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 !