Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Гладстон, Уильям" in Russian language version.
Pronouncements made at regular intervals by giants ot the Liberal Party in the late Victorian and Edwardian period were vehement against Islam and the Ottoman Turks. W.E. Gladstone expressed his deeply-rooted suspicion of Islam, which he thought 'radically incapable of establishing a good and tolerable government over civilised and Christian races'. In a public speech he asserted that for as long as there were followers of 'that accursed book' (the Quran), Europe would know no peace. In his view Europe—in other words Christendom—should have united to impose its will. Only over «lesser» peoples such as the so-called 'Orientals' and 'Mahomedans', where there was no 'complication of blood, of religion, or tradition, or speech', did Gladstone accept the Turks' ability to provide imperial rule. So firm was his belief in the reality of Muslims' fanaticism and their capacity to commit atrocities against Christians that he completely accepted Bulgarian allegations of massacres in 1876 and reports of Armenian persecution in the 1890s, ignoring any evidence that pointed to similar acts committed against the Turks. Consequently his passionate and immensely popular pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors, or The Question of the East, reinforced British perceptions of Muslims as an 'anti-human specimen of humanity'. Not surprisingly such rhetoric encouraged an outpouring of anti-Turkish emotion and agitation.
