The Brave Booksellers and the Changed Perception of Islam

The Brave Booksellers and the Changed Perception of Islam

During a recent visit to my native city of Sofia, I walked by the beautiful Lions’ Bridge. It features four lions at its corners, commemorating four brave booksellers who were hanged in Sofia by the Turkish authorities, months before Bulgaria regained its independence from Ottoman rule.

Five booksellers in Sofia had been sentenced to death due to possessing revolutionary literature and songs, which called for Bulgaria’s liberation. Four of them accepted their fate with remarkable calm and dignity. The fifth bookseller reportedly received in prison a secret note from his daughter, scribbled on a comb, entreating him to “accept everything” since the Liberation was near, so he might live to tell the story and take care of the families of his four brethren.

Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries, from 1396 until 1878. Although the Ottoman administration was not as brutal as other Muslim regimes and allowed certain concessions to Jews and Christians as “people of the Book,” there were instances of violent conquest, forceful conversions, and savage suppression of revolts.

The situation was gravely exacerbated during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which was referred to in the 19^th and 20^th centuries as “the sick man of Europe.” The Bulgarians revolted in 1876 and were defeated with extreme cruelty. In some instances, women and children were savagely murdered even after the rebels had surrendered and laid down their arms. The booksellers’ hanging in 1877 was part of the repercussions after crushing the fighters for independence in 1876.

News of the atrocities reached the world thanks to the courage of two Americans – the statesman and writer Eugene Schuyler and the journalist Januarius MacGahan, who visited the areas of the suppressed uprising and published their account of the massacres. The report caused a widespread outpouring of sympathy for the victims and condemnation of the Ottomans’ cruelty, and ultimately led to the Russo-Turkish War and Bulgaria’s liberation in 1878.

Numerous journalists, intellectuals, and politicians in the United States, Europe, and Russia took a firm stand against the Islamic atrocities. Oscar Wilde wrote a poem titled “On the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria.” Victor Hugo, Guiseppe Garibaldi, and William Gladstone categorically condemned the inhumane suppression of the Bulgarian uprising. In those days, such positions were considered a matter of enlightenment, conscience, and virtue.

Fast-forward some 150 years. Today, most politicians, journalists, and intellectuals in the West have undergone a 180-degree turn. They consider it a matter of enlightenment, conscience, and virtue to defend Islam and condemn Judeo-Christian values. They whitewash the history of Muslim conquests around the world and exaggerate the flaws of Western civilization. They hate their own countries and history and love antithetical ideologies bound to destroy the West.

The renowned Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci, who was by no means a conservative, wrote impassioned critiques of Islam and warned Europe regarding its stance on Muslim migration. She was deeply shocked by the apologists of 9/11 and employed fiery language to condemn a media “which out of baseness or convenience or stupidity is in its overwhelming majority Islamophile and Westphobic and anti-American.”

For her position on Islam, Fallaci, who had participated in the anti-fascist resistance in Italy and risked her life as a fearless war correspondent throughout her career, was swiftly branded as “abominable, blasphemous, deleterious, xenophobic, retrograde, ignoble, wretched, reactionary, troglodyte, racist, liar, lunatic, and abject,” as Paul Sheehan observed. Sheehan continued:

Such are the descriptions reserved for Europe’s most famous woman journalist, biggest-selling political author, and notorious TV inquisitor, Oriana Fallaci. She now requires police protection while in her native Italy, where she was charged with religious vilification and denounced by demonstrators holding placards depicting her decapitated head. Her problem can be summed up in one word: Islam… She portrays a deluded Europe sliding into a repressive “Eurabia.” She draws parallels between the trends in Western Europe and the fall of Rome.

Regardless of her somewhat controversial personality, Fallaci possessed exceptional courage, like the brave booksellers, who are commemorated with the four lion sculptures in Sofia. As the popular Bulgarian author Ivo Siromahov writes, the Lions’ Bridge sculptures remind us that “once upon a time there were people among us with lion hearts.”

We need more lion-hearted individuals to oppose the external and internal attacks on our values and rescue the West.

Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

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