Muslim Heroes
Speaking on the subject of The Muslim Heroes of World War One, Luc Ferrier shared some literally explosive information, updating the narrative on the involvement of Muslims with the allied forces.
“I started to read the journals of my grandfather who was a Belgian officer (in WWI) and he was writing about Muslims. Muslims in World War One? I was ignorant, I hadn’t had a clue,” he told the audience.
“But what fascinated me was that he as a devout Christian was writing with so much respect about his Muslim brother in arms, who were fighting very bravely, for a war which none of them made. So I went to the library and I couldn’t find anything (about the Muslim soldiers).”
“To honor my grandfather and his brothers in arms I created The Forgotten Heroes Foundation, and I went in search of these people. I thought it would be a project of six months but look, six years later I’m still here. The book (The Unknown Fallen) and the project is based on humanity. How did they behave? The interaction between these people.
“In all these documents we found, again and again, personal letters that never made it home, or official reports from officers about the mutual respect between Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus. This is really amazing.
“Another surprise was the huge amount of Muslim soldiers who were forgotten… Today, we can prove by hard facts, because we are very careful with what we say, that 4.5 million Muslims fought with the allied soldiers. That’s a lot.
“In the UK we talk about the 500,000 from undivided India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma. But there were 1.5 million Muslims fighting with the Russians. There were 200,000 Muslims who were in the Chinese labor corps coming to Europe. There were 15,000 American Muslims joining the forces from America. There were 1 million Egyptian Muslims joining the allied forces. There were 600,000 from North Africa including, a huge number of laborers. In African we have just started, the numbers are huge.
“So 4.5 million Muslims and after four years of commemoration, why don’t we talk about them? How can we say to Muslims today that you do not belong here if there were 4.5 million Muslims fighting for the freedom that Europe has today? Fighting for the freedom of speech which a lot of people are using to insult Muslims.”