Stop just saying “geopolitics”. Be specific.
I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. You said, “Had the attempted conquerors been of some other religion, there’s no reason to believe that they would have been more or less likely to succeed (and to succeed in such a bloody manner) than they were as Muslims” [emphasis mine] Any objective examination of the conquest reveals this to be false - as does the comparison with how Muslims themselves treated the dhimmis to the West.
Not quite. They’re not interchangeable – there are definitely differences. But these differences in tenets, texts, and the like, are not better or worse on either side (other than the extremist varieties of various religions) – they’re just different.
The outcomes would probably be different. My point is that they wouldn’t necessarily be better or worse, or more or less violent. Especially if we’re talking about switching the 15th century (or whatever) version of the religions.
Whether this is true or not, it doesn’t mean that the brutality was caused by their faith. And if it was, it’s only an indictment of the specific form of Islam they practiced.
The Sunni-Shia split, the conflict between various Arab tribes, between Arabs and Persians, between Turks and Arabs (and Persians), the fight over various resources.
Again, this isn’t necessarily an indictment of the conquerors religion – and if it is, it’s only an indictment of the specific variety they practiced. And when we’re talking about the brutality of conquering powers, Christian colonizers (like the Belgians in the Congo) aren’t topped by anyone in my made-up measurement of cruelty-and-brutality-per-year.
So. Yougot nothin’.
You’re almost there…
:smack: D’oh! And here’s where I think you blow it. If you can’t recognize the cognitive dissonance here, then I’m afraid we’re at an impasse.
And my point is that, we don’t need to resort to hypotheticals here, because history. If you’re alluding to the Iberian conquest of the New World, again, you are simply wrong if you examine the historical record. Rapacious scumbags though they were, Cortez and his ilk eventually, through the institutions of the Crown and the Church, were tamed. There is no analogue in South Asia.
I won’t bother to recite the myriad of religious pronouncements that explicitly referred to the Islamic faith as primary justification for conquest and slaughter in India, but you really ought to brush up on your history.
Okay, that’s a bunch of interesting nouns. And…?
Leopold II of Belgium was an awful man, who deserves scorn and calumny. A true sack of shit, in a moral sense.
However, you’re comapring apples to oranges here. Find me a parallel in the historical record for the Muslium conquest of India. Colonization is one thing (that weasely shitbag Leopold certainly didn’t earn control of the Congo via traditional means); religiously motivated conquest is entirely another.
What a shame. I’d certainly love to figure out if I’ve gone wrong some where.
Tamed? How? In the New World, at least, the continuation of the slave trade, the continuing exploitation and murder of native peoples, etc., well into the 19th century, doesn’t sound like “tamed” to me.
How does this distinguish it from Christianity? Are you just saying the body count is higher? Considering how brutal various Christian colonizers were at various times, you haven’t convinced me yet that Islam is inherently and necessarily worse.
And I hold that it’s these circumstances, among others, rather than some unique tenets of Islam that separate it from Christianity and other religions, that are responsible for the prevalence of theocracies and convoluted church/state relationships in that part of the world.
The Crusades, Spanish conquest in the Americas, etc. And religion was certainly used as part of the justification for various other colonial actions, including in Africa.
Further, from what I understand of the various conquests of India, “religiously motivated conquest” doesn’t come close to portraying the complexities and details of the various conflicts.
I’m trying here…
:dubious: You’re going to bring up the African slave trade in a cultural comparison with traditional Islamic societies? Really?
Also, there were people like de las Casas who were contemporaneously, within the existing framework of the Church, expressing dissent at the treatment of the natives at the hand of the conquistadores. Do you have a parallel example from the Muslim conquest of India?
I’m not trying to convince you of anything - I’m just asking you to open your eyes.
Sure. We’ve already turned the brutality/cruelty meter up to 11. It doesn’t really get any higher. They did some bad stuff, probably as bad as the slave trade (including their own slave trades) and various genocides. It doesn’t really get any worse than that.
I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter, since we agree that the specific variety of Islam that those conquerors practiced was probably pretty vile – just like the religious practices of the conquistadores.
To what? That these conquerors were bad folks? They certainly were.
This is nonsense.
As already noted, in regard to counterexamples, there is de las Casas, and others. Christian busybody do-gooders actually did make the world a nicer place than it might have been, as stupid in their reasoning as they might have been.
As ignorant as I am, this statement still takes me aback.
Bad people. I agree, those guys suck.
If you’re saying the Christians in past centuries were a positive force in places like the Americas and Africa, then I’m going to have to strongly disagree with you, even though there were some decent folks in there fighting against the massive amounts of injustice.
How? Are you saying the Muslim conquest of India was not complicated?
We’re not “transgenders”, we’re transgender persons.
Just because Khomeini issued his fatwa doesn’t mean transgender persons are not discriminated against in the workplace and society on a daily basis. Or the victims of brutal transphobic attacks, and reporting these to the police typically results in no action whatsoever. I’ve talked to MANY transgender refugees from Iran. You might also want to read this article, which gives a somewhat happier spin on it which still isn’t as rose-colored glasses as you put on it.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/transition-iran
Seriously, I’ve seen you post about my people in Iran a few times before. What’s your actual experience with the transgender community in Iran? I’m willing to be proven wrong, but your understanding is not what my research has shown.
Just numbers here. I have my copy of Matt White’s book handy.
Mideast Slave Trade: death toll of 18.5 million
Atlantic Slave Trade: death toll of 16 million
This really doesn’t flatter Islamic societies.
Sure - Mahmud of Ghazni and Cristoforo Colombo were both despicable bastards.
But - and again you are glossing over the point - within the Christian societies of the time, there were actors who with varying degrees of success curbed the worst excesses of conquest. This did not happen over the course of centuries in India - there was no effective opposition from within Islamic ranks to deter Aurangzeb from acting as wretchedly as Mahmud, centuries earlier. And do not take Aurangzeb for an opportunist cloaking himself in Islam. From all accounts he was a particularly devout man who led an ascetic lifestyle.
That the degree of acceptance within their respective societies for acts of plunder and destruction committed in the name of the dominant religion was not equivalent between Christian and Islamic societies.
I’m not interested in flattering Islamic societies. I think most human societies have been, until recently, pretty awful and unjust, and religion (all religions!) bear a big part of this blame. Only recently have we had a few decent and close-to-just human societies on earth, and even these have lots and lots of problems.
I’m certainly much less knowledgeable about the details of Muslim society in India as I am about various Christian-led societies in the west. I’ll note that, at various points and places in history, there was also no “effective opposition” in many of these Christian societies (which were, after all, pretty diverse in policies and practices). I would find it hard to believe, though, that there were zero Indian Muslims who were not decent people, and didn’t at least take some actions to try and curb some of the most awful stuff that went on. I don’t buy that there’s any human society in which all of the people were bad.
At various times in history I think it absolutely was equivalent.
I’m with Maher too, but I think had the discussion been some kind of side by side comparision about Christianity vs. Islam, Maher and Harris would have bashed Christianity almost as much.
Personally, I don’t see Islam as any worse than old testament Christianity. But even with a kinder, gentler, Jesusier version of Christianity, it remained a brutal institution until civil society rebelled against it.
And I think that’s their argument. Islam is going to have to change it’s dogma and doctrine from within, and the West has to figure out how to encourage it. And the West pretending that the religion has nothing to do with the problem is to almost guarantee failure in whatever attempts it makes.
They don’t just suck - they explicitly state from where their motivations arise. You think Aurangzeb was frontin’?
I haven’t even mentioned Timur. He slaughtered millions in India in the name of Islam, but I don’t take him seriously because he did the same thing in Muslim Central Asia, Iran, and Iraq. Now that’s someone you can point to who attempted to use religion as a cloak for their misdeeds.
Yes, I am saying that. After all, there were some conscientious people like de las Casas. You have repeatedly asserted that various branches of Islam are not representative of the faith as a whole. Why do you focus on the soldier and not the priest when discussing Christianity in the New World? This appears disingenous to me.
Back on Page 7 I said:
" I also recognize that the conquest was extremely complex and at various times political concerns waxed and waned relative to religious ones."
No, I just don’t think that’s particularly unique, surprising, or special.
So we disagree here. I think they both suck. Most of the Christian priests in the New World during the periods of colonization sucked as well. I don’t think highly of most Christian colonizers, whether priests or soldiers, even though there were a few decent folks sprinkled among both categories.
So what was the problem with what I said? It was extremely complicated, and not just religiously motivated conquest.
That’s not the point. You were the one who brought up the slave trade in an attempt to mitigate historic Islamic excesses. My stats (feel free to bring your own) show that there is no moral high ground from which defenders of Islam can legitimately declaim their superiority.
:smack:
Oh, for fuck’s sake, I already said:
“I have no stomach for absolutists of any stripe, those who say “All X is _____” or “All X is not ______”. Of course, immediate contingencies have governed the vast majority of human actions through the ages.”
This is simply not true. Please read some more.
Well that’s a relief, because I’ve never tried to claim any moral high ground. A pox on all their houses. I certainly wasn’t trying to mitigate anything – rather, to demonstrate that Christian governments and forces have been responsible for atrocities that were as bad as anything ever done to anyone (which your stats support).
Okay, so there’s no disagreement here. Apologies if I misunderstood you.
I will continuing reading until I’m dead. But based on what I’ve read so far, there were definitely times and places in which there was no significant internal opposition to certain atrocities committed by Christian forces.