Persecution of Muslims By Christians

Per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims By Christians

It is unfor­tu­nate that Islam is con­tin­u­ous­ly being pur­port­ed to be a reli­gion of vio­lence by the mis­sion­ar­ies when the real­i­ty is very much the oppo­site. What the major­i­ty of Chris­tians are prob­a­bly unaware is of the vio­lence of their brethren against oth­er reli­gions, most par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mus­lims, because it is Islam which has always been the clos­est chal­lenger to the slaves of the Cross. 

There are many cas­es of per­se­cu­tion of the Jews or adher­ents of prim­i­tive reli­gions, such as the natives of Mex­i­co and parts of South­ern Amer­i­ca by Chris­tians, but we will be focus­ing on two past per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims by Chris­tians ; the Cru­sades and the Span­ish Inquisition.

Per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the Crusades

In Novem­ber of 1095, Pope Urban II ini­ti­at­ed the first Euro­pean attempt at col­o­niz­ing the Mus­lim world — known in the West as the Cru­sades — by draw­ing this fate­ful picture :

For you must has­ten to car­ry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East, who need your help, which they have often asked. For the Turks, a Per­sian peo­ple, have attacked them I exhort you with earnest prayer — not I, but God — that, as her­alds of Christ, you urge men by fre­quent exhor­ta­tion, men of all ranks, knights as well as foot sol­diers, rich as well as poor, to has­ten to exter­mi­nate this vile race from the lands of your brethren Christ com­mands it. And if those who set out thith­er should lose their lives on the way by land, or in cross­ing the sea, or in fight­ing the pagans, their sins shall be remit­ted. Oh what a dis­grace, if a race so despised, base, and the instru­ment of demons, should so over­come a peo­ple endowed with faith in the all-pow­er­ful God, and resplen­dent with the name of Christ. Let those who have been accus­tomed to make pri­vate war against the faith­ful car­ry on to a suc­cess­ful issue a war against the infi­dels. Let those who for a long time have been rob­bers now become sol­diers of Christ. Let those who fought against broth­ers and rel­a­tives now fight against these bar­bar­ians. Let them zeal­ous­ly under­take the jour­ney under the guid­ance of the Lord.August C. Krey, The First Cru­sade : The Accounts of Eye Wit­ness­es and Par­tic­i­pants, (Glouces­ter, Mass­a­chu­setts : Peter Smith, 1958)

The Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia informs us the fol­low­ing about the Cru­sades :

The Cru­sades were expe­di­tions under­tak­en, in ful­fil­ment of a solemn vow, to deliv­er the Holy Places from Mohammedan tyranny.

The ori­gin of the word may be traced to the cross made of cloth and worn as a badge on the out­er gar­ment of those who took part in these enter­pris­es. Medieval writ­ers use the terms crux (pro cruce trans­ma­ri­na, Char­ter of 1284, cit­ed by Du Cange s.v. crux), croise­ment (Joinville), crois­erie (Mon­strelet), etc. Since the Mid­dle Ages the mean­ing of the word cru­sade has been extend­ed to include all wars under­tak­en in pur­suance of a vow and direct­ed against infi­dels, i.e. against Mohammedans, pagans, heretics, or those under the ban of excommunication.

Many of the Chris­tians who took part in the Cru­sades spoke of their great pride in wad­ing in the blood of their ene­mies. This is evi­dent in Daim­bert’s com­ments in the Offi­cial Sum­ma­ry of the 1st Cru­sade when he said :

And, if you desire to know what was done about the ene­my whom we found there, know that in the por­ti­co of Solomon and his Tem­ple, our men rode in the blood of the Sara­cens up to the knees of the hors­es.Ibid, p. 275

When Jerusalem was con­quered on the 15th of July 1099 by the Cru­saders who were also known as the Chris­t­ian Knights, more than 60,000 inhab­i­tants, both Jew­ish and Mus­lim, were slaugh­tered in cold blood. In the words of one witness

…there [in front of Solomon’s tem­ple] was such a car­nage that our peo­ple were wad­ing ankle-deep in the blood of our foes, and after that hap­pi­ly and cry­ing for joy” our peo­ple marched to our Sav­iour’s tomb, to hon­our it and to pay off our debt of gratitude. 

The Arch­bish­op of Tyre, who was also an eye-wit­ness, wrote that :

It was impos­si­ble to look upon the vast num­bers of the slain with­out hor­ror ; every­where lay frag­ments of human bod­ies, and the very ground was cov­ered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spec­ta­cle of head­less bod­ies and muti­lat­ed limbs strewn in all direc­tions that roused the hor­ror of all who looked upon them. Still more dread­ful was it to gaze upon the vic­tors them­selves, drip­ping with blood from head to foot, an omi­nous sight which brought ter­ror to all who met them. It is report­ed that with­in the Tem­ple enclo­sure alone about ten thou­sand infi­dels per­ished.F. Turn­er, Beyond Geog­ra­phy (New York, 1980)

Songs were even com­posed about the con­di­tions of the bat­tles dur­ing the Crusades :

Count Roland gripped his sword drip­ping with gore he strikes his valiant blows, shiv­er­ing shafts of spears and buck­lers, too, cleav­ing through feet and fists, sad­dles and sides. To see him hack the limbs from Sara­cens, pile them upon the earth, corpse upon corpse, would call to mind a very valiant knight.F. Turn­er, Beyond Geog­ra­phy (New York, 1980)

These quotes are instruc­tive in their pre­sen­ta­tion of West­ern Chris­t­ian foun­da­tion­al atti­tudes toward Islam. In medieval Europe, the Popes began to use Islam as a proxy to con­vince back­slid­ing Chris­tians to return to the fold and to con­vince them­selves that Chris­tians were chaste, denounc­ing Islam as a sex­u­al­ly lib­er­al and even licen­tious reli­gion. Once the Euro­peans gained a foothold in West Asia, one of the areas of great­est con­cern was mis­ce­gena­tion. In the Cru­sad­er mind, even sex with one’s own wife was a car­nal sin ; sex with an infi­del woman was pun­ished by cas­tra­tion for the Cru­sad­er and facial muti­la­tion for the woman.” Mus­lim women were viewed as defiled and wan­ton whores and seduc­tress­es.” This stig­ma is evi­dent in Bish­op Jacques de Vit­ry’s com­ments on the 5th Cru­sade when he says that :

Those amongst the Sara­cens are con­sid­ered most reli­gious who can make the most women preg­nant they lie with their con­cu­bines and wives often in times of fast, because they sup­pose mak­ing love and desire are so mer­i­to­ri­ous, either to sat­is­fy lust or to gen­er­ate many sons to strength­en the defence of their reli­gion.Nor­man Daniel, Heroes and Sara­cens : An Inter­pre­ta­tion of the Chan­sons de Geste, (Edin­burgh : Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1984)

Per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the Span­ish Inquisition

It is well known in all Spain that pres­sure on Isabel­la led to the foun­da­tion in 1478 of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, over which the Crown was giv­en almost full con­trol by the Pope. The Inqui­si­tion was found­ed to solve one spe­cif­ic prob­lem : the reli­gious and pub­lic sta­tus of con­ver­sos”. Con­ver­sos accused of prac­tis­ing the Jew­ish faith were its main line of busi­ness, but such cas­es tend­ed to occur only at spe­cif­ic peri­ods and often had polit­i­cal rather than reli­gious over­tones. Where nei­ther Protes­tants nor Jews exist­ed the Inqui­si­tion still intrud­ed reg­u­lar­ly into dai­ly life, as the self-appoint­ed guardian of ortho­doxy and moral­i­ty, with exten­sive pow­ers to pros­e­cute sub­ver­sive or dis­re­spect­ful words, thoughts and writ­ings ; sex­u­al mis­be­hav­iour ; bigamy ; usury ; super­sti­tious prac­tices ; and oth­er crimes large or small.

A lat­er his­to­ri­an, the Jesuit Juan de Mar­i­ana, admit­ted that some aspects of the Inqui­si­tion appeared very oppres­sive to Spaniards”. But because the tri­bunal was a tool of deep, seat­ed prej­u­dices, those who direct­ed it were able to bring into being a ter­ri­fy­ing social weapon that helped to mould the think­ing of Spaniards for cen­turies. It was one of the most pow­er­ful forces in the every­day life of six­teenth and sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Spain.

The tri­bunal set itself a task which was more rec­og­niz­ably racial­ist than reli­gious : to puri­fy penin­su­lar Catholi­cism by elim­i­nat­ing from the Church and its cler­gy all descen­dants of Jew­ish or Moor­ish blood”. The task was car­ried out with an effi­cien­cy that has left a per­ma­nent mark on Span­ish his­to­ry. Even in mod­ern times, dis­trust of Jews and Arabs has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Span­ish pol­i­tics. The ear­ly pro­ceed­ings were undoubt­ed­ly bloody : a con­tem­po­rary his­to­ri­an esti­mat­ed that in Seville alone between 1480 and 1488 the tri­bunal had burnt over sev­en hun­dred peo­ple and pun­ished sev­er­al thousand.

In the year of 1492, the influ­en­tial Tomas de Torque­ma­da con­vinced Fer­di­nand and Isabel­la to expel all the sur­viv­ing uncon­vert­ed Jews. Per­haps 200,000 Jews, includ­ing some of the coun­try’s best edu­cat­ed and most pro­duc­tive peo­ple, were sent pack­ing to North Africa and var­i­ous refuges in Europe.

The strug­gle against the Moors was always a uni­fy­ing force, and the final push evoked har­mo­nious cheers of thanks-giv­ing from Spaniards, and from all of Chris­ten­dom. In 1492, when the Recon­quest cap­tured the last Mus­lim city, Grana­da, Fer­di­nand and Isabel­la, cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly accept­ed the keys to the Alham­bra, the city’s won­drous palace. It was all very chival­rous, except that the reli­gious free­dom guar­an­teed to the Mus­lims was soon revoked and mass con­ver­sions were decreed.

Con­clu­sions

To claim that Chris­tians are on a moral high ground” when preach­ing their reli­gion and have been abstain­ing from vio­lence” as it is the fun­da­men­tal teach­ing of their reli­gion is very much fur­ther from the truth, as the evi­dence shows. One may object that we are con­cen­trat­ing only on the neg­a­tive, not pro­vid­ing any back­ground analy­sis, and are not mak­ing nec­es­sary dis­tinc­tions between var­i­ous brands of Chris­tian­i­ty and between sec­u­lar and reli­gious ten­den­cies in the Chris­t­ian world. 

But this is pre­cise­ly what the Chris­tians do to Mus­lims. They most­ly talk and ask about acts of vio­lence tak­ing place in the vast Mus­lim world with­out mak­ing any dis­tinc­tions, or ana­lyz­ing them prop­er­ly, or bal­anc­ing them with the pos­i­tive aspects. The point in this paper is not to prove that Chris­tian­i­ty’s teach­ings are based on mur­der and vio­lence, as the mis­sion­ar­ies would like to claim for Islam, but only to show that Chris­tians have a much dark­er past of mur­der and per­se­cu­tions against those who do not con­form to their doc­trines when com­pared to Muslims.

And cer­tain­ly, only God knows best !Endmark


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4 responses to “Per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims By Christians”

  1. Syed Avatar
    Syed

    Mus­lims occu­pied non mus­lim lands,imposed tax­es on pil­grims vis­it­ing their HOly Places’

    So I guess that is worse than Chris­tians killing and per­se­cut­ing peo­ple of oth­er sects dur­ing that time period

    you imposed high tax­es on them sim­ply because they were non_muslims”

    I did ? maybe the ismaili
    s did but cer­tain­ly not me

    THe nat­ur­al response to all these dis­crim­i­na­tions is a non-Mus­lim ” jihad”. That was exact­ly what the cru­sades were. Chris­t­ian reac­tion to Mus­lim enchroach­ment of CHris­tians ter­ri­to­ries way back in 693 ad and as far away as Spain.”

    O, cer­tain­ly, Ismailis were doing this for a while, all of a sud­den when seljuks come, they wan­na go on a jihaad’, like a bunch of cow­ards they kill inno­cent peo­ple mus­lims, jews and even chris­tians, most of them just going for mate­r­i­al pur­pos­es and some thought they were after jews in the rhine.

    Spain ? is that why a per­son with­ing Spain called for Islam­ic con­quest of the dic­ta­tor­ship type of gov­ern­ment run there, it becomes fun­nier tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion, that they were allowed to keep their faith but when chris­tians take over, nobody can keep their faith includ­ing Jews and Chris­tians of otehr sects, yet when salaahud­din takes over jerusalem again, he does­n’t take revenge, he let them keep their faith after the mas­sacre of inno­cent peo­ple, which is exact­ly what you are try­ing to jus­ti­fy ! So, you tell me, who start­ed it ? WOuld Native Amer­i­can now be jsu­ti­fied if they rose up and killed whites in Amer­i­ca ? Sur­pris­ing­ly, the states that were con­wuered by Mus­lims were a bunch of king­doms that did com­mitt aggres­sion and did­n’t let peo­ple spread Islam…please don’t embarass yourself

  2. Syed Avatar
    Syed

    BTw, it’s quite inter­est­ing, how you cite such thigns in his­to­ry such as the Gold­en Age and the Ottoman Empire when much of what you use today came as a result of that :

    Car­ly Fio­r­i­na, the CEO of Hewlett Packard, recent­ly gave a speech defin­ing the rel­e­vance of lead­er­ship in today’s world. Here is the quote from the final part of her speech.

    I’ll end by telling a story.

    There was once a civ­i­liza­tion that was the great­est in the world.

    It was able to cre­ate a con­ti­nen­tal super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from north­ern climes to trop­ics and deserts. With­in its domin­ion lived hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple, of dif­fer­ent creeds and eth­nic origins.

    One of its lan­guages became the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of much of the world, the bridge between the peo­ples of a hun­dred lands. Its armies were made up of peo­ple of many nation­al­i­ties, and its mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion allowed a degree of peace and pros­per­i­ty that had nev­er been known. The reach of this civ­i­liza­tion’s com­merce extend­ed from Latin Amer­i­ca to Chi­na, and every­where in between.

    And this civ­i­liza­tion was dri­ven more than any­thing, by inven­tion. Its archi­tects designed build­ings that defied grav­i­ty. Its math­e­mati­cians cre­at­ed the alge­bra and algo­rithms that would enable the build­ing of com­put­ers, and the cre­ation of encryp­tion. Its doc­tors exam­ined the human body, and found new cures for dis­ease. Its astronomers looked into the heav­ens, named the stars, and paved the way for space trav­el and exploration.

    Its writ­ers cre­at­ed thou­sands of sto­ries. Sto­ries of courage, romance and mag­ic. Its poets wrote of love, when oth­ers before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

    When oth­er nations were afraid of ideas, this civ­i­liza­tion thrived on them, and kept them alive. When cen­sors threat­ened to wipe out knowl­edge from past civ­i­liza­tions, this civ­i­liza­tion kept the knowl­edge alive, and passed it on to others.

    While mod­ern West­ern civ­i­liza­tion shares many of these traits, the civ­i­liza­tion I’m talk­ing about was the Islam­ic world from the year 800 to 1600, which includ­ed the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Bagh­dad, Dam­as­cus and Cairo, and enlight­ened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

    Although we are often unaware of our indebt­ed­ness to this oth­er civ­i­liza­tion, its gifts are very much a part of our her­itage. The tech­nol­o­gy indus­try would not exist with­out the con­tri­bu­tions of Arab math­e­mati­cians. Sufi poet-philoso­phers like Rumi chal­lenged our notions of self and truth. Lead­ers like Suleiman con­tributed to our notions of tol­er­ance and civic leadership.

    And per­haps we can learn a les­son from his exam­ple : It was lead­er­ship based on mer­i­toc­ra­cy, not inher­i­tance. It was lead­er­ship that har­nessed the full capa­bil­i­ties of a very diverse pop­u­la­tion – that includ­ed Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam­ic, and Jew­ish traditions.

    This kind of enlight­ened lead­er­ship — lead­er­ship that nur­tured cul­ture, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, diver­si­ty and courage — led to 800 years of inven­tion and prosperity.

    In dark and seri­ous times like this, we must affirm our com­mit­ment to build­ing soci­eties and insti­tu­tions that aspire to this kind of great­ness. More than ever, we must focus on the impor­tance of lead­er­ship– bold acts of lead­er­ship and decid­ed­ly per­son­al acts of leadership.”

    For the full speech, please go to :
    http://​www​.hp​.com/​h​p​i​n​f​o​/​e​x​e​c​t​e​a​m​/​s​p​e​e​c​h​e​s​/​f​i​o​r​i​n​a​/​m​i​n​n​e​s​o​t​a​01​.​htm

  3. Syed Avatar
    Syed

    About Ear­ly Caliphs :

    http://​www​.islam​icvideos​.net/​c​o​m​p​o​n​e​n​t​/​o​p​t​i​o​n​,​c​o​m​_​m​t​r​e​e​/​t​a​s​k​,​v​i​e​w​l​i​n​k​/​l​i​n​k​_​i​d​,​18​/​I​t​e​m​i​d​,​30/

    About Cru­sades :

    http://​www​.islam​icvideos​.net/​c​o​m​p​o​n​e​n​t​/​o​p​t​i​o​n​,​c​o​m​_​m​t​r​e​e​/​t​a​s​k​,​v​i​e​w​l​i​n​k​/​l​i​n​k​_​i​d​,​19​/​I​t​e​m​i​d​,​30/

    About Ottomans :

    http://​www​.islam​icvideos​.net/​c​o​m​p​o​n​e​n​t​/​o​p​t​i​o​n​,​c​o​m​_​m​t​r​e​e​/​t​a​s​k​,​v​i​e​w​l​i​n​k​/​l​i​n​k​_​i​d​,​20​/​I​t​e​m​i​d​,​30/

    See 5th video down about Islam­ic Spain :

    http://​kala​mul​lah​.com/​v​i​d​e​o​s​.​h​tml

    About par­tic­i­pat­ing with Hitler :

    http://​www​.alt​mus​lim​.com/​p​e​r​m​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​1639​_​0​_​25​_​0​_​C22

    Chris­tians have been per­se­cut­ing Mus­lims in those years”

    No, not Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar, there was­n’t real­ly a reli­gious motive, more so polit­i­cal, but that’s far from the point, what’s wrong is wrong

    Why should MUs­lims be focussed on the response to their mil­i­tary expe­di­tions that were start­ed by them”

    O you mean like the Cru­sades, that were a response to what Jerusalem wel­com­ing the Caliph Omer (RAA) in open arms when he con­quered it as a response to their aggres­sion ? No, the real­i­ty was, the pope was jsut mad because of some ismaili caliph hakim destroy­ing some church, the seljuks rebuild­ing it did­n’t help, and yet you use this to jus­ti­fy killing inno­cent peo­ple includ­ing jews and chris­tians, by this log­ic, I guess mod­ern day atroc­i­ties which occur by Mus­lims, are by all means jus­ti­fied. By th way, if you are gonna lie, tell a good one

  4. ROB Avatar
    ROB

    The Cru­sades are expe­di­tions under­tak­en to deliv­er the Holy PLaces from Moslem tyran­ny. Why should MUs­lims be focussed on the response to their mil­i­tary expe­di­tions that were start­ed by them.We see a lot ter­ror­ism pro­voked by Mus­lims. Mulims always do not con­demn these actions instead always ask ppl to look at the cause of these vio­lent actions. Why can’t Mus­lims do the same. Why can’t they look at the root cause of the Cru­sades. It is a shame that Mus­lims ignore their mil­i­tary xpe­di­tions that were made into NOrth­ern Africa annex­ing Chris­t­ian states there first these expe­di­tions were start­ed way back in 693 ad.They even man­aged to cap­ture Spain. Many mus­lims con­sid­er this as their gold­en Age”. If islam does not sup­port expan­sion­ism and colo­nial­i­sa­tion then why both­er invad­ing oth­er lands.Muslims shy away when talk­ing about the cru­sades caus­es, but talk glo­ri­ous­ly about their empires such as Abbasiyah and Umayyad.Ottoman empires.
    tEHESE CONQUERING empires per­se­cut­ing the idi­ge­nious Non-Mus­lim cit­i­zens by impos­ing jizyah, refus­ing them the per­mis­sion to repair dam­aged tem­ples and church­es, not allow­ing them to high gov­ern­m­ment posts altough it was their own territory.Why should Mus­lims con­trol the lives of non-Mus­lims in coun­tries that are not theirs!The west­was not the only des­ti­na­tion of Mus­lim expan­sion, India was invad­ed by a small force of MUs­lims under Calipgh UTh­man Al AFFan.MOghul empire destroyed tem­ples and built mosques on them.
    If these things were done unto them mus­lims would go on a jihad. Accord­ing to Islam­ic beliefs jihad is a strug­gle against dis­crim­i­na­tion( at least wat you say). That’s is the rea­son why yo guys go on sui­cide bomb­ings etc. Pales­tini­ans say the Israelis unfair­ly occu­py their lands , so their response is jihad. Osama says infi­dels should leave all Islam­ic lands, in order to make them leave he is going on a jihad. South­ern THai Mus­lims say Thai govt is try­ing to destroy their Islam­ic way of life , so their on a jihad, shoot­ing unarmed Bud­dhists monks and school teachers.
    THe same thing took place those days, Mus­lims occu­pied non mus­lim lands,imposed tax­es on pil­grims vis­it­ing their HOly Places( I almost for­got Osama says he is on Jihad sim­ply because Infi­dels should leave Sau­di because it is the HOME of the Islam­ic holy city),you imposed high tax­es on them sim­ply because they were non_​muslims, con­vert­ed their Church­es to mosques.THe nat­ur­al response to all these dis­crim­i­na­tions is a non-Mus­lim ” jihad”. That was exact­ly what the cru­sades were. Chris­t­ian reac­tion to Mus­lim enchroach­ment of CHris­tians ter­ri­to­ries way back in 693 ad and as far away as Spain.

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