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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:01 am Post subject: Christianity has a worse history of violence |
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I'm always very interested in this guy's take on things. He always seems to me to be one of the few rational voices in times of hysteria. Here's what Uri Avnery has to say on the latest hooha sparked by the Rat Singer.
For the full article, click here: http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html
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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.
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Ratsinger seems to have forgotten that on the way to the Crusades, Christians would massacre thousands of Jews on their way. Indeed Christians who had no appetite for the journey to the holy lands would just find a few (dozen/hundred) local jews to massacre instead. When the Christians took Jerusalem, the streets ran red with the blood of Jews and Muslims. However, when the muslims retook Jerusalum, they showed great mercy to the Christians. I can't believe the silly bugger pulled out some silly quote from the 14th century to make his point. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:04 am Post subject: |
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That's your chosen defense of Islam? That right now, Islam is acting less extreme than Christians at other moments in history?
I can think of much more worthy efforts to defend Islam. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
That's your chosen defense of Islam? That right now, Islam is acting less extreme than Christians at other moments in history?
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Are you doolally? At what point do I say that Islam is acting less extreme than Christians NOW? I'm pointing out that if the Rat Singer wants to make a point about how the world is today, he shouldn't be delving into dubious quotes from the 14th century when Christians were behaving a thousand times more brutally than muslims.
Secondly, if you count the US as a christian country, then I'd have to say yes, Christians are acting very brutally and 'extremely.' Bombing the crap out of third world countries (either directly or by proxy - see the recent war in Lebanon) is not a good advertisement for Christianity. Neither are torture camps, phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs or missiles tipped with depleted uranium. |
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Boodleheimer
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Location: working undercover for the Man
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:17 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| I'm pointing out that if the Rat Singer wants to make a point about how the world is today, he shouldn't be delving into dubious quotes from the 14th century when Christians were behaving a thousand times more brutally than muslims. |
the Inquisition wasn't murder... it was... love. pure Christian love. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:33 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
That's your chosen defense of Islam? That right now, Islam is acting less extreme than Christians at other moments in history?
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Are you doolally? At what point do I say that Islam is acting less extreme than Christians NOW? I'm pointing out that if the Rat Singer wants to make a point about how the world is today, he shouldn't be delving into dubious quotes from the 14th century when Christians were behaving a thousand times more brutally than muslims.
Secondly, if you count the US as a christian country, then I'd have to say yes, Christians are acting very brutally and 'extremely.' Bombing the crap out of third world countries (either directly or by proxy - see the recent war in Lebanon) is not a good advertisement for Christianity. Neither are torture camps, phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs or missiles tipped with depleted uranium. |
Point taken about what Ratzinger said. Christians have behaved very naughty in the past, but I don't think that point adequately addresses the roots of the problem in the Middle East (although neither does pointing out that Islam is evil/barbaric, etc...)
But you seem to be suggesting something above. Is Christianity is to blame for the errors in Iraq? |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:18 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
Are you doolally????? At what point do I say that Islam is acting less extreme than Christians NOW ????. |
Big bird is acting extreme. Lets bomb her. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:35 am Post subject: |
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Let's not forget the near past -- the holocaust.
As every Jew must, we must not forget . And especially the fact/feature of it being a crime complicit and undertaken through and by Christians on another group.
Scream as much as you want, it is a fact. Whether the good Christians like Bonhoffer or the bad ones like Mussolini, they all had a part........doing nothing was/is not an excuse.
Let's not forget the holocaust...........
DD |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:36 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
Let's not forget the near past -- the holocaust.
As every Jew must, we must not forget . And especially the fact/feature of it being a crime complicit and undertaken through and by Christians on another group.
Scream as much as you want, it is a fact. Whether the good Christians like Bonhoffer or the bad ones like Mussolini, they all had a part........doing nothing was/is not an excuse.
Let's not forget the holocaust...........
DD |
That's a litle melodramatic, don't you think??? Not that I disagree though. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:49 am Post subject: |
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