I watched an documentary by a historian on the history of Islam, Judaism and Catholicism. Please keep in mind as I continue my post that the Catholic church’s beliefs and practices are actually much different than others that are unfortunately lumped under the convenient term of “Christianity”…so my distinction here and why I will not use the term “Christian” as broadly as some unfortunately do. I am specifically referring to the Catholic church in my post.
What I learned from this documentary was that the Muslim population learned about holy war (jihad) from the Catholic church’s crusades. Before then, it was not a part of their practices. They were attacked under the Catholic church’s greedy need to conquer at all costs and gain wealth & more power, which as with any military type campaign that has this goal, means to slaughter all and do all the evil that goes with it. Anything goes to reach that ultimate goal. If it is done under a powerful entity (religious or not), there is even more zeal, as those fighting under that name want status, riches and fame as well. These reasons are not biblical ones by any means…to conquer for fame, riches and egotistic power. These are unarguably historically Catholic reasons, though.
Anyway, my point is, based on this historian’s findings, that Catholics fought their holy wars first against the Muslims (Crusades) and the Muslims fought back using the same idea of holy war.
Hmmm. Narble, I think that you missed something. First, I am NOT an expert on the crusades. However, the stated purpose was to RECLAIM lands that had been attacked and taken by Muslims. If the Muslims were all-peaceful, there would hardly be a reason to retake lands that were never conquered by the sword in the first place.
I am not saying that Wikipedia is exactly the ultimate reference source and completely infallible, but it is a good starting place… Violent conquest has been part of Islam from the beginning, whether you use the “Jihad” term or not.
Now, for a different context to this, we need to ask a different question: how well does Islam play with others? The answer is generally not good. How tolerant are they of other opinions? Not at all. Period.
Islam is SO tolerant that you can be KILLED for blasphemy or changing religions…
“A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that, as of 2014, about a quarter of the world’s countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and that more than one-in-ten (13%) nations had laws or policies penalizing apostasy. The legal punishments for such transgressions vary from fines to death.”
Guess which countries these are? You will never guess…
Next, let’s look at the Asa Bibi case. This is about Pakistan, not exactly a hot bed of violent activity, but generally considered a “mainstream” Muslim country.
Asia Noreen Bibi is a Christian in Pakistan. She is currently waiting EXECUTION for blasphemy against Mohammed.
Yup, she was tried and convicted without any hard evidence, just the word of Muslim women who were mad that she would dare drink from the same well as them.
“The general population was less sympathetic towards Noreen. Several signs were erected in Sheikhupura and other rural areas declaring support for the blasphemy laws, including one that called for Noreen to be beheaded.[27] Mohammad Saleem, a member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan Party, organized a demonstration in Rawalpindi and led a small crowd chanting, “Hang her, hang her.”[12] In December 2010, a month after Noreen’s conviction, a Muslim cleric announced a 500,000 Pakistani rupee award (the equivalent of $10,000)[7] to anyone who would kill her.[3][41] One survey reported that around 10 million Pakistanis had said that they would be willing to personally kill her out of either religious conviction or for the reward.[7] The village mosque in Ittan Wali was reportedly indifferent towards Noreen’s plight; its imam, Qari Mohammed Salim, stated that he had wept for joy on learning that she had been sentenced to death and threatened that some people would “take the law into their own hands” should she be pardoned or released.”
So, yeah, all they want is peace, and the execution of anybody who would dare be accused of blasphemy.
Where is this peace and tolerance that they are supposed to practice? The GENERAL POPULATION is OK with this, as it is a part of both their culture and legal system.
So, a poll showed that 5% of the general population of Pakistan (10 million people) would be willing to kill an accused blasphemer with their OWN HANDS. What could possibly go wrong bringing them into a country with free speech?
That’s been hashed out many times on this board, Harrkev. There are fundamentalist Christians who believe that their God wants them to kill others with different values and beliefs. Would you consider the Westboro Baptist Church representative of all Christians? There are radical extremists in every faith, and in groups without a religious figurehead.
I was going to bring up The Klan, they do consider themselves to be Christians … I can’t blame whatever denomination spawned such a hateful group nor the entire Protestant movement …
Just repeating what I’ve heard … our problems are with the Jihadists, which is just a tiny minority of Wahhabists, which in turn is a minority of Sunnis …
I think it’s wrong to blame all of Christiandom for the acts of The Klan … thus I think it’s wrong to blame all of Islam by the acts of Jihadists …
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world … I understand it’s not the Garden of Eden there but she’s hardly a terrorist hot-spot …
Funny…
Of course the well-known nature of the peaceful (oh no, actually not peaceful) forced conversions to the Christianity in the early Europe are so well known…
Or the bloody suppression of anything the Christian church hieararchies decided was heritical - the real reason for the success of the Islamic take over of the Levant and the Egypt from the eastern Roman, not any great war genuis, only the promises to the local ‘heretical’ christians and the jews to leave them alone. The focus on the tax payments and the contract law.
Centuries before the Crusades, Muslim warriors emerged from Arabia to conquer neighboring lands, ranging as far west as Spain, losing only to Charles Martel (otherwise the history of France would have been quite different) and ranging far east as well. While many motivations explain why this conquest occurred, religion was one of the reasons behind it.
Of course, the very fast Muslim expansion stopped. Perhaps the enthusiasm for religious conquest waned after a while? Or did it have something to do with political splintering?
But I don’t see this as startlingly different from the history of Christianity. Perhaps because Christianity effectively “took over” a strong nation (Rome) that had already conquered so much territory and so many people that a sweeping conquest beyond Rome’s borders would have been difficult early in Christianity’s history. Certainly missionaries were extremely effective at converting areas the Romans had never conquered, such as Ireland, Scandinavia, and Ukraine, despite often having no military power whatsoever, then destroying local religions and imposing tithes on the people.
For accuracy it is to note that this MArtel story is romantic fiction.
The brief holding of the mediterranean France showed well it was beyond the long term range of the old Ummayads.
You can read about the Conversion crusades of conquest in the Europe itself.
“no military power” is a fiction as presenting no conquests by sword and by fire of the lands beyond the old roman sphere - the conversion of many portions of the north and the eastern europe was military as the poor old prussian pagans could attest to you.
The past was harsh and barbaric. Christianity has largely gotten past that step. Islam, in many places, has not. What kind of weak-ass gotcha is that, anyways? “Sure, my religion is responsible for numerous atrocities every week the world over, but look at what this other religion did 500 years ago!” Every single person condemning modern Islam will gladly condemn the actions of Christianity in the past. In fact, many of them will gladly condemn the actions of Christianity today insofar as Christianity is responsible for awful things (like the abusive cultishness of the Quiverfull movement, the dominionists, the anti-gay movement, etc).
This is the kind of pointless straw man that stops this kind of conversation getting anywhere. Nobody, nobody, would disagree that there is a militant minority of Muslims who believe in some kind of radical islam, because we all see the same terrorist incidents, we all know about ISIS.
What we’re discussing here is about generalizing about all Muslims on the basis of some minority.
The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, but yes, right now, the religion has a higher proportion of violent extremists than any other religion, both these statements can be true at the same time.
But we’re talking about whether the religion itself is fundamentally bad or good.
Christianity is a good example here: the Bible contains various God-endorsed genocides, and people once took it quite literally. But societies and theologies moved on, and although the book hasn’t changed, we focus on the peaceful parts now, and try to derive some metaphor from the other bits.
Islam has kind of gone the other way, being quite enlightened compared to Europe during Islam’s golden age, now not only do many take the book literally, but a minority derive an evil message from it.
But it’s not really the book; you could find inspiration for the same acts from the bible, and in many parts of the world people still believe the bible tells them to murder gays, for example.
Charles Martel was a real guy who really did stop the real advance of the real Ummayad army at Tours, a real city, on the 10th of October, 732 (really) and then proceeded to sack the Ummayad-held cities of Agde, Beziers, Villenueva, and Nimes. Charles didn’t hold Nimes (the former Narbonensis), but Pepin the Short (another real guy, and the real son of Charles Martel(also a real guy)) took it from the Ummayads in 752.
Following the Battle of Tours (real event) the Ummayad caliphate stopped its advance (yes, really). After that, the Caliphate was beset by a large revolt in 739 (the Berber revolt) that eventually led to Morrocan independence.
While that was happening, in the East, the Caliphate was attempting to expand into the Caucassus region, all the way to Samarkand (a real place, I’ve always wanted to go there), and eventually fell apart due to internal infighting.
There’s no question that the Ummayad Caliphate was ultimately destroyed by internal revolts but it’s ridiculous to dismiss the Battle of Tours or its historical impact as a “fairy tale”.
I think he meant that the Islamic advances into France were not territorial ambitions. I’ve read that they were mainly looting and pillaging trips, and that at least part of the reason why the Moors were defeated is that individual soldiers wanted to retreat with the booty they had already secured. That’s mentioned on Wikipedia, but there’s no cite. It may be another of those romantic myths about the battle though.