Tolerance in Islam.

[Ggreen 12]

http://quran-m.com/firas/en1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=434:tolerance-in-islam&catid=54:fakes-about-islam&Itemid=108

One of the commonest charges brought against Islam historically, and as a religion, by Western writers is that it is intolerant.

This is turning the tables with a vengeance when one remembers various facts: One remembers that not a Muslim is left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia. One remembers that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in l821. One remembers how the Muslims of the Balkan peninsula, once the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe, how the Christian under Muslim rule have in recent times been urged on to rebel and massacre the Muslims, and how reprisals by the latter have been condemned as quite uncalled for.

In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifas, Christians and Jews, equally with Muslims, were admitted to the Schools and universities - not only that, but were boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the state. When the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish empire, where their descendants still live in separate communities, and still speak among themselves an antiquated form of Spanish. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled from persecution by the Inquisition.

The Western Christians, till the arrival of the Encyclopaedists in the eighteenth century, did not know and did not care to know, what the Muslim believed, nor did the Western Christian seek to know the views of Eastern Christians with regard to them. The Christian Church was already split in two, and in the end, it came to such a pass that the Eastern Christians, as Gibbon shows, preferred Muslim rule, which allowed them to practice their own form of religion and adhere to their peculiar dogmas, to the rule of fellow Christians who would have made them Roman Catholics or wiped them out.

The Western Christians called the Muslims pagans, paynims, even idolaters - there are plenty of books in which they are described as worshiping an idol called Mahomet or Mahound, and in the accounts of the conquest of Granada there are even descriptions of the monstrous idols which they were alleged to worship - whereas the Muslims knew what Christianity was, and in what respects it differed from Islam. 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. I quote a learned French author:

“Every poet in Christendom considered a Mohammedan to be an infidel, and an idolater, and his gods to be three; mentioned in order, they were: Mahomet or Mahound or Mohammad, Opolane and the third Termogond. It was said that when in Spain the Christians overpowered the Mohammadans and drove them as far as the gates of the city of Saragossa, the Mohammadans went back and broke their idols.

“A Christian poet of the period says that Opolane the “god” of the Mohammadans, which was kept there in a den was awfully belaboured and abused by the Mohammadans, who, binding it hand and foot, crucified it on a pillar, trampled it under their feet and broke it to pieces by beating it with sticks; that their second god Mahound they threw in a pit and caused to be torn to pieces by pigs and dogs, and that never were gods so ignominiously treated; but that afterwards the Mohammadans repented of their sins, and once more reinstated their gods for the accustomed worship, and that when the Emperor Charles entered the city of Saragossa he had every mosque in the city searched and had "Muhammad" and all their Gods broken with iron hammers.”

That was the kind of "history" on which the populace in Western Europe used to be fed. Those were the ideas which inspired the rank and file of the crusader in their attacks on the most civilized peoples of those days. Christendom regarded the outside world as damned eternally, and Islam did not. There were good and tender-hearted men in Christendom who thought it sad that any people should be damned eternally, and wished to save them by the only way they knew - conversion to the Christian faith.

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. Therefore the difference evident in that anecdote is not of manners only but of religion. Of old, tolerance had existed here and there in the world, among enlightened individuals; but those individuals had always been against the prevalent religion. Tolerance was regarded of un-religious, if not irreligious. Before the coming of Islam it had never been preached as an essential part of religion.

For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham... http://quran-m.com/firas/en1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=434:tolerance-in-islam&catid=54:fakes-about-islam&Itemid=108

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://quran-m.com/firas/en1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=434:tolerance-in-islam&catid=54:fakes-about-islam&Itemid=108

One of the commonest charges brought against Islam historically, and as a religion, by Western writers is that it is intolerant.

This is turning the tables with a vengeance when one remembers various facts: One remembers that not a Muslim is left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia. One remembers that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in l821. One remembers how the Muslims of the Balkan peninsula, once the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe, how the Christian under Muslim rule have in recent times been urged on to rebel and massacre the Muslims, and how reprisals by the latter have been condemned as quite uncalled for.

In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifas, Christians and Jews, equally with Muslims, were admitted to the Schools and universities - not only that, but were boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the state. When the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish empire, where their descendants still live in separate communities, and still speak among themselves an antiquated form of Spanish. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled from persecution by the Inquisition.

The Western Christians, till the arrival of the Encyclopaedists in the eighteenth century, did not know and did not care to know, what the Muslim believed, nor did the Western Christian seek to know the views of Eastern Christians with regard to them. The Christian Church was already split in two, and in the end, it came to such a pass that the Eastern Christians, as Gibbon shows, preferred Muslim rule, which allowed them to practice their own form of religion and adhere to their peculiar dogmas, to the rule of fellow Christians who would have made them Roman Catholics or wiped them out.

The Western Christians called the Muslims pagans, paynims, even idolaters - there are plenty of books in which they are described as worshiping an idol called Mahomet or Mahound, and in the accounts of the conquest of Granada there are even descriptions of the monstrous idols which they were alleged to worship - whereas the Muslims knew what Christianity was, and in what respects it differed from Islam. 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. I quote a learned French author:

“Every poet in Christendom considered a Mohammedan to be an infidel, and an idolater, and his gods to be three; mentioned in order, they were: Mahomet or Mahound or Mohammad, Opolane and the third Termogond. It was said that when in Spain the Christians overpowered the Mohammadans and drove them as far as the gates of the city of Saragossa, the Mohammadans went back and broke their idols.

“A Christian poet of the period says that Opolane the “god” of the Mohammadans, which was kept there in a den was awfully belaboured and abused by the Mohammadans, who, binding it hand and foot, crucified it on a pillar, trampled it under their feet and broke it to pieces by beating it with sticks; that their second god Mahound they threw in a pit and caused to be torn to pieces by pigs and dogs, and that never were gods so ignominiously treated; but that afterwards the Mohammadans repented of their sins, and once more reinstated their gods for the accustomed worship, and that when the Emperor Charles entered the city of Saragossa he had every mosque in the city searched and had "Muhammad" and all their Gods broken with iron hammers.”

That was the kind of "history" on which the populace in Western Europe used to be fed. Those were the ideas which inspired the rank and file of the crusader in their attacks on the most civilized peoples of those days. Christendom regarded the outside world as damned eternally, and Islam did not. There were good and tender-hearted men in Christendom who thought it sad that any people should be damned eternally, and wished to save them by the only way they knew - conversion to the Christian faith.

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. Therefore the difference evident in that anecdote is not of manners only but of religion. Of old, tolerance had existed here and there in the world, among enlightened individuals; but those individuals had always been against the prevalent religion. Tolerance was regarded of un-religious, if not irreligious. Before the coming of Islam it had never been preached as an essential part of religion.

For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham... http://quran-m.com/firas/en1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=434:tolerance-in-islam&catid=54:fakes-about-islam&Itemid=108

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests

Muslim conquests

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania

Umayyad conquest of Hispania

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

Ottoman Empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_wars_in_Europe

Ottoman wars in Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

Fall of Constantinople

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire

"Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slave raids were perpetrated mostly by Arabs and Berbers rather than Ottoman Turks, but during much of the height of the Barbary slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries the Barbary states were subject to Ottoman jurisdiction and ruled by Ottoman pashas; furthermore, many slaves captured by the Barbary corsairs were sold eastward into Ottoman territories before, during, and after Barbary's period of Ottoman rule.

The concubines of the Ottoman Sultan consisted chiefly of purchased slaves. Because Islamic law forbade Muslims to enslave fellow Muslims, the Sultan's concubines were generally of Christian origin. The mother of a Sultan, though technically a slave, received the extremely powerful title of Valide Sultan, and at times became effective ruler of the Empire (see Sultanate of women). One notable example was Kösem Sultan, daughter of a Greek Christian priest, who dominated the Ottoman Empire during the early decades of the 17th century. Another notable example was Roxelana, the favourite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent.

The concubines were guarded by enslaved eunuchs, often of African origin. The eunuchs presented another problem, because Islamic law forbade the emasculation of a man. Ethiopian Christians, however, had no such compunctions; and thus they enslaved and emasculated members of neighboring nations, and sold the resulting eunuchs to the Ottoman Porte.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_Slavery

Islam and slavery

Historically, the major juristic schools of Islam traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. The Islamic prophet Muhammad and many of his companions bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves.

In Islamic law the topic of slavery is covered at great length. The Qur'an (the holy book) and the hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) see slavery as an exceptional condition that can be entered into under certain limited circumstances. Only children of slaves or non-Muslim prisoners of war could become slaves, never a freeborn Muslim. They also consider manumission of a slave to be one of many meritorious deeds available for the expiation of sins. According to Sharia, slaves are considered human beings and possessed of some rights on the basis of their humanity. In addition, a Muslim slave is equal to a Muslim freeman in religious issues and superior to the free non-Muslim.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

If we're going back to that point in history where do we stand on the Christian imperial powers of Europe who killed and enslaved not hundreds of thousands but millions of people during a 300 year land grab?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Scratch that - 400 years if we're looking at the point from the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the British rule of China and India.

[SMR 368]

Scratch that - 400 years if we're looking at the point from the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the British rule of China and India.

I believe you have hit the nail on the head. The OP is talking about crusades and Saragossa. 1000 years ago or 400 years ago there was significant oppression from various groups. The important question is today and now.

The OP makes a reasonably valid point about the oppression of Muslims in the Balkans. But other than that he's talking about the distant past. It's reasonable to respond in kind.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Scratch that - 400 years if we're looking at the point from the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the British rule of China and India.

Ahem, mainland-China was never actually under British rule.

I believe you have hit the nail on the head. The OP is talking about crusades and Saragossa. 1000 years ago or 400 years ago there was significant oppression from various groups. The important question is today and now.

The OP makes a reasonably valid point about the oppression of Muslims in the Balkans. But other than that he's talking about the distant past. It's reasonable to respond in kind.

No, #6 wasn't on the nail--since China was never actually under British rule (though it did extend favourable trade terms to British under duress after Opium War). Edited September 16, 2010 by Saddle Bronc

[ready4ONE 5,400]

The OP is nothing more than a more thorough fleshing out of 'the Christians did it too! (don't care how far back)' pat response to observations about Islam today.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

http://www.crusadewatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=355&Itemid=36

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10576100701611288

http://tinyurl.com/2b9w39s

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clay-naff/bible-vs-quran-the-evolut_b_511080.html

[mawilson 2,133]

If we're going back to that point in history...

We're not. Christianity has evolved past it's barbaric past, while Islam is still stuck in the dark ages.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Islam is stuck in the dark ages because of the ideology of the religion or because the civilisations out of which Islam arose from and which represent it in the middle east haven't been able to develop because of political struggles?

[mawilson 2,133]

Islam is stuck in the dark ages because of the ideology of the religion or because the civilisations out of which Islam arose from and which represent it in the middle east haven't been able to develop because of political struggles?

Probably the latter, but the fact remains - Islam is stuck in the dark ages, which affects

Muslim countries even in parts of the world (e.g. Indonesia) that are geopolitically free

from conflicts over land, borders and resources, in the way that the Middle East is.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Probably the latter, but the fact remains - Islam is stuck in the dark ages, which affects

Muslim countries even in parts of the world (e.g. Indonesia) that are geopolitically free

from conflicts over land, borders and resources, in the way that the Middle East is.

Islam also affects Western country's when they go nuts and whack movie directors, cartoonist, authors, etc... not to mention they refuse to conform to said country's laws and customs. It's one thing when they bring their own country's down and keep them in the Dark Ages, but it's yet another when they do it do the host country's that have taken them in.

[evli1966 88]

Islam is stuck in the dark ages because of the ideology of the religion or because the civilisations out of which Islam arose from and which represent it in the middle east haven't been able to develop because of political struggles?

I like this post +1.

Probably the latter, but the fact remains - Islam is stuck in the dark ages, which affects

Muslim countries even in parts of the world (e.g. Indonesia) that are geopolitically free

from conflicts over land, borders and resources, in the way that the Middle East is.

I would agree.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Islam isn't stuck in the Dark Ages.

[Heracles 417]

Scratch that - 400 years if we're looking at the point from the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the British rule of China and India.

The British did not conquer countries like Australia, India or the US in order to force Christianity.