format_quote Originally Posted by
Periwinkle
Gossamer Skye: -
Robert Fisk, The Independant. Sigh! A man known to write what a certain mindset of people want to read. The Independent is in its death throes, still clinging to the old left who are, fortunately, also a dying breed.
winkle, corporate media. Sigh. folks paid to write what a certain mindset of people want to read. ( fortunately Fisk) he has a few awards for his work.. what about you, what do you have personal persuasion and an agenda?
Ah yes- Australia. Also known as the "Lucky" country. The country that so many are desperate to become citizens of.
I like to cater to popular taste as much as the next guy.. you know just to mildly amuse myself, but your affirmations of truth leave little for one to sink the fork into, which tends to happen when one engages a pseudo-intellect.. Though there is really no excuse for a westerner.. all those books you boast about will avail you naught if they sit collecting dust in the library :hmm:
Yes - thieves were sent there, but the lucky thing for them was that being sentenced for theft in UK, not in a muslim country, they arrived in Australia with TWO hands and TWO feet, ready to build the wonderfully, democratic and dynamic country that Oz has now become.
Lucky indeed that they should wipe out the aborigines and set up shop. It is always better to foster crime and British life even when criminal as well sympathize with them for their criminality. Ironically given your very liberal views I fail to see why you are so irked when others jump on the same criminal bandwagon? and, Since you don't know the first thing about Islamic jurisprudence. I'd refrain from passing comments left and right, lest of course you enjoy publicly humiliating yourself on every thread?.. I did enjoy your pearls on the Euthanasia thread :D
As for the wars not happening in mulim countries until the appearance of the west, I should remind you that Islam tried for centuries to invade the West. 700AD - Tours, France; 1450AD - Lepanto, Venice, Italy; 1480AD - Vienna, Austria . Fortunately the Europeans held and went on to create the secular democratic world where all are equal.
Islam was quite successful in reaching the Iberian peninsula and had a staying power of 800 yrs! Andulsia was the Jewel of Europe during its darkest of ages, and not because women's souls were akin to animals as the church had the west believe or starving to death because potatoes were the devil's food for having grown off the earth, and ironically saved by the Ottoman's not the benevolent west which sent them food and money.. nonetheless we still introduced you to new strings on your guitar and a seven course meal when your popes were mandating that your men not wear pointy shoes, and given you the first books in medicine and a water clock to
Charlemagne sent in 802 by Harun (Aaron the upright) which marked the hours by dropping bronze balls into a bowl, as
mechanical knights — each one for each hour — emerged from little doors which shut behind them, and an
elephant. The presents were unprecedented in Western Europe and may have influenced
Carolingian art. .. How about you enroll in some grade school level history course simply to sustain yourself in a conversation without warranting a guffaw from the rest of us?
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Harun:al:Rashid.htm
As far as beliefs are concerned there is absolutely no compromise: But those who adhere to such false beliefs are to be tolerated. It is because of this that Jews and Christians found their safest haven in the Muslim world long before the West started to talk about human rights and freedom of religion. “Jews familiar with history might note that from Spain to Baghdad, it was the Islamic world that offered the Jews of the Middle Ages a fair degree of toleration -- not the Christian West’, so tells us Richard Cohen in an article in the Post.
And as for your fantasy that muslims lived in a once upon a time peaceful fairyland. That fairyland was in constant strife, one Caliph set against another because they didn't agree with the way one practised Islam, some kind Caliphs and some despotic murderers who even killed their sons and brothers to eliminate competition. A quaint Islamic tradition.
many writers such as Forster praise the Islaamic Expansion for its moral influence in Africa. In fact, he is of the view that every nation that came in contact with Islaam has prospered.
Bosworth-Smith states that through the Islaamic expansion, it removed the dark rituals and practises that was heaped on the inhabitants of Africa:
"We hear of whole tribes laying aside their devil worship, or immemorial fetish, and springing at a bound, as it were, from the very lowest to one of the highest forms of religious belief. Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise, have remarked that the Negro who accepts `Mohamedanism' acquires at once a sense of the dignity of human nature not commonly found even among those who have been brought to accept Christianity"
R.B. Smith: Mohammed; op cit; p. 38.
He further adds:
"Nor as to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt. Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception. Though polygamy is allowed by the Koran, it is not common in practice, and, beyond the limits laid down by the Prophet, incontinence is rare; chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness henceforth that degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforth measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain-a step, as every one will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe."
R.B. Smith: Mohammed; op cit; pp. 42-3.
Another reason for the advancement of the expansion was to exterminate oppression and install justice.
To state a few examples, al-Baladhuri (Muslim historian) records that the people of the Syrian city of Hims, both Christians and Jews, proclaimed their reference for Muslim rather than Byzantine Rule, beging the Muslim soldiers to stay when the emperor Heraclius threatened to retake the city. Once the Muslims defeated the Roman army, they welcomed the Muslims with music and dance.
This is supported by a text written by a Christian Syrian (after five centuries of Muslim rule in Syria). He writes:
This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble beholding the wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without pity, brought from the region of the south the Muslims, to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if in truth we have suffered some loss, because the Catholic churches, that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the Muslims, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at people.
Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche
Another supporting example is the Visigoth persecution.
In 711 CE, an oppressed Christian chief named Julian went to Moosa ibn Nusair, the governor of North Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Christian Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick. Moosa responded by sending the young general Taariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops, burned their fleets, and defeated the 30,000 Visigoths. One of his remarkable speech was after burning his fleet -- "The sea is behind you, and the enemy is ahead of you, and you have no escape but the truth and patience." A new atmosphere of toleration began for the Jews. The Muslims had few men and needed help in every city they conquered to maintain their rule. The Jews helped the Muslims because they represented an opportunity to free themselves from the Visigoths. The Christians and Jews were liberated in Al-Andalusia. The Syrians welcomed the Muslims as their liberators since they liberated from their religious trouble and also relieved them of the burdensome taxes that that were placed on their backs. They praised the Muslims by announcing publically,
"Praise be to God, who delivered us from the unjust Byzantines and put us under the rule of the Muslims".
The mere fact that Muslims did not coerce the inhabitants that they conquered to Islaam is attested by many [non-Muslim] writers.
Lawrence E. Browne writes in the ‘
Prospects of Islaam’:Incidentally these well-established facts dispose of the idea so widely fostered in Christian writings that the Muslims, wherever they went, forced people to accept Islam at the point of the sword.
James Michener states in
‘Islaam: The Misunderstood Religion’:
No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islaam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience.
K. S. Ramakrishna Rao writes in ‘Muhammad: The Prophet of Islaam’:
My problem to write this monograph is easier, because we are not generally fed now on that (distorted) kind of history and much time need not be spent on pointing out our misrepresentations of Islam. The theory of Islam and sword, for instance, is not heard now in any quarter worth the name. The principle of Islam that “there is no compulsion in religion” is well known.
Thomas Carlyle in
‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History’:A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by?...
Thomas Arnold in ‘The Call to Islaam’:
We have never heard about any attempt to compel Non-Muslim parties to adopt Islam or about any organized persecution aiming at exterminating Christianity. If the Caliphs had chosen one of these plans, they would have wiped out Christianity as easily as what happened to Islam during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; by the same method which Louis XIV followed to make Protestantism a creed whose followers were to be sentenced to death; or with the same ease of keeping the Jews away from Britain for a period of three hundred fifty years.
Kenneth W. Morgan comments on the myths attributed to Islam Islam- The Straight Path: Islam Interpreted by Muslims:
Islam saved the Turks from wrong beliefs and superstitions, strengthened their characters, and taught them the true ideals for mankind. In return the Turks became the most sincere champions of Islam. They strove for its glory and expansion with their schools, learned men, and saints; they lived as persuasive examples of their faith; they spread Islam by pacific means. The expansion of the Turks by the sword was for economic or military purposes and not in order to force Islam on non-Muslims. They used the sword only in the defense of Islam, not for its expansion, but then they defended it with all their strength and when necessary with their lives. The highways and byways of Islamic countries have been strewn with the bodies of heroes who fell in defense of Islam.
Annemarie Schimmel states in Islam: An Introduction that:
The widespread idea that Islam made its way through the world mainly through fire and sword cannot be maintained.
Jonathan P. Berkey writes:
Popular stereotypes about Islam spreading by the sword, and older scholarly assumptions that most of the inhabitants of the Near East converted fairly quickly to the new faith in order to escape the onerous personal and agricultural taxes levied on non-Muslims, both radically misrepresent the complex situation faced by Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and others in the century or two following the initial Muslim conquests. In fact, what came to be known as the dhimmi communities, those monotheists who lived under a pact of protection (dhimma) with the Muslim state, survived and in many cases thrived for many generations.
Muhammad Zafrulla Khan writes:
In modern times, there are Muslims in Indonesia, in Egypt and in Morocco, in Russia, Central Asia and in South and Central Africa. The Iranians, the Pakistanis and the Turks are Muslims; Islam is professed in China, Cyprus and Yugoslavia. One may add that there is a number (not very large, but enough to merit mentioning) of converts to Islam of European or American origin. In the course of the centuries Islam has been able to amalgamate this variety of vastly different types into one group homogeneous at least in the religious aspect. This impressive feat has been achieved by very simple means: not, as is usually asserted, by the power of "fire and the sword," but by the strength of a religious dogma that is not too complicated to be understood by a simple and yet complex enough to satisfy the subtle mind, by virtue of a religious pattern not too difficult to uphold, and by a human attitude appealing to a great variety of men.
Islam and the Modern Age: An Analysis and an Appraisal
Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Ilse Lichtenstadter; Bookman Associates, 1958
Planhol states:
The expansion of Islam seems therefore to be linked to means of communication; the religion spreads along trade routes and in coastal areas but is hindered by all natural obstacles to social life (mountain ranges and densely forested areas) as well as by the simple inertia of the rural population. . . . The Moslem religion may be thought of as a sort of gigantic octopus, the arms of which reach far down the main roads and project far in front of the animal's actual body
Op cit., p. 104.
H. A. R. Gibb writes after praising the Islaamic Expansion:
…more astonishing than the speed of the conquests was their orderly character. Some destruction there must have been during the years of warfare, but by and large the Muslims, so far from leaving a trail of ruin, led the way to a new integration of peoples and cultures. The structure of law and government which Mohammed had bequeathed to his successors, the Caliphs, proved its value in controlling these Bedouin armies. Islam emerged into the civilized outer world, not as the crude superstition of marauding hordes, but as a moral force that commanded respect and a coherent doctrine that could challenge on their own ground the Christianity of East Rome and the Zoroastrianism of Persia.
He further adds:To the peoples of the conquered countries the Islamic conquest signified at first little more than a change of masters.
There was no breach in the continuity of their life and social institutions, no persecution, no forced conversion.
http://www.islamicboard.com/clarific...d-sword-2.html
but to add my own, It was of course the Muslim world that gave us the inquisition and Pope Alexander IV who banned Muslim philosophy books as contradicting to church teaching? So much for freedom of speech or must everyone in the world conceive 'freedom' by your definitions? If so then the problem is not confined to Muslims. It is bound to include all people who belong to other cultures; it is in fact bound to include many in the West since there is no consensus among them on the way these things are to be conceived. If your tolerance and freedom applies only to those who share your values and , further, conceive them the way you do, you will be making mockery of tolerance, which is by definition readiness to coexist peacefully with those who do not share your values
As for Andulusia - muslims invaded it three times! The first muslims apparently liked the Spanish life style too much, so a North African Caliph sent in his army to bring them back to pure Islam, and guess what, the second army eventually followed the easy going Spanish lifestyle, so a third army was sent in to sort the second army out!
You should really get read, you are so ignorant I am not sure where to begin or if it is even worth my time and everyone else's but I enjoy a public debacle as much as the next person!
let's have a look shall we?:
The World of the Middle Ages: A Reorientation of Medieval History
Additionally Heraclius and Sergius tried to reconcile their beliefs with the orthodox belief in order to create unity but failed since the Chalcedonians and Sophronius opposed it and protested against it. They then tried to come up with a new formula to reconcile all four beliefs and the patriarchs accepted this formula 'till Pope John IV in Rome rejected it emphaticially. So thus, he issued an imperial decree. This has caused an all-war against the heretics.
This article is a travelogue of impressions from a recent visit to Spain. For a Muslim who has some familiarity with Islamic history in the Iberian peninsula of the Mediterranean, a visit to Spain is almost like a pilgrimage. However, unlike the pilgrimage to Mecca, such a visit can be spiritually and emotionally agonizing, for one is overwhelmed by manifestations of European Islam in Spain (Al-Andalus, as it was then known). That was the era of the
Golden Age of Islam, from early 8th century to late 15th century, almost coincidental with Dark Ages in the rest of Europe, when Al-Andalus was the center of global civilization. And the capitol city of
Cordoba was Europe's largest - the city of books, of patrons of great literary figures and of men who were explorers of knowledge. There existed no separation between science, wisdom, and faith; nor was East separated from the West, nor the Muslim from the Jew or the Christian. It was here that the
European Renaissance began and flourished beyond.
For decades I had longed to visit Spain, not only for its legendary charm and picturesque beauty but, more importantly, to experience the heritage of almost 800 years of Islamic presence. In December 1998, I traveled to Spain for the purpose of participating in a colloquium, sponsored by the Paris-based
International Society for the Study of Arab and Islamic History and Science (in conjunction with Spanish universities). The conference theme pertained to the contributions of Cordoba's most important intellectual, Death of
Ibn Rushd (known as
Averroes in the West; Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Astronomy, Theology) in commemoration of his 800th death anniversary. The trip also provided me an opportunity to experience Spain's Islamic heritage. That heritage, indeed, has its reminders in every nook and corner of contemporary Spain, but especially in the province of Andalucia. That is where the two most prominent monuments of Islam's legacy are located: Granada (Arabic Gharnata) and Cordoba (Arabic Qurtaba); both are United Nations' "Heritage of Humanity" cities. Of course, these cities are well-maintained by Spanish Government, for, aside from the "heritage" aspects, both are huge sources of tourist revenue, even though, in times past, Catholic fanaticism had tried to destroy all vestiges of the Islamic heritage. Soon after landing in Madrid (Arabic Majrit, a kind of a breeze), I took a night train to Granada, arriving there the next morning.
Grandeur of Granada
When Muslims (Arabs and Berbers) arrived in Spain during early eighth century, they thought they had discovered heaven on earth. Water being somewhat of a luxury for them, they found it in the snows of Spain's mountain peaks. By a series of intricate channels, they directed water into the palace grounds and onto plains below. Still today in Granada one gets a glimpse of paradise (so described even by many subsequent visitors and travelers as well) in the majesty of Alhambra Palace and the adjacent Generalife Gardens (Arabic Janna al-Arif, the Garden of the Architect). Small streams carry the water to numerous fountains and ponds, water even rushing over a stone stairway. One observes and hears splashing and gushing water, with displays of color under the conifers--roses, lilies, jasmine, etc. Aside from the luxury of the Palace itself, there are the courtyards shaded by a variety of trees and cooled by fountains and underground water channels, and walls decorated by patterned tiles. All through one feels the presence of God Almighty, for there are Qura'anic verses inscribed on the walls, the most prominent and ubiquitous being: "Wa la ghalib illa Allah" (There is no victor but Allah).
As one walks through Alhambra and the Gardens, one vicariously absorbs into the past and begins to experience an enormous sense of pride and awe at the glory that was Islam. But as I walked through the Palace, the tour-guide pointed out, among others, the "Ambassador's Hall," where the Muslim ruler, Abu Abdallah ("Boabdil," as the guide referred to him) had signed the treaty on November 25, 1491 for eventual surrender of Granada in January 1492 to the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. [
The Treaty of Granada]. And, I remembered reading, when Abu Abdallah shed tears and cried out, "Allah O'Akbar," his mother said to him, "Cry you like women over a kingdom lost that you could not defend like a man." Thus one feels the pain of an inglorious end to a glorious past, intensified further by one's knowledge of a divided and impoverished present world of Islam, subject to Western hegemony almost since the Crusades. Of course, I strongly felt the tour-guide was inclined to understating the Arab-Islamic character of these historic structures, as well as denigrating the Islamic rulers and religion (e.g., "You have heard of sensuous Moors," "Islam allows many wives," etc.). And the mostly non-Muslim, Western tourists, given their own conditioning, seemed quite receptive. However, once my Muslim identity became apparent, there was caution; the guide even stated that during Islamic Spain, "Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together peacefully."
There are numerous other reminders of historic Islam in Granada. There are several smaller palaces and there is the historic Albaican quarter (the Muslim quarter, where still some Muslims live and where the former mosque stands as Church of El-Salvador). Many churches, with domes and crosses on top in place of crescents and bell-towers in place of the
muezzin's ada'n, clearly revealed their former status. There is the Gothic Cathedral, once the Great Mosque of Granada, where the two Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, are buried. As I visited the Cathedral, I saw more statues and paintings of Catholic icons than I care to remember, reminding me of at least one of the reasons for the 16th century Protestant split in Christianity.
One giant-sized painting/sculpture that covered a large wall was most painful to absorb. It showed a warrior on a horse and a dead man with his neck crushed, lying under the horse's feet. The guide explained, "It is Santiago and his horse, slaying a Muslim." When I asked further, she said, "It is the Apostle Santiago who helped in the Christian victory over Islam." When I asked her about the implied hate-message, she was slightly taken aback and asked if I was a Muslim, and when I affirmed, her answer was, "well, it is just a painting." Since that experience, I have learnt a little about the legend of St. James ("Santiago" in Spanish). When the Muslim commander, Ibn Abi Amir (also known as "Al-Mansur bi Allah," meaning "victorious through God's grace;" and "Almanzor" in the West), captured Leon in Northern Spain in the 10th century, his troops caused much destruction, including the Church of Santiago de Compostela. However, Al-Mansur preserved the shrine of the Christian apostle St. James in that structure. Later, as the Muslims lost ground, the myth of St. James was cultivated, and Santiago "Matamoros" ("Santiago the Moor-slayer") became known as the inspiration for the Christian victory; thus, he became Spain's patron-saint.
And then during the Cathedral visit, there was another interesting conversation with a another tour guide. I asked him about the number of Muslims now in Spain. He said, "Not many; only some youngsters are converting out of fashion." "You mean they are not true to their new faith?" I asked. "No, they will revert," he seemed confident. I said, "What if they don't? Will there be another Inquisition?" There was a long pause. [Another 1985 travelogue:
Valencia, Granada and Cordoba].
Cordoba's Grand Mosque and Surroundings
From Granada, I proceeded by bus to Cordoba. As I was riding in the bus, I could see, through the eyes of my eyes, the presence of Muslims in history, especially conspicuous because I could see former mosques in every little town along the way. And then, about every few miles, I could see forts and castles on mountain tops, now displaying Christian symbols, as well as often churches besides them. I could see flashbacks of Muslims tending to their olive groves, developing new crops and agriculture technology, and living side-by-side peacefully with their non-Muslim cousins. Yet I could also see them hiding behind the hills and mountains, trying to escape the wrath of the
16th century Inquisition, when their choice was to either be "baptized" (and thus, be "saved"), or face deportation, or risk brutal death.
Among the various monuments of Islamic Spain, the most intense yearning of my soul was to experience the Grand Mosque (Le Mezquita) of Cordoba, built in the 8th century by Emir
Abdul Rehman I, but now called The Holy Cathedral. [The construction of the great mosque of Cordoba began in 786 CE on a site purchased for 100,000 gold dinars]. Immediately after arriving at my hotel in Cordoba on December 8th, I was able to join a guided tour that took me to the Mosque. As a Muslim, just being there was overwhelmingly therapeutic, for here, before my own eyes, was about the most vivid reminder of the Golden Age of Islam, an era that provided the roots of Europe's Enlightenment. In the open compound, there were ornate rows of orange trees, with the Cathedral's bell-tower on one side, once the
muezzin's minaret. As we entered the Mosque, I could also see the Cathedral, which the Catholic hierarchy, so as to emphasize the victory over Islam, built in the center of the Mosque during early 16th century. While there was some controversy at the time as to the building of the Cathedral, fortunately its presence helped to preserve the Grand Mosque from complete destruction at the hands of the new rulers. While standing in the Mosque, I felt spiritually immersed in its serenity and grandeur. There were the majestic arches and columns; there was the symmetry of chandeliers in all directions, interrupted by the presence of the Cathedral. As I saw the
mihrab, I was instinctively drawn toward it. It was enclosed by a metal fence, but I could see several Qura'anic verses on the walls, beautifully inscribed in Arabic calligraphy, intertwined with colored tilework, and with Christian statues and crosses above. Again, it was easy to flashback - and I could see myself standing in prayers, shoulder to shoulder, along side such Muslim intellectual giants of Cordoba as Ibn Hazam, Al-Qurtubi, al-Maqqari, al-Ghafiqi, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Arabi, and others who once made Cordoba the supreme intellectual center of the world.
Yet again, I felt, as I did at Alhambra, that the tour guide was painstakingly linking the architectural beauty of the Mosque more with the Romans and less with the centuries of Islamic presence. During interactions with the guide, someone happened to ask about the origins of bullfights in Spain and, as though trying to link this violent sport with "terrorist" Arabs, she responded, "Oh, the Arabs brought that here." Cautiously, I interjected, for while I had heard several explanations as to the origins of bull-fighting, that was not one of them. So I mentioned that one explanation I had read somewhere went back to some Catholic legends, in that when Mariam (Mary) was pregnant with Prophet Issa (Jesus Christ; peace be upon both), there was an incident in which a bull was indignant to Mariam, so the bull became a beast to be fought back. She said she had never heard of this. Fortunately, a Catholic couple in the group from Barcelona was able to confirm my story. I do not know the authenticity of this explanation, however; but, whatever else, certainly contemporary bull-fighting did not originate with the Arabs. [
Mary and Jesus (peace be upon them) and
Jesus, The Son of Mary (pbut) in the Holy Qur'an].
Then I encountered a most painful experience in Cordoba's Grand Mosque. As the tour was in progress, I felt the urge to perform two
nafls, as
tahat al-masjid. So I moved away from the group to a somewhat remote corner and began my prayers. As I stood there, performing the second raka'at, suddenly I felt the presence of an angry man, trembling with rage and breathing straight into my face, admonishing me with his gestures and screaming in Spanish, "No Muslim prayers.....No Muslim prayers" (so I understood). Momentarily, I resisted the pressure of this Catholic security guard; but he held and shook my arm, and forced me to break my niyat. Obviously, I was annoyed - but far more intense was my spiritual agony, for here was one of the most sacred heritages of Spanish Islam and as a Muslim, I was being denied the freedom to say prayers. This was despite my knowledge that post-Franco Spain had become more tolerant and that even the Spanish Parliament had passed legislation that accepted Islam, Judaism, Protestant Christianity as co-equals with Catholicism. Despite my protests (to be fair, the guide and some others joined my protest), the guard tightly held my arm and escorted me out of the Mosque. As I stood outside the Mosque, the pain was unbearable and my eyes filled with tears. And there I was, thinking of the late
Allama Iqbal (1873-1938) of the Indian sub-continent who visited this Mosque in 1932 (with special permission from England, for until not long ago, Muslims and Jews were forbidden to enter Spain) and, having encountered similar experiences, he expressed his anguish in his poetry; thus, in his epic poem, "The Mosque of Qurtaba," he bemoaned:
Oh Holy Mosque of Qurtaba, the shrine for all admirers of art
Pearl of the one true faith, sanctifying Andalusia's soil
Like Holy Mecca itself, such a glorious beauty
Will be found on earth, only in a true Muslim's heart
As I stood there outside the Mosque, I was thinking of the well-known tolerance and protection that Islam has historically extended to other faiths. And my mind was occupied by the thoughts of Allama Iqbal's most touching poems he wrote during his visit to Spain. I had carried them with me to Spain and they became the source of some comfort in my pain. Of course, during the next day or so, I cautiously returned to the Mosque, accompanied by a Muslim colleague from France; and I was able to absorb its quiet spirituality more thoroughly.
But there is so much more of Islam's legacy in Cordoba. Guided by a city map, I decided to explore more by walking. Echoes of Cordoba's grandeur remain in the area around the Mosque, for it is typical of a Muslim town of small palaces, built around watered courtyards, and to explore these streets is to encounter unexpected joys: glimpses through open doors (which would have been shut in Islamic times) reveal cool, tiled and flower-filled patios. Street names in Arabic seemed common. "Alfaros" was the Arabic name of the hotel where I stayed, with some of the specialty rooms also named in Arabic (e.g., "Salon al-Zahra"). [
Wonders of az-Zahra and Other Andalusian Palaces]. And there were churches, castles, and fortresses which would remind me of their Islamic past, either by their structure or some inscriptions. As I walked along the banks of Guadalquivir (derived from al-Wadi al-Kabir, or Great River, in Arabic), I saw the picturesque ruins of three flour-mills from the Islamic days, with a Roman bridge standing in the background. On the other side of the bridge stood an historic fort, the Tower of Calahorra (Arabic Qalah al-Harrah, or The Fort of Freedom), which houses a small but excellent Arab-funded Islamic Museum. The most spectacular sight, however, was that of a 9th century waterwheel (Spanish noira, from Arabic al-na'urah) still standing in the river. During centuries past, water used to be taken from here and transported through intricate channels to the Mosque and the rest of the city. Near the Mosque is the
Alcazar (Al-Qasr in Arabic), built in the 8th century, the residence of the first Ummayad emir, Abdur Rehman. Then, of course, I had to pay homage to Ibn Rushd and visited his statue not far from the Mosque.
While I was unable to say prayers in the Grand Mosque, I knew that there was at least one functional mosque now in Cordoba. And I had also known of the newly-founded Ibn Rushd Islamic University in the vicinity of the Mosque. Upon some investigation, I located the university and the mosque that is within it; and I went there for Friday prayers on December 11th. That visit turned out to be quite an experience by itself. It was most moving to hear the sound of
ada'an on the soil of Spain, where the general environment is still rather hostile and where once even the slightest suspicion of one's Islamic faith could lead to death. And, further, I discovered this irony: the university and the mosque are now located almost exactly at the spot where so much of the Islamic past was destroyed: religious scriptures and thousands of books written by Islamic scholars. This was also one of the spots where Muslims used to be burnt at the stake for their refusal to be baptized or for suspicion that they were not quite "Christian." Those who thus converted by force became known as
Moriscos. Most Andalusians have that Morisco past even today, though over the centuries their identity is so thoroughly lost in the larger society that hardly anyone remembers or wants to remember, and any attempt to remind them arouses surprise, even ridicule and hostility (as I discovered for myself!). Of course, the Jews, though less numerous, had suffered similar fate in Spain, and those "baptized" were known as Conversos.
In the University's mosque, I met some native young Spaniards (including three women) who, having discovered their roots and/or having formally studied comparative religion, had embraced Islam. In fact, it was most moving to hear the Friday
khutba from the mouth of a young Spanish Muslim, who spoke in fluent Arabic, and even provided translation in English as well as Spanish! Of course, he also led the prayers. As I think back of these young Spanish Muslims, I also reminisce about what that guide in the Granada cathedral had told me about the "young Spaniards converting out of fashion."
Then, at the University, I met the University's Rector, Dr. Ali M. Kettani, a Moroccan by origins [Dr. Kettani was the Director General of IFSTAD in the 1980s]. And it was a pleasant surprise, for he and I had briefly known each other in the 1980s when we were both located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I have not met many people with the dedication, enthusiasm and commitment to the cause of Islam that I observed in Dr. Kettani. With his own almost single-handed efforts, he has founded this small university in an environment which, though officially tolerant, still exudes Catholic fanaticism; I was told the university and mosque doors have to be locked all the time, for there have been instances of violence and vandalism. The University currently enrolls some students (Muslims and non-Muslims) and there are plans underway for expansion. However, there is also a desperate need for financial resources (anyone willing to contribute may contact the author).
And while visiting the University, I also learnt of a most gruesome tragedy that a prominent Muslim lady, Sabora Uribe, had suffered. Professionally a psychiatrist, the wife of the President of the Federation of Spanish Muslim Entities, the mother of five children, she had embraced Islam 20 years ago and was the founder of the Women's Spanish Muslim Association (called "Al-Nisa"). She was brutally murdered in a town near Cordoba on October 28, 1998. Some fanatic entered the house at night and stabbed her to death, the apparent motive being hatred for her Islamic faith and activities. The University has named one of its classrooms in her memory. One of her children attends the Islamic University in Cordoba.
Seville: A Detour
At the end of the Ibn Rushd colloquium and having absorbed as much of Cordoba as I could with the time available, a colleague and I decided to make a quick visit to Seville. Of course, this city has its own Islamic heritage. I had read somewhere that the Arabic name of Seville was Ishbilyya. After the advent of Islam, the city's Roman name Hispalis was 'arabized' to Ishbilyya, from which is derived Seville, pronounced "Savellya" in Spanish, which is almost the Arabic pronounciation. One of Islamic Ishbillya's famous 12th century scholar was the Muslim botanist Abu Zakariyah al-Awwam Ishibili who had identified nearly 600 plants and had developed methods of grafting; in the usual Arab fashion, he is named "Ishibili" after the city he came from. But there is more of Islamic past in Seville, submerged in the famous relics of the Alcazar and the Cathedral/La Giralda.
About like the Alhambra Palace, Seville's
Alcazar (Al-Qasr) is another architectural jewel from the early days of Islam. It was built in the 8th century and then expanded in the 9th. Later the Christian rulers made further additions, but in spite of the Gothic details, the entire structure is essentially Islamic and follows the Islamic tradition of halls and open courts with water fountains. The walls are covered in painted stucco and glazed tiles. The blue and white inscription proclaims the same message that I saw in Alhambra: "wa la ghalib ill Allah" (There is no victor but Allah). Over the vestibule doors are elongated voussoirs which make a nice introduction to more fantasies. Multi-lobed arches support facades of a network of lace-like stone and foliage in which lurk human faces besides the shields of Castile (added during the Christian rule). There is the Hall of the Kings, with fine woodwork, a triple horseshoe-arched arcade and deep alcoves. Then there is the "Hall of the Ambassadors," with its similar triple arcades, sharply cut while the ornament is so lavish that it would numb the senses were it not for the vistas beyond. The dome is starlit above subdued
muqarana squinches (shoulders of masonry supporting the dome, with interlocking woodwork producing the effect of stalactites) which catch and reflect the light. One of the most elaborate plaster designs in one of the halls is a foliate lattice inset with pine cones, some of which seemed crushed into thistle heads and others conjured into three-dimensional shells.
After absorbing the interior wonders of the Alcazar Palace, I walked through the well-trimmed hedges in the exterior, sat on the tiled benches and enjoyed the beautiful flowers as the Muslim emirs and their entourage must have enjoyed them when they were the masters. And I wondered: If only the Muslim architects would come here to the land of their forefathers to study the beautiful Andalusian architecture, what improvements could be made to the modern concrete boxes that are common place. And how the sons of the desert became such excellent gardeners and farmers still mystifies historians and scholars! They introduced so many different types of plants in the West: lemons, oranges, apricots, artichokes, dates, rice, sugarcane - it is a long list.
And then we walked to Seville's famous Cathedral and its
La Giralda (The Minaret) - the grandest of the minarets, rivaled only by its parent, the
kutubiyya of Marrakesh. The Cathedral is now where the Great Mosque of Seville was built in 1172; and the original minaret was built in 1198. The mosque was converted to Christian use in 1248. Later it was demolished, except for the dome and the minaret, and the Cathedral was built during the 15th century. I walked through the Cathedral and absorbed what I could, and we even walked to the top of the 165-feet tall minaret (no stairs, only gently sloping ramps). Aside from the visible dome and the minaret (both now "Christianized," of course), an astute visitor can also see the Cathedral's Islamic past in two other manifestations: an Arabic-language wall plate as one enters the minaret that tells of its architect, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub; and the huge entry gate whose doors not only have the Islamic design but also 12th century Arabic inscriptions. There is nothing inside the Cathedral that would suggest its Islamic past. There is the thoroughly Gothic architecture inside, with dozens of statues and paintings of Christian icons and other symbolisms. Yet, I was impressed by the Cathedral's interior, not only for its grandeur and richness but also for the serene and solemn atmosphere and the religious sanctity that it conveyed, much more than I felt in Granada's Cathedral. I also saw in the Cathedral the tomb of Christopher Columbus, who, after the 1492 fall of Islamic Granada, was charged by Isabella and Ferdinand to seek out India. [
Columbus: What If?]. But one factor that caused him to pursue that task by traveling West was the Ottoman presence in the East; and guided by well-travelled Muslim navigators, he happened to "discover" the Americas in the same year (of course, many dispute and despise his adventures). [
Islam and Columbus' America].
Some Concluding Remarks
While the splendid monuments of Islamic history that one encounters in Spain represent a tangible legacy of a great civilization, there are many others that are less tangible and which are part of daily lives and taken for granted. Perhaps the most telling example of continuing Islamic influence is the survival of myriad Arabic words and phrases in the Spanish language, such as almirante (al-amir), almohade (al-mohtasub), arroz (al-ruz), guitarra (qitar), aceituna (zaytuna), and many others. Further, when one hears
"Ole'! Ole'!" during the Flamenco dances and Spanish bullfights, the unwitting reference is to "Allah! Allah!" And when a Spaniard or Portuguese says
"Oj'ala'" (God willing), he probably does not even know that he is uttering the distorted version of Arabic "Insha-Allah." [
Names of Arabic Origin...]. And there is so much more, including many customs and traditions that go back to the Islamic past, despite the fact that during the
early 15th century Spanish Inquisition, anything with the slightest link to the Arabic language or Islamic faith or practice was absolutely forbidden and subject to the severest punishments.
Contemporary Spain vigorously promotes Alhambra and other monuments of Al-Andalus as major tourist attractions. Yet, the promoters, including the tour-guides, do not quite point out that these are legacies of nearly eight centuries during which Muslims not only occupied Spain but planted the roots of European Renaissance through unparalleled transfer of knowledge in almost every field known. In other words, while Spain and the West are happy to inherit and benefit from the legacy of Islamic Spain (with its own assimilation, to be sure, of the rediscovered Greek reservoir of knowledge), there is stubborn reluctance to acknowledging how that legacy contributed to Europe's ascendence. The American traveler, Washington Irving, observed this paradox when he visited Spain during early 18th century. The Spanish, he remarked, considered Muslims only as "invaders and usurpers;" and that still seems to the case today.
Yet, given the official acceptance of Islam in 1989, there is now freedom of religion in Spain, at least officially. However, fanaticism still becomes visible at times, such as the murder of a Muslim woman last October. According to information available from the Islamic University of Cordoba, there are now about 500,000 Muslims living in Spain - about 100,000 citizens, the rest are foreigners. Of the citizens, about 20,000 are converts, the rest are naturalized. Most of the new Muslims live in the Andalucia region, though one can find some in all regions of Spain. There are about 200 mosques in Spain today, 50 of them in the Andalucia region. At one time, of course, there were over 1600 mosques in Cordoba alone!
Finally, while I have had the good fortune of having done some traveling here and there, none - except my visits to Mecca and Medina - surpasses the spiritual and emotional experience that I felt upon being immersed for a few days into Spain's Islamic past. There is indeed a sense of pride and humility about the glorious age of my forbearers in faith. This personal exposure to Islamic legacy, as well as my other recent academic explorations into Islam's intellectual contributions and their impact in the making of the West, are in the nature of spiritual medicine, a sort of a therapy for the soul. Such encounters enable me to escape into history books and thus help me in overcoming the sense of inferiority and humiliation that haunts me as a Muslim; I suspect I am not alone. Again I am recalling a verse from Allama Iqbal's poem,
Hispania:
Indeed, my eyes observed and absorbed Granada; but
My soul is at peace neither from travelling, nor stopping
Saw so much, absorbed so much; told so much, heard so much;
Yet, solace to the heart is neither from seeing, nor from hearing
While one can seek solace in such lamentations of the late Allama, yet one also yearns for a brighter Islamic future, as visualized in the writings of such universal intellectual giants as
Ibn Sina (980-1037),
Al-Ghazali (Algazel, 1058-1111; Sociology, Theology, and Philosophy), and Ibn Rushd (1126-1998). The meaning of life and its goal in Al-Andalus during its Islamic apogee directed each act of daily living, as well as scientific explorations. Such explorations were not set apart from wisdom and faith, and none can express this delicately-balanced bliss better than Ibn Rushd. Thus, during my visit to Cordoba's Islamic Museum, I noted this message from a recorded tape of Ibn Rushd's remarks from his book,
On the Harmony of Science and Religion: (i) science, founded on experience and logic, to discover reason; (ii) wisdom, which reflects on the purpose of every scientific research so that it serves to make our life more beautiful; and (iii) revelation, that of our
Qura'an, as it is only through revelation that we know the final purposes of our life and our history; Amen. Indeed, it is the gift of "reason" that the then civilized Islam, through Ibn Rushd and others, gave to the then primitive Europe. And it was their impact that the late Allama mentions in his poem, "The Mosque of Qurtaba:"
Remember Alhambra - the Moorish pleasure palace? It is exquisite - you should travel there one day. Built for numerous wives, concubines, slaves and their children.
I have traveled indeed.. seems Islamic architecture brings Spain alot of tourist money
In this Islamic fairyland, the Jews and Christians were secondclass citizens, unequal under law,the indiginous polytheists suffered terribly and were Islamicised and used in the army to capture the next country along the way, the booty always being passed back to the greedy caliphs. And slaves, even today there are over half a million legally indentured slaves in muslim Mauritania. Arabia on oulawed it in 1962, but still treats its indentured foreign workers much as it treated its slaves.
Let's have a look at what the Jews have to say yet again, shall we and later on a nice comparison just for you as to whom the west has suffered under the most!
Mohammed's Sword
By URI AVNERY
Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306--exactly 1700 years ago--encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".
* * * IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted--of all people--a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had--or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt)--with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
These words give rise to three questions:
(a) Why did the Emperor say them?
(b) Are they true?
(c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
* * * WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
* * * IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes--Christian, Jewish and others--in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith--and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
* * * THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service--a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion--because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
* * * THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims--the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism"--when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in
The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book
The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery09262006.html
The muslims lived off the suppression and misery of others. The major difference between Islam and the West is that we have admitted our mistakes in the past and modernised our way of thinking to try and make every ones lives matter. Islam lives in the past and would still like to obtain a perfect Caliphate whilst in complete denial of the inhuman way it was practiced in the past - one only has to look at Saudi, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan etc. to see how muslims are physically and mentally opressed by their powerful masters - and as for ethnic minorities in these countries- you cannot deny that they are terribly abused by their muslim neighbours.
Christian Copts in Egypt, Hindus in Pakistan - little preteen girls abducted , converted and married off to old men, Christian villages and residents burnt to death in Pakistan, Christians being massacred in Nigeria and Kenya, Bahais and Kurds persecuted in Iran, christians and Bhuddists in the Phillipines and Thailand - need I go on? Islam is doing this in 2009 - how you can possibly play the victim card and say that Islam treated its non muslim citizens and neighbours nicely past and present), I cannot understand. And whilst muslims live safely in the west extolling Islam - do they ever take time to think that what they are doing is perpetuating the appalling system that the women, children and ethnic minorities still living those wonderful Islamic countries , have to endure? Is that what western muslims want for their brothers and sisters whilst they enjoy the comforts and equality of a western democracy?
I wasn't aware one person was capable of this much drivel. Do you have side bars on your vision?
Sure the first suicide bombers were the Knights Templar destroyed one of their own ships, killing 140 Christians in order to kill ten times as many Muslims and sure in
Rwanda Christian people would become a killing field where neighbors are slaughtering each other in huge numbers, where grown men who attend church regularly would pick up machetes and hack to death entire families, including the children, should strike us as utterly bizarre and yet were saved by Muslims
http://www.religion-online.org/showa...asp?title=1852
but who cares about all of that, when you can sit home and read selectively from the Australian? Which of course you are so entitled, but word to the wise, try to engage like minds when doing so, because you'll be annihilated by recorded historical facts not politically motivated refuse!
Regarding the history of Islam:
“The Christian World came to wage crusades against Muslims but eventually knelt before them to gain knowledge. They were spellbound to see that Muslims were owners of a culture that was far superior to their own. The Dark Ages of Europe were illuminated by nothing but the beacon of Muslim Civilization.”
Author :F.J.C Hearushaw
Book Reference :The Science of History
"History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated."
Author :
De Lacy O'Leary
Book Reference :
ISLAM AT THE CROSSROADS, London, 1923, p. 8
“The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain.”
Author :
Robert Briffault
Book Reference :
The Making Of Mankind
Incidentally these well-established facts dispose of the idea so widely fostered in Christian writings that the Muslims, wherever they went, forced people to accept Islam at the point of the sword.
Author :
Lawrence E. Browne
Book Reference :
‘The Prospects of Islam,’ 1944
Despite the growth of antagonism, Moslem (Muslim) rulers seldom made their Christian subjects suffer for the Crusades. When the Saracens finally resumed the full control of Palestine the Christians were given their former status as dhimmis. The Coptic Church, too had little cause for complaint under Saladin's (Salahuddin) strong government, and during the time of the earlier Mameluke sultans who succeeded him the Copts experienced more enlightened justice than they had hitherto known. The only effect of the Crusaders upon Egyptian Christians was to keep them for a while from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for as long as the Frank were in charge heretics were forbidden access to the shrines. Not until the Moslem victories could they enjoy their rights as Christians.
Author :
James Addison
Book Reference :
'The Christian Approach to the Moslem,' p. 35
The picture of the Muslim soldier advancing with a sword in one hand and the Qur'an in the other is quite false.
Author :
A. S. Tritton
Book Reference :
in 'Islam,' 1951
No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience.
Author :
James Michener
Book Reference :
‘Islam: The Misunderstood Religion,’ Reader’s Digest, May 1955, pp. 68-70
My problem to write this monograph is easier, because we are not generally fed now on that (distorted) kind of history and much time need not be spent on pointing out our misrepresentations of Islam. The theory of Islam and sword, for instance, is not heard now in any quarter worth the name. The principle of Islam that “there is no compulsion in religion” is well known.
Author :
K. S. Ramakrishna Rao
Book Reference :
'Mohammed: The Prophet of Islam,' 1989
When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!..
Author :
Thomas Carlyle
Book Reference :
‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History,’ Lecture 2, Friday, 8th May 1840
A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by?...
Author :
Thomas Carlyle
Book Reference :
‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History,’ Lecture 2, Friday, 8th May 1840
“A rugged, strife-torn and mountaineering people...were suddenly turned into an indomitable Arab force, which achieved a series of splendid victories unparalleled in the history of nations, for in the short space of ninety years that mighty range of Saracenic (i.e. Muslim) conquest embraced a wider extent of territory than Rome had mastered in the course of eight hundred.”
Author :
Simon Ockley
Book Reference :
in 'History of the Saracens'
We have never heard about any attempt to compel Non-Muslim parties to adopt Islam or about any organized persecution aiming at exterminating Christianity. If the Caliphs had chosen one of these plans, they would have wiped out Christianity as easily as what happened to Islam during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; by the same method which Louis XIV followed to make Protestantism a creed whose followers were to be sentenced to death; or with the same ease of keeping the Jews away from Britain for a period of three hundred fifty years.
Author :
Thomas Arnold
Book Reference :
in 'The Call to Islam.'
This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble beholding the wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without pity, brought from the region of the south the sons of Ishmael, to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if in truth we have suffered some loss, because the Catholic churches, that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the Arabs, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at people. (Michael the Elder, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch wrote this text in the latter part of the twelfth century, after five centuries of Muslim rule in that region.)
Author :
Michael the Elder (Great)
Book Reference :
'Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche,' J.B. Chabot, Editor, Vol. II, Paris, 1901
Despite the growth of antagonism, Moslem (Muslim) rulers seldom made their Christian subjects suffer for the Crusades. When the Saracens finally resumed the full control of Palestine the Christians were given their former status as dhimmis. The Coptic Church, too had little cause for complaint under Saladin's (Salahuddin) strong government, and during the time of the earlier Mameluke sultans who succeeded him the Copts experienced more enlightened justice than they had hitherto known. The only effect of the Crusaders upon Egyptian Christians was to keep them for a while from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for as long as the Frank were in charge heretics were forbidden access to the shrines. Not until the Moslem victories could they enjoy their rights as Christians.
Author :
James Addison
Book Reference :
'The Christian Approach to the Moslem,' p. 35
In the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a people....It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other evidences of the highest culture. Before the coming of Islam it (tolerance) had never been preached as an essential part of religion...
Author :
Marmaduke Pickthall
Book Reference :
1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,' Madras, India
If Europe had known as much of Islam, as Muslims knew of Christendom, in those days, those mad, adventurous, occasionally chivalrous and heroic, but utterly fanatical outbreak known as the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were based on a complete misapprehension...
Author :
Marmaduke Pickthall
Book Reference :
1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,' Madras, India
The tolerance within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history; class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers.
Author :
Marmaduke Pickthall
Book Reference :
1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,' Madras, India
let's have a look at what the christian west gave the world though, shall we?
______________________________
WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD'S DIVINE GLORY"Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete)
Ancient Pagans
- As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
- Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
- Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
- Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468]
- Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
- Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..." - In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
- In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
- The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
[DO19-25]
Mission
- Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
- Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
- Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
- 15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
- 16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]
Crusades (1095-1291)
- First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
- Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
- 9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
- Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
- after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60] - Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
- Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude") - The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]
- Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
- Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
- Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
- Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224] Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.
Heretics
- Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
- Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
- Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181] - Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
- subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
- After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
- Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
- Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
- Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
- John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
- University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
- Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.
Witches
- from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
- in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
- incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times
Religious Wars
- 15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
- 1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
- 1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
- 1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
- 17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]
- 17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers." [SH191]
- 17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]
Jews
- Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
- In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
- 17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
- The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
- First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
- Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
- Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
- Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
- 1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
- 1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
- 1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
- 1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
- 1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
- 1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
- 1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
- 1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
- 1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]
(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz.
Native Peoples
- Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
- Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion." [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it." [SH204-205] - On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:
I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]
- Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ." [SH235]
- In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess." [SH109,238]
- On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204]
- The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and spanish raids.
- As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous." [SH69]
- The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell." [SH70]
- What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive." [SH72]
Or, on another occasion:
"The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs." [SH83] - The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". [SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated." [SH75]
- "And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitln [Mexico city] was next." [SH75]
- Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
- "When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead." [SH95]
Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of Amerikkka.
- Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the pilgrim fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy...", so that there usually was "no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]
- In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the (generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown - "being idell ... did runne away unto the Indyans," - to live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).
"Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed: 'Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe'." [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow englishmen: "This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia" methods were different: "when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community" down. [SH105] - On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the "Peqout War". The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from persecution in their own home country England.
- When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief's pledge they attacked.
Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after, because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and burned their villages.
The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies": men, women, children. [SH113-114] - So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance". [SH111].
- Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:
"Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20) - Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents". [SH114]
- Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own words: "blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them." (This was inspired by spanish methods of the time)
In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was near. [SH107-119] - The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good'." [SH115]
- Other tribes were to follow the same path.
- Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his Beauty!"
"Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!" [TA] - Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. "Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians 'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]
- In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
- In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some "600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a 'barbeque'." [SH115]
- To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118] These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred. And the carnage was not over then.
- All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun.
- A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.
- In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even today.
More Glorious events in US history
- Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'." [SH241]
- Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.
From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed ..." [SH131]
More gory details. - By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'." [SH244]
20th Century Church Atrocities
- Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV] - Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.
The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:
- "Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life....
- Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:
"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]
As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages never come to an end....
References:
[DA] K.Deschner,
Abermals krhte der Hahn, Stuttgart 1962. [DO] K.Deschner,
Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987. [EC] P.W.Edbury,
Crusade and Settlement, Cardiff Univ. Press 1985. [EJ] S.Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders, Madison 1977. [LI] H.C.Lea,
The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York 1961. [MM] M.Margolis, A.Marx,
A History of the Jewish People. [MV] A.Manhattan,
The Vatican's Holocaust, Springfield 1986.
See also V.Dedijer,
The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Buffalo NY, 1992. [NC] J.T.Noonan,
Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Cambridge/Mass., 1992. [S2] Newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany, 10/10/96, 12:00. [SH] D.Stannard,
American Holocaust, Oxford University Press 1992. [SP] German news magazine
Der Spiegel, no.49, 12/2/1996. [TA]
A True Account of the Most Considerable Occurrences that have Hapned in the Warre Between the English and the Indians in New England, London 1676. [TG] F.Turner,
Beyond Geography, New York 1980. [WW] H.Wollschlger:
Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Zrich 1973.
(This is in german and what is worse, it is out of print. But it is the best I ever read about crusades and includes a full list of original medieval Christian chroniclers' writings). [WV] Estimates on the number of executed witches:
- N.Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch Hunt, Frogmore 1976, 253.
- R.H.Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, New York 1959, 180.
- J.B.Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Ithaca/NY 1972, 39.
- H.Zwetsloot, Friedrich Spee und die Hexenprozesse, Trier 1954, 56
In closure, get read.. or do you think the rest live along side your trailer and have no access to recorded history?
all the best as usual of course :D