these Jews who had been
expelled from Spain in certain parts of his empire, around Edirne, and
Thessalonica in present-day Greece. Most of the 25,000 Turkish Jews
living in Turkey today are the ancestors of those Spanish Jews. They
practice their religion and customs, which they brought from Spain

some 500 years ago and continue to live most comfortably with their
own schools, hospitals, old people's homes, cultural associations and
newspapers. In the same way that they have traders and businessmen,
they also have representatives in numerous professions, from technical
subjects to advertising, with increasingly developing intellectual cir-
cles. While Jewish communities in many countries in Europe have for
centuries been exposed to the fear of anti-Semitic racist attacks, those