| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
I just received this message from Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad:
I listened to Dinesh D’Souza’s comments about the Jews of late 15th century Spain and their “rescue” by the noble Ottomans, as well as his description of “tolerant Muslim rule in India”, especially under the Mughals. As D’Souza’s very flawed understanding of these examples has been packaged into ahistorical tropes that he discusses repeatedly, the larger historical context merits examination.The Nexus Between the Jews of Spain and the Ottoman Empire
The (Berber Muslim) Almohads (1130-1232) wrought tremendous destruction upon both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation—massacre, captivity, and forced conversion—was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. Maimonides, the renowned philosopher and physician, experienced the Almohad persecutions, and had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148, temporarily residing in Fez — disguised as a Muslim — before finding asylum in Fatimid Egypt. Indeed, although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews:
..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us...Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they…These brutal, discriminatory practices resulted in a massive emigration of Jews and Jewish converts to Islam to the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, from both Muslim-controlled Al-Aandalus and the North African Maghreb. During the first half of the 13th century, Jaime the I of Aragon, in particular, advanced policies of protecting Jews within his territories, granting safe-conduct and letters of naturalization to all Jews who made their way by land or sea, and established themselves in the states of Majorca, Catalonia, and Valencia. Jewish converts to Islam were permitted to return to Judaism if they wished so. Within 250 years, however, the descendants of these Jews who had escaped the Muslim Almohad depredations would be subjected to the fanatical rage of the Spanish Inquisition, and some of them would find refuge under the suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman empire, especially in the region of Salonika, at the end of the 15th century. To complete this morose cycle of persecution, the vacuum filled by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition was created when their co-religionist counterparts -- the Jews living under Byzantine (and Venetian) rule in Thrace -- were subjected to massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation by these same Ottoman conquerors, during their jihad campaigns of the early to mid-15th century.
Jihad Against the Hindus & Their Condition in the Delhi Sultanate and Under the Mughals
K.S. Lal analyzed Indian demography for the period between 1000-1525, from Mahmud of Ghazni, through the end of the Delhi Sultanate. This half millennium was an era of Islamic invasion and rule during which endless jihad campaigns were waged by Muslim leaders (see here, pp. 77-85; 433-461; 631-653)—including Qutbuddin Aibak, Alauddin Khalji, Muhammad and Firoz Tughlaq, and of course Amir Timur—all of whom were celebrated in Muslim chronicles as “killers of lakhs” (each lakh= 100,000) of Hindus. Lal estimates that the numbers of Hindus who perished as a result of these campaigns was approximately 80 million—which far exceeds the toll of internecine violence between Muslims for this, or any other historical period.
The imposition of Islamic law upon the Hindu populations of India, i.e., their relegation to dhimmi status, beginning with the advent of Muslim rule in 8th century Sindh, had predictable consequences during both the Delhi Sultanate period (1206-1526 C.E.), and the Mughal Empire (1526-1707 C.E.). A.L. Srivastava highlights these germane features of Hindu status during the Delhi Sultanate:
Throughout the period of the Sultanate of Delhi, Islam was the religion of the State. It was considered to be the duty of the Sultan and his government to defend and uphold the principles of this religion and to propagate them among the masses…even the most enlightened among them [the Sultans], like Muhammad bin Tughlaq, upheld the principles of their faith and refused permission to repair Hindu (or Buddhist) temples…Thus even during the reign of the so-called liberal-minded Sultans, the Hindus had no permission to build new temples or to repair old ones. Throughout the period, they were known as dhimmis, that is, people living under guarantee, and the guarantee was that they would enjoy restricted freedom in following their religion if they paid the jizya. The dhimmis were not to celebrate their religious rites openly…and never to do any propaganda on behalf of their religion. A number of disabilities were imposed upon them in matters of State employment and enjoyment of civic rights…It was a practice with the Sultans to destroy the Hindu temples and images therein. Firoz Tughlaq and Sikander Lodi prohibited Hindus from bathing at the ghats [river bank steps for ritual bathers] in the sacred rivers, and encouraged them in every possible way to embrace the Muslim religion. The converts were exempted from the jizya and given posts in the State service and even granted rewards in cash, or by grant of land. In short, there was not only no real freedom for the Hindus to follow their religion, but the state followed a policy of intolerance and persecution. The contemporary Muslim chronicles abound in detailed descriptions of desecration of images and destruction of temples and of the conversion of hundreds and thousands of the Hindus. [Hindu] religious buildings and places bear witness to the iconoclastic zeal of the Sultans and their followers. One has only to visit Ajmer, Mathura, Ayodhya, Banaras and other holy cities to see the half broken temples and images of those times with their heads, faces, hands and feet defaced and demolished.Majumdar sees a continuum between the Delhi Sultanate and the subsequent Mughal Empire, regarding the status of the Hindus:
So far as the Hindus were concerned, there was no improvement either in their material and moral conditions or in their relations with the Muslims. With the sole exception of Akbar, who sought to conciliate the Hindus by removing some of the glaring evils to which they were subjected, almost all other Mughal Emperors were notorious for their religious bigotry. The Muslim law which imposed many disabilities and indignities upon the Hindus…and thereby definitely gave them an inferior social and political status, as compared to the Muslims, was followed by these Mughal Emperors (and other Muslim rulers) with as much zeal as was displayed by their predecessors, the Sultans of Delhi. The climax was reached during the reign of Aurangzeb, who deliberately pursued the policy of destroying and desecrating Hindu temples and idols with a thoroughness unknown before or since.Majumdar also makes this interesting juxtaposition of Hindu cultural advancement under the lengthy period of Muslim colonial rule, compared to the much shorter interval of British colonial rule:
Judged by a similar standard, the patronage and cultivation of Hindu learning by the Muslims, or their contribution to the development of Hindu culture during their rule…pales into insignificance when compared with the achievements of the British rule…It is only by instituting such comparison that we can make an objective study of the condition of the Hindus under Muslim rule, and view it in its true perspective.Posted by Robert at January 29, 2007 8:21 AM
Print this entry | Email this entry | Digg this | del.icio.us
What about the effects on christians? And the Pagans in the interior - remember, the great part of the populace IN THE INTERIOR was still Pagan. The romanized christians were only in the coasts.
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 29, 2007 10:05 AM
I suppose there are no records of and about the Pafans?
All this is exactly why I'm out of religiousity -one is as fanatical as the other.
The Inquisition is still alive and well btw.
Posted by: allat at January 29, 2007 10:23 AM
As a matter of fact, Allat, you are wrong. The majority of the Roman population in both halves of the empire by the sixth century was Christian. This is why Germanic tribes that entered the Roman territories usually became Christianized. There was a considerable amount of Pagan minority, but in spite of the insulting nickname Pagan, it was not at all necessarily in the so-called "interior" - Athens, for instance, remained a stronghold of paganism till late in the day. The main reason for the end of Paganism were the atrocious wars launched by the execrable Justinian I and his even more depraved followers, as well as their odious Persian counterparts (it is rare that a historical period should see so many detestable rulers as the sixth century in Roman and Persian areas). The devastation wrought from Spain to Mesopotamia was lethal for the pagan institutions, which were largely local and unorganized, while the Church and all bodies that imitated it - Manicheans, schismatics, etc. - were better able to survive it and more able to support its members in distress. Even so, some pagans and Gnostics carried right over into the Muslim world; their descendants are the Druze of Syria and Lebanon and the Alawis, pseudo-Muslims who believe in reincarnation and in a divine Trinity of a markedly Plotinian kind.
As for the trash about the expulsion of Jews, those who tell the pretty fable about tolerant Ottomans who, in between flaying enemies alive and impaling their own brothers, welcomed the poor Spanish Jews with open arms, neglect to tell that some of those expelled went straight to... Rome, the Pope's royal capital and centre of Christendom. There they established no less than three scholae or synagogues, the Aragonese, Castilian and Catalan, which lasted for centuries until they were merged in the great Synagogue of central Rome in existence today. Some Popes were less tolerant than others, but it must be borne in mind that the Roman Jewish community is the most ancient in the world, and that not only did it manage to survive under Papal rule for thirteen centuries and welcome persecuted Jews from abroad, but that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it literally colonized central and northern Italy with its own members. That hardly argues in favour of the Catholic-ogre narrative, but then, nobody wants to hear that the Popes treated Jews better than the Turks. Even if it happens to be true.
Posted by: Paolo at January 29, 2007 10:33 AM
Wow-the Muslims do one favor for Jews and this is supposed to erase all trangressions before and after that? Dinesh D'Souza is rapidly turning into Dinesh D'Dummy with these laughable statements on Islamic kindness. Will he be excusing the conduct of the Grand Mufti during WW2 next?
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at January 29, 2007 10:59 AM
I really hope that Mr. D'Souza's book becomes one of those flashes in the pan that gets a lot of publicity and hype and is then forgotten in six months. I really hope that the American (or other Western) conservative movement doesn't take his thesis seriously and instead drops it like a hot potato. It's a bad idea, it's a self-defeating idea, it puts us on the side of "moderate" (whatever that means) Muslims and against anti-Islamist feminists like Hirsi Ali, solely because they are feminists.
at January 29, 2007 11:37 AM
ISLAMSFORLOSERS wrote:
"Wow-the Muslims do one favor for Jews and this is supposed to erase all trangressions before and after that? Dinesh D'Souza is rapidly turning into Dinesh D'Dummy with these laughable statements on Islamic kindness. Will he be excusing the conduct of the Grand Mufti during WW2 next?"
at January 29, 2007 11:49 AM
Remember D'Souza also has blamed FDR for helping Islamic radicals in some round about bizarre way dealing with Soviets and Yalta.
Lets face it we are dealing with a man who is obsessed with the morality of women. Is it not amazing how he has this positive view of Islamic traditions on women?
Posted by: greatcometof1577 at January 29, 2007 12:07 PM
Islam's long history of defacement, destruction, or outright theft of temples and churches proves it to be an aggressive ideology.
But, lemmme guess. Some Christians mowed down a mosque a thousand years ago so we have attained... equivalence.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at January 29, 2007 12:14 PM
Bostom writes: "...the descendants of these Jews [who had converted to Islam] who had escaped the Muslim Almohad depredations would be subjected to the fanatical rage of the Spanish Inquisition..."
Was it only "fanatical rage" on the part of the Spanish Inquisition, or perhaps also to a great extent rational wariness about potential enemies of the state? Remember, the SI didn't occur in a historical vacuum, but after Spain finally liberated itself from 800 years of oppressive Islamic rule of Spain along with centuries of incessant battles against that evil and illegal occupation as it relentlessly tried to expand into the heart of Europe.
at January 29, 2007 12:48 PM
I suppose there are no records of and about the Pafans?
All this is exactly why I'm out of religiousity -one is as fanatical as the other.
The Inquisition is still alive and well btw.
Posted by: allat at January 29, 2007 10:23 AM
You are guilty of the same dissembling or tu quoque practiced by muslims and islamic apologists--you fail to acknowledge that Christian atrocities are ancient history. Christianity underwent a reformation and ended its brutal practices centuries ago; islam has not changed, cannot change, and will never change.
Another very important distinction between Christian and islamic atrocities is the fact that the Bible does not sanction or dictate such behavior; the qur'an does. Nobody will deny that rampant Christian fanaticism existed, particularly during the Middle Ages. Do today's Christians pose a threat to anyone? I think not.
It is quite ignorant to characterize all religions as brutal, morally equivalent, oppressors of humanity. No other religion in existence resembles islam, and no other religion in history has committed mass genocide, forced conversion, barbaric brutality, and a host of additional atrocities on the same scale as islam. To assert otherwise only helps islam. There is no equivalency between Christianity and islam; islam is a satanic death cult.
Posted by: Susanp at January 29, 2007 2:50 PM
people
please to copy and paste this next time some cretin tells you "the christians and jews lived fair under muslim rule"
Posted by: StillFedUp at January 29, 2007 3:59 PM
This is typical of the anti-American / anti-Christian position held by UK professors and journalists.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2007/01/bunting_on_science_and_history.html
This is AC Grayling's citation within the comments on what it's like to live within the Christian-held territories of the United States.
http://www.harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDarkly-12838838.html
You'd almost think academics had some sort of axe to grind against modern Christians. I know, crazy as that may sound.
Posted by: Beagle
at January 29, 2007 4:28 PM
Dinesh keeps harping on the fact that liberal morals have a lot to do with the spread of radical islam as opposed to the more traditional peaceful islam. Well if the libs were busy corrupting the traditional muslims what have the cons been doing? cons and repubs with their lib friends have supported one traditional corrupt islamofascist dictator after another. Cons were even bigger supporters of pakistan than the libs. It was repub, Nixon who supported the pakis as they killed millions of hindus and muslim bangladeshis. Where were the cons when carter was busy promoting the ayatollaha as the new ruler of Iran? Where were the cons when indonesia was busy massacring the christians in their country?
It's wrong for dhimmi Dinesh to put the blame on just the libs, there IS plenty of blame to go around.
at January 29, 2007 5:11 PM
Among the "liberals" whom Dinesh D'Souza deplores, are many of the most important protectors and defenders of the West, those who admire its liberties, and choose to exercise their freedoms rathern than merely be comfortably aware that they exist. These include: Oriana Fallaci, Pym Fortuyn (murdered by an instrument of Islam), Theo van Gogh (murdered by a Muslim), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who has sought safety in the United States), Ibn Warraq (ditto), Ali Sina (ditto), Anwar Shaikh (in Wales), Bat Ye'or, Bruce Bawer, Alain Finkielkraut, Alain Besancon, Jean-Paul Charnay, Alexandre del Valle, Jean Peroncel-Hugoz, Anne-Marie Delcambre, and many others.
Every single one of those listed is an atheist, and hence part of the group that Dinesh D'Souza deplores. Every single one is, in political terms, an old-fashioned liberal. Every single one has done far more to explain Islam, to stand upo to Islam, to analyze Islam, to disseminate information about Islam that is useful to Infidels, than Dinesh D'Souza with all his religiosity and "family values."
At least one moral should be drawn from this: Dinesh D'Souza is All Hat, and No Cattle.
Posted by: Hugh at January 29, 2007 5:23 PM
To anyone who's curious, 'Majumdar' cited above refers to Dr Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, who compiled (to my knowledge) the most comprehensive account of Indian history, starting with the Vedic age, and ending with independence in 1947. The source that I always go to for any details. The series of these books is called 'The history and culture of the Indian people'.
Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 29, 2007 8:10 PM
One reason for the apologetic and supposedly benign view of Islam in India that people like Dinesh D'Souza peddle, has more to do with tying it into the Christian (benign rule and positive affect on India) narrative. Most Goanese (given his surname he is probably Goanese) were converted by force from Hinduism to Catholicism but rarely acknowledge it (same as the Muslims in India). For more on the Goanese experience
"Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel"
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14inter1.htm
"
... many Indian Hindus were tortured and burnt at
the stake for continuing to practice their religion.
Muslim Indians were generally murdered right away or made to flee Goan territory
"
at January 29, 2007 10:43 PM
Unknown Indian
That doesn't explain why D'Souza chose to give the Ottoman empire a pass vis a vis the Spanish reconquistas. As a Catholic, he should defend the inquisitions, right? So why isn't he? And why doesn't he note with pride the alliance Alfonso de Albuquerque had with the Vijayanagar ruler against sultanates like Bijapur?
Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 29, 2007 11:13 PM
Unknown Indian:
Muslims were the most brutal invaders to India. The Goa inquisition wasn't the most merciless and cruel invasion that hit India.
The American historian Will Durant summed it up like this: "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within."
http://voi.org/books/negaind/ch2.htm
Posted by: Johnathan at January 30, 2007 4:35 AM
Unknown Indian:
Albuquerque had not come to India looking for conquests. He was invited to conquer Goa. He had under his command 23 ships which were armed by 1200 fighting men, which was really not enough to launch a military operation on land. His squadron was lying in wait for its natural prey which were the Mecca-bound ships of the Sultans which always made rich prizes, when a man called Timoja, (or Thimmaya), who is described as a commander of Vijayanagar's navy, approached him and told him that "if the Portuguese fleet were to enter the Mandovi, Goa would not be able to withstand an attack".
He did not hesitate. The squadron sailed up the Mandovi in tight formation. Everything went off just as Timoja had predicted. On 3rd March 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque, Captain-General of the Indian Ocean, had become the master of a fine port and a flourishing town from which the commander of the Adilshahs and his principal subordinates had already fled, leaving their women and children behind.
It is given to few to become witnesses to such a truly historic spectacle, this spearhead of the western world's invasion of the eastern. At this moment, an Era began. Albuquerque the man had met his hour. He entered the city with fanfare, to be welcomed by many of its citizens. "The palms of Goa offer their leaves to bind Albuquerque's victorious forehead. Like a lion or a bull, he charges the Moors and puts them to flight", gushed one of Portugal's greatest poets, Luis de Camões, in his epic, Os Lusiadas.
But it was not to last. Barely two months later, when Albuquerque heard that several columns of the Adilshah's forces were converging upon Goa, he prudently vacated the city and went back to live on his ships, taking his troops and whatever provisions and arms he could collect and also as many "of the more beautiful women" as he could accommodate. Throughout the ensuing monsoon, his ships were anchored in the Mandovi, just out of range of the artillery of the Muslims which kept firing at them from a nearby hill.
At the end of October, when he had already broken off from the action and escaped to the open sea, he was joined by fresh ships which had arrived from Portugal and could now muster 2000 men. He turned in his tracks and came charging in again.
This time the palms of Goa did not quite offer themselves to him. There was a bitterly fought action in which many of his soldiers died. He won the battle nevertheless, and after allowing his men to plunder the city at will, ordered "a general massacre of its Muslim citizens-men, women and children". But it would seem that at least some of the women were spared. The number of people put to the sword is said to have been six thousand, and that the process took four days.
This time the Portuguese had come to stay. That victory of Albuquerque is commemorated by the building of at least two churches. One, dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, is on the sloping ground between the river and the great square of Velha Goa, built on a spot from where, as a plaque states, "On 25th November, 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque watched the battle which led to the conquest of Goa", and on which, no doubt,he had knelt down and thanked God aloud, when victory had been won. It is a particularly fine structure of dressed laterite which has weathered beautifully and acquired a rich patina, like fine-grained rosewood, and it has its own special importance because it contains the grave of the very first Portuguese woman ever to have come to India. She was Dona Catarina a Piro, wife of Garcia de Sa, who was Goa's tenth Viceroy. The first nine did not bring their wives with them, but were happy to live with their Goan mistresses, and in the process qualifying themselves for extra holiness too, since these women were, by the special dispensation of the times, automatically gathered into the Christian fold.
Posted by: Johnathan at January 30, 2007 4:50 AM
Paolo,
"As for the trash about the expulsion of Jews, those who tell the pretty fable about tolerant Ottomans who, in between flaying enemies alive and impaling their own brothers, welcomed the poor Spanish Jews with open arms, neglect to tell that some of those expelled went straight to... Rome, the Pope's royal capital and centre of Christendom. There they established no less than three scholae or synagogues, the Aragonese, Castilian and Catalan, which lasted for centuries until they were merged in the great Synagogue of central Rome in existence today. Some Popes were less tolerant than others, but it must be borne in mind that the Roman Jewish community is the most ancient in the world, and that not only did it manage to survive under Papal rule for thirteen centuries and welcome persecuted Jews from abroad, but that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it literally colonized central and northern Italy with its own members. That hardly argues in favour of the Catholic-ogre narrative, but then, nobody wants to hear that the Popes treated Jews better than the Turks. Even if it happens to be true."
And do not forget that the small country by the sea, Holland, took in many of the Jews from Spain as well and when the Dutch began to explore and colonize the new world, including what is now NYC, the decendents of these Jews also made the trip to the new world.
at January 30, 2007 7:17 AM
Johnathan,
I wasn't comparing the Christian vs Muslim brutality on the Hindu population of Goa, as far as I'm
concerned their actions were/are a direct result of "You are with us or against us" mentality, which unfortunately both religions suffer from. In my eyes they are the two sides of the same coin (cliched but true). I'm aware of Muslim persecution (genocide is probably the correct word) of Hindus. My point was that people like Dinesh can't bring themselves to criticize Muslim rule in India because it would then lead them to question the misdeeds done by Christians for exactly the same reasons ie. conversion through force, that's all.
Your purpose for the long post regarding the arrival of Portugese in Goa escapes me.
Posted by: An unknown Indian at January 30, 2007 9:47 PM
Infidel Pride,
:That doesn't explain why D'Souza chose to give the Ottoman empire a pass vis a vis the Spanish reconquistas.
It doesn't.
:As a Catholic, he should defend the inquisitions, right? So why isn't he?
It's in the same basket as caste for Hindus, I haven't met any Hindus defending caste either.
:And why doesn't he note with pride the alliance Alfonso de Albuquerque had with the Vijayanagar ruler against sultanates like Bijapur?
Where does he mention this alliance ? He has made
(false) broad statements about the treatment of Hindus in India by the Muslim invaders. Besides this alliances seems to be dictated more by "enemy's enemy is a friend".
at January 30, 2007 10:01 PM
My point was that people like Dinesh can't bring themselves to criticize Muslim rule in India because it would then lead them to question the misdeeds done by Christians for exactly the same reasons ie. conversion through force, that's all. Posted by: An unknown IndianIn other words, you are suggesting that he condones Portugese excesses in Goa. But that doesn't square with his praise of the Ottomans above at the expense of the Spanish reconquistas. Unless you have a theory about how he is protective of his Portugese heritage, but for some curious reason, willing to be anti-Spanish to the extreme. After all, he obliquely condemns the Spanish inquisition, while seemingly (according to you) giving the Portugese inquisition a pass. Doesn't add up.
It's in the same basket as caste for Hindus, I haven't met any Hindus defending caste either.Apples and oranges. The Spanish inquisition was a Catholics vs every-one else penal institution - almost their equivalent of shariah law. The caste system was an intra-Hindu societal division, which though despicable, didn't touch any non-Hindus. Ergo, there is no reason for a Hindu to defend the caste system.
A better comparison would have been if you could mention Hindus who note the fictional tolerance of Muslims towards Hindus, and completely gloss over every tyranical Muslim ruler who ran any place. Like most dhimmi historians who run the history courses in Indian academia.
Where does he mention this alliance ? He has made (false) broad statements about the treatment of Hindus in India by the Muslim invaders.He doesn't, which is my point. You are trying to make the case that he is being defensive about his Portugese ancestors, which isn't borne out by what he could have done had that been his motivation. I am taking his statements at face value, and belive him to be genuine about what he believes, albeit woefully wrong.
Besides this alliances seems to be dictated more by "enemy's enemy is a friend".It absolutely was, and worked more to the benefit of the Vijayanagar empire (which reconquered the Raichur Doab as a result of this alliance).
at January 31, 2007 1:56 AM
An unknown Indian wrote: " I wasn't comparing the Christian vs Muslim brutality on the Hindu population of Goa "
Really? I beg to differ.
When you cite the quote "Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel," you are making a strong statement.
"Most merciless and cruel" is a subjective statement that goes far enough on the scale to make a conclusion about comparative topics, namely conquests/conversions.
Christian and Muslim conquests/conversions are not " two sides of the same coin " as you mistakenly claimed in your post. It is simply not that simplistic.
A more sophisticated examination of history will lead one to believe that there are major differences when examining how Christians and Muslims conquered and converted peoples.
This is a gigantic topic that I simply don't have time to respond to right now.
But there are good historical books that can help you to understand the differences about Muslim and Christian conversions.
But let's not forget how both religious founders
(Jesus and Muhammad) approached the topic of conversion.
In short, Muhammad conquered people on the battle field and forced many of his conquered subjects to accept Islam and sharia. There are plenty of direct quotes from the Quran and other hadiths that encourage violent jihad and subjugation of the infidel.
Jesus never conquered any group of people. Jesus was a man of peace who allowed himself to be conquered and murdered. There are no quotes from Jesus that encourage Christians to use force and subjugate non-Christians.
Posted by: Johnathan at January 31, 2007 2:01 AM
:An unknown Indian wrote: " I wasn't comparing the Christian vs Muslim brutality on the Hindu population of Goa "
:Really? I beg to differ.
Sure.
:When you cite the quote "Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel," you are making a strong statement.
Yes I am and it's true, you should bring that up with the author of the statement not me.
:"Most merciless and cruel" is a subjective statement that goes far enough on the scale to make a conclusion about comparative topics, namely conquests/conversions.
:Christian and Muslim conquests/conversions are not " two sides of the same coin " as you mistakenly claimed in your post. It is simply not that simplistic.
Unfortunately it is that "simple". The crimes committed in the name of Christianity and forcible conversions are too many to recount. The case of
the Incas should suffice.
:A more sophisticated examination of history will lead one to believe that there are major differences when examining how Christians and Muslims conquered and converted peoples.
These differences are more on the lines of the Muntzer and Zwingli dispute, at their core they discriminate against non-believers and in both their recorded histories they have persecuted dissenters and punished with death anyone that has had the temerity to question it's core doctrines. What exactly is a "Sophisticated examination of History", a selective reading that fits your facts perhaps.
:This is a gigantic topic that I simply don't have time to respond to right now.
Perhaps you need a bigger margin in your notebook :-)
:But there are good historical books that can help you to understand the differences about Muslim and Christian conversions.
I'm sure there are and I don't claim to have read them all but I've read my share - thanks.
:But let's not forget how both religious founders
(Jesus and Muhammad) approached the topic of conversion.
:In short, Muhammad conquered people on the battle field and forced many of his conquered subjects to accept Islam and sharia. There are plenty of direct quotes from the Quran and other hadiths that encourage violent jihad and subjugation of the infidel.
Sure. Mohammad ended up creating the framework of Arab imperialism and the means of propagating it using the vehicle of Islam, but what's _your_ point.
:Jesus never conquered any group of people. Jesus was a man of peace who allowed himself to be conquered and murdered. There are no quotes from Jesus that encourage Christians to use force and subjugate non-Christians.
We are not comparing notes about founders here but the "you are with us or against us" mentality that both Islam and Christianity subscribe to. It is this (misguided) ideology that has led both adherents/practitioners of the religions to commit
genocide in the belief that they are doing the right thing by God/Allah or whatever.
at January 31, 2007 2:36 AM
In other words, you are suggesting that he condones Portugese excesses in Goa. But that doesn't square with his praise of the Ottomans above at the expense of the Spanish reconquistas. Unless you have a theory about how he is protective of his Portugese heritage, but for some curious reason, willing to be anti-Spanish to the extreme. After all, he obliquely condemns the Spanish inquisition, while seemingly (according to you) giving the Portugese inquisition a pass. Doesn't add up.
Its not whether he condones it explicitly or not but more to do with a mindset that goes into denial about persecution of Hindus at the hands of Christians and Moslim's. Going by my interaction with "Anglo Indian" and Goanese Catholics, they are loathe to admit their Hindu origins, they've all invented genealogies tracing their ancestors to some European. Similarly the Pakistanis that I've interacted have done the same inventing ancestors from S. Arabia or Central Asia. However
this is a digression.
at January 31, 2007 3:36 AM
Comments are turned off and archived for this entry.
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dhimmi Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)