It is a hoary post-modern, ridiculous myth, which permeates the media and modern sensibility. Islamic empires are now fashionably depicted as tolerant temples of multi-cultural peace and love. What a nonsense. The modern history of the Ottoman empire, not to mention the history of any Muslim empire, state, or kleptocracy reveals the opposite to be true.

The Ottoman empire was a Turkish imperialist enterprise. It had little regard for 'others'. Like most Turkish tribes from the central Asian steppes the Ottomans had converted to Islam during the 10th to 11th centuries. Migrating and holding part of modern Turkey not far from Constantinople the Ottomans turned a small principality into a world-relevant empire. But it was a Turkish enterprise and had little to do with multi-cult love and understanding.

The Turks and Ottomans were assaulted first by the Mongols in the 13th century and then by Tamerlane a hybrid Turk and Mongol during the 14th. The Mongols had converted to Islam during the 14th century and came close to wiping out the Turkish and Arab states and empires. The Ottomans thrust near the Christian Byzantine border survived and turned their strong defensive position into a springboard to empire.

Defeating the Byzantines near Constantinople [yes note to post moderns Istanbul was once Christian], the Ottomans spread across the Bosporus into Europe and surrounded the remaining heartland of the second Roman empire. By 1453 the Turks had the Christian city and the most prosperous urban and trading area in the world surrounded. Depleted of troops, people, money and time the most important Christian enclave outside of Rome was taken by the Turks in an orgy of blood, death, executions, rape and destruction. The city streets ran knee deep in blood.

The destruction of the Byzantine empire would be but a harbinger of the methods and attitudes of the Muslim Turkish empire.

Within 80 years the Ottoman empire had expanded to its greatest expanse. In 1529 the Turks were hammering on the gates of Vienna after subduing the Balkans, Greece, parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Levant [or Israel, erroneously and stupidly called Palestine by the multi-cults]. Even at its apogee the Ottoman empire was a contradiction and internally rotten. As quickly as they rose the Ottomans were poised to fall.

The Turkish Muslim empire was typical of all Muslim empires – Arab, Mongol, Sudanese, or Indian. All Muslim empires suffered from similar problems. The core or ruling elite, was always challenged by the peripheral areas. The imperialist language – Arabic or in the case of the Ottomans Turkish – was never enough to solidify a vast empire into one coherent unit.

The Ottomans like the Arabs before them were imperialists – Jews, Christians, Persians, Arabs or Berbers were simply people to be conquered, subdued and forced to submit. Islam was a convenient ideology of occupation and the will to universal world rule a compelling impulse to empire extension. As with the Arabs the Ottoman Turks were also grasping, ravenous, murderous, and ill-tempered imperialists. Islam's holy writ that the subjugated must submit and give up their rights and humanity was not an empty promise.

After the Turks were pushed out from Vienna in 1529 the Turkish imperial venture, in the name of Islam, started to show remarkable weakness. Corruption, bribery, an effeminized and pleasure loving elite, military backwardness, and a rash of discontented popular uprisings marked Ottoman rule from the mid 16th century to its demise in 1918. For over 370 years, Tsar Nicholas' 'sick man of Europe' was held up and protected by European powers. In one of history's great ironies, it was the British, the French and at times the Russians who held the Ottoman empire together. It is a bizarre and queer spectacle which still reverberates today.

The idea that the Ottomans erected a multi-cult paradise of communal love and respect is of course insane. The Turks were conquerers controlling the eastern Mediterranean basin and huge swathes of central and eastern Europe. As with the Muslim Arab occupations the Turks displayed ferocity and rapacity on a huge scale. Slavery, rape, tribute, destruction of local culture and massive Turkish immigration into the 'new' lands followed Ottoman expansion. Turkish power was spread by blood and war, not by hugs and kisses.

Some simple examples suffice. From 1820 until 1920 subject peoples in the Balkans, Greece, Eastern Europe and Egypt were in a state of almost perpetual rebellion. Greece alone during its 10 year war for independence lost between 1820 and 1830 almost 100.000 killed, wounded and sold into slavery. Similar episodes occurred throughout the Ottoman empire. The backward, anti-industiral, impoverished and largely agricultural Turkish enterprise was little more than an imperialist, autocratic and very corrupt oriental adventure.

The apogee of Turkish ruthlessness and genocide occurred of course with the Armenians. Incited by the ideas of nationalism and inflamed by the examples of Greece and eastern Europe, the Armenians who were Christianity's oldest national grouping, started to agitate for independence around 1870. War, incidents of terrorism and open conflict finally resulted in the Turkish massacre of 250.000 Armenian Christians in the east of Turkey in 1896. This blunted but did not end the Armenian effort for an independent Christian state.

With the advent of World War I and the Ottoman entrance into the war on the side of Germany to try and expand its Islamic empire in Europe and beyond, the Armenians openly allied themselves with the Russians. The Turkish response was genocidal. Armenians were first disarmed and then deported en masse to desert camps in Syria. The old, sick, young and useless were generally shot on sight. Deported columns of Armenians were harassed by Muslims, raped, beaten and eventually starved to death or killed by the Turks. Almost 1.5 million non Muslim Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks during World War One – a crime still denied by the Turkish state.

No one knows how many non Muslims, and non-Turks the Turkish Ottomans murdered in their conquests from 1300 until 1918. The 1453 sack of Constantinople annihilated the city under a river of blood. Literally millions were sold by Turks in slave markets over their 500 reign of Oriental terror. Millions more were killed in reprisals, civil war and genocide. Christians, Jews, Greeks, and non-Turks were under constant pressure and authoritarian rule for centuries. The Turkish elite ruled and the rest of their vast emporium obeyed. A multi-cult paradise? Hardly.

The Turkish Muslim empire was a backwards, anti-modern and oriental relic of a disaster. If the Ottomans had been the genteel, intelligent multi-cults of revisionist historical lore, than their empire would not have been so rotted, corrupt and impoverished. It was perversely only the geo-political concerns and competition of the 'great powers' of Europe which allowed the Ottomans to survive past 1700. At any time during the past 300 years the British, Russians or even the Americans could have taken back Constantinople – a worthwhile objective which was unfortunately never pursued.

Millions of whites died, and millions more were enslaved by the Turks and their Muslim caliphate. Sex slaves, soldiers, mine workers, and forced laborers – all white – were taken by the Muslims into the Turkish heartlands for the benefit of the Islamic empire. Yet no one cries or remembers the jihad against modernity perpetrated by the Turkish Muslims. For many the Ottoman Turks represent tolerance and sophistication. In reality they represented oppression, hatred, blood and genocide.