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| Slave Market. Jean Leon Gerome |
This essay appears at Jihadwatch here
"Islam Was More
Tolerant Than Christianity": Discuss
I received an email from "Stan," who wrote to
respond to my article "Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad." Through Google I discovered
that Stan is an Ivy-League-educated PhD. "Counter-jihadists," Stan
wrote, "deny that Islam was indeed more tolerant from the end of the 11th
century down to the 17th." Catholic Church teaching during that period "was
far worse than dhimmitude … Jews and Christians could practice their religions …
[There were] few forced conversions or massacres." Catholic Spain expelled
Jews who fled to Muslim territory. I would recognize these facts, Stan kindly
advised me, "If you pick up a history book." "No historian would
consult with Robert Spencer," as I do, Stan sniffed. Stan listed sixteen
books addressing Christian anti-Semitism. If I had any "interest in the
subject" I would read them. Stan mentioned the 1209-1229 Catholic Crusade against
Albigensians. "Would you rather have been an Albigensian in southern
France or in Constantinople?" Please note: my article about Donald Trump
never mentions Jews, Catholics, or Albigensians.
Counter-jihadis regularly confront variations of this: "Any
intolerance that Islam shows today is the result of historical forces. Violence
and intolerance are not inherent in Islam. Terrorism is caused by European colonialism,
the recognition of the state of Israel, America's support for dictators, and
American wars-for-oil. In the past, Christianity was a violent, intolerant
religion. The passage of time reformed Christianity; in the same way the
passage of time will reform Islam."
How can a counter-jihadi respond?
- Differentiate
between behaviors inspired by temporary historical circumstance and
behavior inspired by canonical documents.
- Recognize
that most conventionally educated Westerners believe extravagant
falsehoods and aren't aware of important truths.
- Be
aware of events outside of Western Europe and North America.
Differentiate between
behaviors inspired by temporary historical circumstance and behavior inspired
by canonical documents.
Scholars who describe medieval, Muslim Spain as
relatively better for Jews than medieval, Christian Europe acknowledge that differences
were inspired by temporary historical circumstance and not canonical scripture.
Given that medieval socioeconomic conditions no longer exist, but canonical
scriptures are still considered divine revelations, we should not expect
medieval Muslim tolerance of Jews, or medieval Christian persecution of Jews,
to recur. We should, rather, look to canonical scripture as inspiration for
behavior.
Mohammed was an Arab, living in Arabia, among Arab
Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Mohammed is al-Insan
al-Kamil, the perfect human, worthy of emulation. Hostility to Jews is
overt in the Koran, the hadith, and the biography of Mohammed. See, for
example, here, here, here, and here. Mohammed wiped out a Jewish tribe. Mohammed inspected Jewish boys to
determine if they had pubic hair
as a precursor to slaughter. Mohammed supervised the torture-murder of Kinana,
to rob him of gold and take his wife. Mohammed expelled Christians and Jews from the Arabian Peninsula, where
they cannot live to this day. Bukhari 1:24 reports that Allah ordered Mohammed
to make war on all mankind till Islam dominates the planet.
As part of daily prayer, Muslims repeat seventeen times a day that Jews anger God.
Muslims commonly believe that the Koran is flawless, and that the Bible is corrupt. Merely possessing a Bible in Saudi
Arabia is cause for imprisonment and torture.
In short, hostility to Jews is inextricable from Mohammed's
biography, the Koran, the hadith, and mandated daily Muslim prayer. Muslims
have long been inspired by the ostensibly divine Koran to do what the Koran
tells them to do: hate, murder, torture, steal, and rape.
Jesus, on the other hand, was a Jew. He lived in Israel,
the Jewish homeland. Jesus was knowledgeable about and respectful of Jewish
scripture. Jesus' disciples and the authors of the New Testament were Jews. Christians
accept Jewish scriptures as divinely inspired. Jesus declared that salvation
is from the Jews. God
continued to love the Jews and his
promises to them are irrevocable.
The Vatican cites these scriptures.
The harsh criticisms of some, not all, Jews in the New
Testament were written by Jews as part of Jewish tradition. The most severe
passages are less severe than those in the Torah. Compare Matthew
23, where Jesus
excoriates the Pharisees for straining on a gnat and choking on a camel, to Exodus 32, where God orders Jews, immediately,
to massacre thousands of their own "brothers, friends, and neighbors"
for worshipping a golden calf.
Jesus specifically taught that his disciples were not to
interfere with free will. If people chose not to be Christians, Jesus said, just
move on. Jesus never
ordered his disciples to make converts by force, or to oppress nonbelievers. In
contradistinction to Bukhari 1:24, Koran 66:9, Koran
5:51 and many similar
verses, Jesus, in the Good Samaritan episode, counsels his followers to
treat all humanity, not just fellow believers, with compassion.
Spreading the faith by military conquest was not part of
foundational Christianity; for its first three hundred years, Christianity was
an outlawed and persecuted faith. The second century Greek Pagan Celsus described early Christianity as a marginal
"religion of women, children and slaves." Every time a Christian
violates a Jew or anyone else, that Christian violates his own professed belief
system.
When Christians committed crimes against Jews, other
Christians protested and attempted to intervene. During the medieval Rhineland
Massacres of the Crusades, Catholic bishops attempted to protect Jews. Popes repeatedly condemned blood libel. When Jews were expelled
from Western Europe, they were invited into Catholic Poland and protected by
the 1264 Statute of Kalisz and the 1573 Warsaw Confederation.
Confession and repentance are Christian rituals and
virtues. Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us." Christians have confessed their
sins against Jews, and resolved to improve. This emphasis on confession and
repentance is not found in Islam. Turkey, for example, prosecuted Orhan Pamuk,
its own Nobel-Prize-winning writer, for merely mentioning the Armenian Genocide.
Why, then, have Christians committed horrible crimes
against Jews? Why did Christians, including priests, twist the original
Christian message into one of hatred against Jews? And why have Muslim states
tolerated Jews?
One ray of light into this complicated topic is Edna Bonacich's work on middleman
minorities. Jews in
Europe occupied a particular socioeconomic niche. Jews were middlemen. Medieval
Christians and Medieval Muslims viewed middlemen differently. That difference,
not scripture, affected Jewish lives differently in medieval Christian and medieval
Muslim countries.
Mark R. Cohen, Princeton University professor emeritus,
is the author of Under Crescent and
Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, a book frequently cited to support the "Islam
was more tolerant" generalization.
In his 1986 Jerusalem
Quarterly article "Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter-Myth, History,"
Cohen acknowledges that Islam contains a "fundamental theological
hostility towards the religion of Judaism … and towards Jews, stigmatized … as
contemptible infidels." Various historical and socioeconomic factors
trumped Islam's "fundamental theological hostility." One of those
factors was how Muslims viewed middlemen.
Mohammed was a merchant. He was born and lived most of
his life in Mecca, a trading center. "Islam was born with a positive
attitude towards commerce … Mohammed's own life and … the Koran and other holy
literature lent strong support to the mercantile life … Since many jurists in
the early Islamic period were themselves merchants, Islamic law was shaped to
meet the needs of a mercantile economy." In the Muslim world, both Jews
and Muslims were both moneylenders.
Medieval Christian Europeans were mostly peasants – poor people
who valued rootedness, labor, and land. Jesus was a carpenter who preached the
virtue of poverty. He lived in Galilee, a region of country bumpkins. Markets,
money, travel and banks were underdeveloped in much of medieval Europe. Jews
traveled, handled money, and appeared not to labor, as peasants understood
labor. The Jew as merchant and moneylender was more troubling to economically naïve
European Christians than to more economically sophisticated Middle Eastern Muslims.
Further, Cohen points out, Jews in medieval Europe were
not just economically and religiously alien, they were ethnically and
geographically alien. Jews were comparatively familiar to Middle Eastern Muslims
– they came from the same geographic region, they spoke a language related to
Arabic, similarly written right to left, and they shared a similar physical
appearance.
Cohen cites another flashpoint for Jews living in
Christian lands. Christianity separates church and state. This separation is
rooted in Jesus' saying, "Render unto Cesar what is Cesar's
and unto God what is God's." Jews had to develop relationships with both
secular and religious authorities. One might be friendly while the other might
not be. Church and state might be in competition. The Jew was often stuck in
the middle of that often violent competition.
In Islam, there is no separation of church and state. Jews
had to cultivate fewer powers, and they did not have to worry about a
non-existent competition between centers of power. Cohen says that it is this
separation of church and state in Christianity, and the lack of same in Islam,
that explains why, during the medieval period, Jews were sometimes expelled
from Christian nations, but not from Muslim ones.
Another factor Cohen cites for Jews' position in Islam. "In
Europe, the Jews nurtured a pronounced hatred for Christians, whom they
considered to be idolaters subject to the anti-pagan discriminatory provisions
of the ancient Mishnah … the Jews of Islam had a markedly different attitude
towards" Islam. There was a "tolerant Jewish view of Islam."
In 2016, Dario Fernandez-Morera published The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise:
Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. In 2013 he argued in Comparative Civilizations Review that
Muslims favored Jews in Spain for tactical reasons. Visigoths, the rulers in
Spain before the Muslim Conquest, discriminated against Jews. When Muslims
invaded, significant numbers of Jews aided the Muslims as a way to improve
their own lot. Muslims, he said, regarded Jews as "servants," not as
friends, and thus avoided violating the Koran's admonition not
to take Jews as friends.
Muslim rulers feared betrayal from other Muslims. Elevating Jews to powerful
positions protected the ruler's back. A Jew, as a member of a hated minority,
could never usurp a Muslim.
Fernandez-Morera cautions contemporary Jews against
romanticizing their forebears' lives in Muslim Spain. Islamic law mandated that
Jews had to pay the jizya, could not build synagogues, had to keep their
buildings shorter than Muslims' buildings, could not carry weapons or ride
horses, and had to show deference to Muslims, including by wearing distinctive clothing.
They could not testify in court against a Muslim. There were harsher court
sentences for Jews than for Muslims. Jews could not criticize Islam. Capital
punishment was prescribed for a Jewish man who had sex with a Muslim woman. (Compare
this to the medieval Polish legend of Catholic King Casimir the Great and his
Jewish companion, Esterka.) Even if these mandates were not always followed,
Cohen writes, the "themes of segregation and humiliation" in "Islamic
sources … rival if not exceed … the Christian West." Canonical Islamic prescriptions
communicated to Jews their subordinate status and kept them in their place.
Fernandez-Morera quotes a satirical poem that refers to
Jews as "apes," as does the Koran. Jews, the Muslim poet says, should
be "the lowest of the low, roaming among us, with their little bags, with
contempt, degradation and scorn as their lot, scrambling in the dunghills for
colored rags, to shroud their dead for burial … hasten to slaughter…do not
consider it a breach of faith to kill them."
Jews' middleman minority status and their alignment,
however tactical and temporary, with Muslims, may have contributed to Christian
antisemitism. A 1986 University of Notre Dame Press book, The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism, addresses
a Europe-wide association, by Christians, of Jews with feared Muslims. Daniel
Pipes' mostly positive review of the book, that appeared first in Commentary, can be viewed here.
In any case, the twenty-first century understanding of
the word "tolerance" should not be applied to Muslim Spain. A naive
person might envision Jews and Muslims in Al-Andalus sipping cappuccinos and
discussing philosophy while eating rainbow cake celebrating same-sex weddings
and watching their daughters play on the boys' soccer team. "Tolerance"
meant something very different in medieval Muslim Spain than it means in 2016.
Suppose someone told a black person that the antebellum
South was a "tolerant" place because Jews were allowed to practice their
religion without impediment.
My reaction to discussion of Muslim Spain as "tolerant" is similar to
that black person's. Muslim Spain relied on slave labor. Its slaves were my
forebears, Slavs. The word "Saqaliba,"
derived from "Slav," occurs in Arabic in reference to Slavic slaves
and to eunuchs. In 961, there were 13,750 Saqaliba eunuchs in Cordoba alone. Jews were often the slave traders who transported Slavic
slaves to Muslim Spain. Saint Adalbert's attempt to liberate Slavs from Jewish
slave traders is depicted on the bronze, twelfth-century Gniezno doors.
Adalbert was later murdered by European Pagans. Christians were martyred by Pagans in Europe right up to the fourteenth
century. Applying twenty-first century definitions of "tolerance" and
twenty-first century conceptions of what it means to be a Jew, a Muslim, and a
Christian to this medieval narrative can only cause complete misunderstanding.
Christians were not all-powerful in medieval Europe but were often quite
vulnerable. Jews were not always helpless; some exercised the power that all
slave-traders do. "Tolerant" Muslims were enjoying sexual access to
female and castrated male slaves, not serving up rainbow cake.
Stan asked if I would rather be an Albigensian in Turkey
or in France. I've traveled in Turkey and I loved it. Even so, I'd rather not
live as a female Albigensian or a female anything else in any Muslim country.
When Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded Spain in 711, he delivered a
"sermon" promising his jihadis Christian
women to rape: "In this country there are a large number of ravishingly
beautiful Greek maidens, their graceful forms are draped in sumptuous gowns on
which gleam pearls, coral, and purest gold." Muslim chronicler Ibn
al-Athir describes another Muslim warrior in Spain, who
"traversed this land in every direction, raping women;" another
"carried off women." Yes, violation of women occurs in all wars,
fought by men of every religion. Islam, though, sanctions rape in war, rape
that Muslim chroniclers openly celebrate.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a million Jews
lived in Muslim countries. Nine and a half million Jews lived in Europe. This
was 57% of the Jews in the world. During the twentieth century, the Jewish
population of the US rose from one to six million, and the Jewish population of Muslim countries shrank to near zero. Jews voted with
their feet.
Jews living in Christian lands gave the world Einstein,
Marx, Freud, Franz Boas, Helena Rubinstein, Artur Rubenstein, Baal Shem Tov,
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bruno Szulc, Adam Michnik, Disraeli, Gustav Mahler,
Franz Kafka, "The Jews who invented Hollywood" and the bulk of Nobel Prizes won by Jews. This is a very different
contribution to civilization than the fruits of the brand of
"tolerance" practiced in Muslim Spain.
Finally, no generalization about tolerance cancels out
Muslim Spain's less tolerant moments. There is a widespread belief that Maimonides and his family
feigned a conversion to Islam
in order to survive persecution. Maimonides wrote in a letter that "On
account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation
of Ishmael who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to
debase us … No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in
debasing and humiliating us." And one must also remember events like the
Grenada Massacre of 1066, during which a Muslim mob crucified Jewish vizier
Joseph ibn Naghrela and murdered many Jews.
Recognize that most
conventionally educated Westerners believe extravagant falsehoods and aren't
aware of important truths.
My World History is a widely used Pearson textbook. It informs American schoolchildren that
Mohammed respected Judaism and Christianity, Jews and Christians in Muslim
lands could practice their religion freely, the Koran has never been changed,
and religious faith helped Islam spread peacefully. "Islam offered
followers a direct path to God and salvation." And oh, yes – Islam
improved conditions for women.
Even atheists need to understand politicization and bias
in discussion of religion. Protestant England and Catholic Spain fought for
world domination. Anti-Catholic
propaganda played a role in that struggle. Much
of what conventionally educated Americans think they know about Catholicism,
and, by extension, Christianity, is simply wrong. Myths about Christianity are
used to warp discussion of Islam.
Here's an example. Suppose you criticize gender apartheid
in Islam. An Islam-apologist hits back with "common knowledge" about
misogyny in the Catholic Church.
Everybody knows that the witch craze of the Middle Ages
was promulgated by the all-powerful, misogynist Catholic male clergy against
goddess-worshipping healing women, nine million of whom died before
secularization stopped the slaughter. You can learn this history in The Burning Times a documentary funded by a Western
government. You can learn this history from bestselling author Barbara Ehrenreich, or NPR journalist Margot Adler.
Here's the problem. Every "fact" in the above
sentence is false. The witch craze took place during the Early Modern Period
and the Enlightenment, after the Catholic Church lost much of its authority.
During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church adamantly condemned witch hunting.
Accusers were often women themselves, and lay women insisted that clerics join
in. Victims were not healers and they didn't worship the goddess; they were
simply poor women past the age of fertility during the hungry times of the wars
of the Reformation, the Little Ice Age, chaotic periods of confused authority, and
skyrocketing food prices. Neither secularization nor science stopped the craze.
It stopped largely because jurists stopped believing that they could prove
accusations in a trial. Not nine million, but between forty and sixty thousand
people were killed, over the course of two hundred years. Enlightened, anti-Christian,
Revolutionary France managed to murder that many people in the eleven months of
the Reign of Terror. Two Catholic priests – Friedrich Spee and Alonso de
Salazar Frías – and believe it or not, the Spanish Inquisition – were key in
stopping the witch craze.
Prominent atheists Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer are
both PhDs and highly respected public intellectuals. Both Pinker and Shermer champion
truth, not convenient propaganda, above all. Both Pinker's 2012 The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why
Violence Has Declined and Shermer's 2015 The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People tell the same just-so
story about a Catholic priest, Friedrich Spee, who was an eager participant in witch
trials until an enlightened secular ruler stopped him and changed history.
There's a problem with this anecdote. It is extravagantly
false. There is not a shred of evidence to support it; Spee's biographer, Ronald Modras, condemns it. In fact Father Friedrich
Spee was a courageous hero who put his own life in danger by taking a stance
against the witch craze. He did so because of his Catholic faith. His book, Cautio Criminalis, helped end witch
trials and torture used to extract confessions.
The Catholic Church really wasn't the force
behind the witch craze.
Understanding of the Inquisition needs to be completely revised. The Crusades, too, have been misunderstood,
and need to be reexamined.
Bernard Lewis has warned against the uncritical
dissemination of convenient myths. In his 2001 book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East, Lewis
wrote,
"The broad outlines of the story, in the simplified
and dramatized form in which great historic events so often reach the popular
imagination, were well defined. The Jew has flourished in Muslim Spain, had
been driven from Christian Spain, and has found a refuge in Muslim Turkey. The
reality was of course more complex, less idyllic, less one-sided. There had
been times of persecution under the Muslims and times of prosperity under
Christian rule in Spain – and many Christian states … had given shelter to the
Spanish Jewish refugees … the golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief
in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth
was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians –
and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews."
Mark R. Cohen echoes Lewis' warning. "The
Jewish-Islamic interfaith utopia" "a golden age of toleration, of
political achievement, and of remarkably integrated cultural efflorescence"
is a "myth invented by nineteenth-century European Jewish intellectuals
frustrated by the tortuously slow progress of their own integration into
gentile society." It was the companion to another myth, in "which
Jewish life in medieval Christian Europe was one long chain of suffering."
The sloppy, popular
insistence that Nazism = Christianity is
one of the most depressing examples of smart people repeating empty myths for
political reasons. In 2009, British celebrity Stephen Fry suggested that Polish Catholics were
responsible for Auschwitz. The otherwise respectable Bernard Lewis writes in
his Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry
into Conflict and Prejudice, "There is nothing in Islamic history to
parallel … the Nazi Holocaust."
One wishes that humanity had produced only one genocidal
monster like Hitler. Tamerlane (1370–1405), "The Sword of Islam,"
killed a larger percentage of the world's population than that killed by Hitler
or Stalin. He was famous for his signature pyramids of human heads. In his
jihad against Hindus, he slaughtered a hundred thousand captive Indians. He
buried four thousand Armenian Christians alive. He massacred Assyrian
Christians; in the twentieth century, their descendants would be massacred by
Muslims in the Assyrian Genocide, an event related to the Armenian
Genocide. Historian Ashirbadi Lal Srivastava reports that Tamerlane left
"pestilence caused by the pollution of the air and water by thousands of
uncared-for dead bodies … for two months not a bird moved wing in Delhi."
Historian Rene Grousset reports that Tamerlane repeatedly
cited Islam as his inspiration. "It is to the Koran to which he
continually appeals." In the Malfuzat-i-Timuri,
Tamerlane is quoted as saying that he opened the Koran at random to seek
guidance and he found 66:9. While vanishingly few parents name their baby
"Hitler," Muslim parents today – including Zubeidat Tsarnaev – name
their children after this murderous monster. There
are heroic statues of Tamerlane in Muslim countries; see here
and here.
One of the books Stan recommended is Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History, by James
Carroll, a former Catholic priest. Carroll misleads readers about the deaths of
Catholic Poles under Nazism. He does so because he wants to emphasize how
rotten Catholics have been to Jews. That Nazis murdered and tortured Polish
Catholics doesn't fit neatly into Carroll's narrative. Carroll reports that 150
Catholic Poles died at Auschwitz. In fact, c. 140,000 Poles were imprisoned in
Auschwitz, of whom half were killed.
Critics of Christianity desperately want Nazism to be
Christianity, or to be Christianity's spawn. As real historians know, Nazism's
goal was to eradicate Christianity. In their own documents, Nazis cite neo-paganism, nationalism, and
scientism as
inspirations. In speeches justifying the shooting of "thousands of leading
Poles" and the enslavement and mass murder of Czechs and Russians, SS
Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler did not cite Christianity as inspiration. He
cited nationalism and science. He and his men were wiping out
"bacteria." Christianity, to Himmler, was "the greatest of
plagues."
Top Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg hated Christianity. He
championed – wait for it – the very heretics Stan also championed – the
Albigensians. Albigensians, Rosenberg wrote, "moved me deeply." Their
"will and character … [were] essentially West Gothic … They rejected the
Old Testament, avoided the use of any and all Jewish names … even the name of
Mary. The crucifix to them appeared an unworthy symbol."
Consider: every sadistic, dehumanizing crime – short of
genocide – that Nazis committed against Jews, they also committed against
largely Catholic Romani, aka Gypsies, and Catholic Poles. Auschwitz was built for, and for the first 18
months of its existence inhabited by, Poles. Poles were mowed down by Einsatzgruppen. Rudolf Spanner manufactured soap
from Polish corpses. Poles were subjected to medical experimentation. Polish priests were singled out for mass murder.
Dachau was the "largest monastery in Germany." Even as Nazis were
losing World War II, they committed the systematic destruction of Warsaw, as part of a cultural genocide.
Zyklon B was first used to mass murder Soviet POWs. Handicapped Germans, not
Jews, were the first and last victims of Nazi mass murder. Of Poles, Hitler
stated, "I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed
by a firing squad – our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but
in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my
death-head formation in readiness … with orders to them to send to death
mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish
derivation and language."
Mentioning what the Nazis did to the Poles, to the
Gypsies, to the handicapped and to Soviet POWs is not to diminish the unique
Holocaust of the Jews. I mention this horrific record to emphasize why the
popular misconception of "Nazism = Christianity" or
"Christianity produced Hitler" "does not withstand examination.
Finally, it must be mentioned, that it was largely
Christians, including my father, who saw heavy combat in World War II, who
defeated Hitler, de-Nazified Germany, and utterly revile Nazism.
In September, 2016, Richard Weikart will publish Hitler's
Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich.
Weikart, author of Hitler's
Ethic, will take
on the popular misconception that Hitler was a Christian, or was inspired by
Christian ideas.
Be aware of events
outside of Western Europe and North America.
Stan insisted that Islam was tolerant when Christianity
was not. Stan specified the years between 1000 and 1599. To support this
generalization, Stan cited Spain.
During the period Stan specified, Islam was driving into
all but extinction the Zoroastrians of Persia. Citing ancient accounts, Fariborz Rahnamoon claims that Arab invaders festooned
24 miles of road with the bodies of hanging Persians. Arabs ran mills with the
blood of slaughtered Zoroastrians. Zoroastrian scholars were murdered and
libraries burned. Sultan Husayn (1668-1726) ordered the forced conversion of
Zoroastrians; he slaughtered those who did not accept Islam. An
English traveler's account describes the plight of the few surviving
Zoroastrians in 1818: "They have nowhere to look for help and know no
place to go where they would be free. They have made the desert their home and
live with all the hardship that comes with it, just to preserve their religion
in their ancient country. During the onslaught of conversion to Islam, some had
taken to the mountain and others had fled to the bordering lands of India."
The world's tiny remaining population of Zoroastrians live in India today.
During Islam's allegedly tolerant medieval period, Islam
was persecuting the Christians of Egypt. In Cairo, in 1343, Muslims accused
Christians of being arsonists. Christians "were seized in the street,
burned or slaughtered by the mob as it left the mosques. Anti-Christian
violence raged in the main towns. To enable the Christians to go out into the
streets, Jews would sometimes lend them their distinctive yellow turban,"
writes Bat Ye'or.
Historian Philip Jenkins writes that in 1354, "Mobs
demanded that Christians and Jews recite the Muslim profession of faith upon
threat of being burned alive." Jenkins quotes a contemporary account by
Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi:
"Many reports came from both Upper and Lower Egypt
of Copts being converted to Islam, frequenting mosques and memorizing the Quran
… In all the provinces of Egypt, both north and south, no church remained that
had not been razed; on many of those sites, mosques were constructed. For when
the Christians' affliction grew great and their incomes small, they decided to
embrace Islam. Thus Islam spread among the Christians of Egypt and in the town
of Qalyub alone 450 persons were converted to Islam in a single day … this was
a momentous event in Egyptian history."
More on Islam's "tolerant" medieval period. In
Jerusalem, in 1009 AD, Islam razed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of
Jesus' burial and resurrection. In Egypt, in 1193, Al-Malik Al-Aziz Osman bin
Salahadin Yusuf attempted to tear down the pyramids.
Also during Islam's "tolerant" period: Islam
was savaging the Balkans, laying seeds for killing and hatred that would last
for hundreds of years. Islam was taking millions of Poles and other Slavs
slaves. The Islamic Slave Trade was dwarfing the Atlantic Slave Trade. And the
Islamic Conquest of India would inspire a profoundly tragic quote from
historian Will Durant, a man who had confronted much human misery:
"The Islamic conquest of India is probably the
bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is
that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and
freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians
invading from without or multiplying within." All this and more would take
place during a period that Stan called a period of Islamic "tolerance."
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