The Roots of Jihad (long, but interesting)

[Agathon]

A large part of the roots of Jihad is invaders like Siro living on Muslim land.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


If you call the seizure of pre-pubescent children to serve the military, forced castration of soldiers who refused to convert, the suppression of religious training of other faiths, the denial of the rights of infidels to testify in court, heavy special taxes on infidels, and the seizure of infidels to serve as slaves, then yeah, I guess the Ottomans were paragons of tolerance.

Compared to their 16th century contemporaries committing genocide, mass burnings of accused witches, and basically all the accusations you make against the Ottomans, well, YEAH.

The basic difference- a non-Muslim had a better life under the Ottomans than a non-Christian anywhere in Europe. Not a good life, but better in comparison.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Agathon
A large part of the roots of Jihad is invaders like Siro living on Muslim land.

how can land be muslim? so far as I can tell it's all agnostic.

[Sandman]

All religions evolve and change to meet the challenges they face . . . or they perish. From the time Christianity assumed power in the Roman Empire until the 19th Century, it was easily as intolerant as modern Islam. Muslim extremism arose as a response to the Islamic world's decline and Christian ascendancy. Every society going through such a period sees the same tendencies. The response is nearly always the same: if we return to an imagined earlier, purer form of our ideology , then we will once again regain glory. You see it here in the U.S. today among Christian conversatives.

This paragraph is pretty much on the ball. The Babylonians were trying to resurrect their glorious past four thousand years ago.

It's easy to see what Islam may become - heartily capitalist. Just repeat 'Mohammed was a merchant', and emphasise Islam's past as a religion of traders and craftsmen.

Those who state that Islam cannot change are deluded.

[Saras]

Lithuania was more tolerant that Ottoman Empire

[Zoid]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
Interesting and comforting : with men like him, the future has a chance.

QFT

I found this passage very interesting and spot on.

"Islamic terror is a great enemy of humanity, but so is rampant capitalism. The world is being managed without wisdom and humanity is in constant danger of an ecological disaster, a nuclear disaster and a biological disaster.

"Capitalism is a necessary historical stage. At first it was wild and left many victims in its wake. As a result, a counter-movement arose, which succeeded in 'taming' it by stages, in 'civilizing' its barbarian impulses. Now it is running wild again and we must fight to tame it anew."

Once you believed that the workers and their allies would succeed in toppling capitalism in a socialist revolution.

"Today I think this is not possible. What will apparently happen is that capitalism will gradually change, by itself and under pressure from its opponents, and will become something else. The workers do not want a dictatorship of the proletariat, but they do want to receive services and commodities free. We have to struggle for free health [care], free bread and milk (every year surpluses of milk are dumped - why not distribute it to hungry children?), free culture, free public transportation."

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Agathon
A large part of the roots of Jihad is invaders like Siro living on Muslim land.

I´m not so sure. As the article stated fundamentalist muslims hate jews, not zionism. Thus the seed of jihad is in the medinaist islam itself, not in the zionist occupation of Palestine. I´m not saying it isn´t fueling the flame of hatred and spreads fundamentalism, but, again, jihad has its roots in religious bigotry.

[Az]

A large part of the roots of Jihad is invaders like Siro living on Muslim land.

Any new worlder has a helluva lot of balls speaking about "living on other people's land".

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by GePap


Compared to their 16th century contemporaries committing genocide, mass burnings of accused witches, and basically all the accusations you make against the Ottomans, well, YEAH.

The basic difference- a non-Muslim had a better life under the Ottomans than a non-Christian anywhere in Europe. Not a good life, but better in comparison.

Islam had its episodes just like Christian Europe. While the Ottomans allowed the Balkans and Egypt to remain largely Christian they knew that they could not permit the population of their new homeland, Anatolia, to harbor a large population of infidels. The conversion of Asia Minor required knocking a few heads. Muslims have also been known throughout their expansion to at times annhilate entire populations that proved excessively resistant to their rule. Oh, and Sunnis had been previously known to slaughter Shiites and vice versa.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Saras
Lithuania was more tolerant that Ottoman Empire

Not having studied the Grand Duchy in as much depth as I have the Osmanlis, I can't definately agree or disagree. I am inclined to say, you may very well be correct, at least as far as Jews and different sects of Christians were concerned. I'm not so sure they were as tolerant towards Muslims.

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
If you call the seizure of pre-pubescent children to serve the military, forced castration of soldiers who refused to convert, the suppression of religious training of other faiths, the denial of the rights of infidels to testify in court, heavy special taxes on infidels, and the seizure of infidels to serve as slaves, then yeah, I guess the Ottomans were paragons of tolerance.

And what was Christian Europe like at the time? As far as castration of soldiers of another faith, given that half of the Ottoman Army was Christian, and nearly their entire navy was Greek, I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Maybe at a later time, when the Empire was declining, but not during the period of Ottoman ascendency.

As for the special "heavy" taxes, those taxes were so "heavy" that forts had to be built along the Habsburg fronteer to stop peasants fleeing into Ottoman lands. Christians, frequently found themselves better off financially under the Ottomans because the extra taxation they got was less than the normal taxation under Christian lords. And if they were Orthodox Christians living under Latin rule, they were substantially better off. This is why trade bloomed in the Balkans during the Ottoman period.

Finally, thousands of children under the protection of the Holy Mother Church were castrated in order to hold on to their dolcetto voices for just a few more years.

Slaves of the sultan were an elite group within Ottoman society. Children who became janisaries often used their position in the government to help their families. It could be so lucrative that far from the weeping and wailing that later day Balkan nationalists would have you believe, parents would often bribe officials to take their sons. One grand vizer even elevated his brother to Patriarch of Belgrade. The sons of Christian peasants and headers could rise to the very top of muslim Ottoman society. Tell me in what Christian society that was true, let alone that former Muslims could run the government?

Of course, this only lasted untill the end of the 16th Century, when, facing the limits of their reach and draw agasint Austira and a defeat in Persia, the same process I described earlier, a demand by religious authorities to return to an imagined purer form of the religion set in. Even as it got worse, though, a European was treated better in the Empire than vice versa.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Islam had its episodes just like Christian Europe. While the Ottomans allowed the Balkans and Egypt to remain largely Christian they knew that they could not permit the population of their new homeland, Anatolia, to harbor a large population of infidels. The conversion of Asia Minor required knocking a few heads.

Actually, the Sultan had to outlaw Christians converting to Islam in the Balkans. While there were episodes of anti-Christian oppression in Anatolia, those were practiced before the Ottomans came to power (the Karaman Sultanate, for example, were ruthless towards Christians--ironically, by the 20th Century, Karamanli became a name for Christian Turks).

Despite the privildged position Christians had in the empire relative to Christians in Europe, it was better still to be Muslim. You paid no household tax, you could be granted a "fief," you could join the military (in the first two hundred years of the empire, Christians formed half the Ottoman military, but as lords converted to Islam, this less and less became the case). The only episode of early Ottoman intolerance towards Christians was when Selim decidd he was going to remove all the Christians from Anatolia. He was, fortunately, talked out of it.

During the Interregium, the period when the four sons of Beyezid I vied for control of the Empire, Sultan Musa (who held the Balkan half of the empire) had a spiritual advisor who preached a fusion of Christianity and Islam (as well as an early communism). Until the rise of the Safavids, the Ottoman Empire was the most religiouslu heterodox empire in Europe or the Middle East. It was only because the Safavids attempted to use their followers to overthrown the Ottomans that the Ottomans became viciously anti-Shi'ite.

Of course, by the 19th Century, the Ottomans had become viciously anti-Christian. but again, that was because they had become ever more conservative and intolerant as they waned.

[C0ckney]

The Roots of Jihad (long, but interesting)

well 1 out of 2 ain't bad i suppose

[Zoid]

nm

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
[Q]Originally posted by Saras

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
If you call the seizure of pre-pubescent children to serve the military, forced castration of soldiers who refused to convert, the suppression of religious training of other faiths, the denial of the rights of infidels to testify in court, heavy special taxes on infidels, and the seizure of infidels to serve as slaves, then yeah, I guess the Ottomans were paragons of tolerance.

And what was Christian Europe like at the time? As far as castration of soldiers of another faith, given that half of the Ottoman Army was Christian, and nearly their entire navy was Greek, I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Maybe at a later time, when the Empire was declining, but not during the period of Ottoman ascendency.

One of the early Sultans decreed that Janissaries who had served their time but had not converted to Islam would be given a last chance to convert at the time of discharge or would be relieved of their family jewels. His successor rescinded the order.

As for the special "heavy" taxes, those taxes were so "heavy" that forts had to be built along the Habsburg fronteer to stop peasants fleeing into Ottoman lands. Christians, frequently found themselves better off financially under the Ottomans because the extra taxation they got was less than the normal taxation under Christian lords. And if they were Orthodox Christians living under Latin rule, they were substantially better off. This is why trade bloomed in the Balkans during the Ottoman period.

I wonder how many of those Hapsburg citizens trying to move to the Ottoman empire wer actually slav refugees from the Ottoman invasion trying to return home? IIRC a number of the Ottoman empire's Christian neighbors, including at times the Hapsburgs, were paying tribute to the Sultan. I imagine that drove up the tax rate for them and decreased it for the Ottoman citizens. I guess that might be considered an enlightened tax policy.........if you happen to be Genghiz Khan or a Hun. Also the Ottomans gathered tribute from traffic in the Mediterranean. As regards trade, the Muslims had maintained a choke hold on trade in the Mediterranean for centuries, so yeah, I guess trade did improve once you got on their side. I'm sure this changed after Lepanto.

Finally, thousands of children under the protection of the Holy Mother Church were castrated in order to hold on to their dolcetto voices for just a few more years.

How big was this choir?

Slaves of the sultan were an elite group within Ottoman society. Children who became janisaries often used their position in the government to help their families. It could be so lucrative that far from the weeping and wailing that later day Balkan nationalists would have you believe, parents would often bribe officials to take their sons. One grand vizer even elevated his brother to Patriarch of Belgrade. The sons of Christian peasants and headers could rise to the very top of muslim Ottoman society. Tell me in what Christian society that was true, let alone that former Muslims could run the government?

The Ottomans started as a band breaking away from the Seljuks in the 14th century. They invaded Thrace, militarized the Christian peasants and then used them to begin their march to glory first conquering the southern Balkans, then crossing back into Anatolia, and finally finishing off the remnants of the Byzantines. The simple truth is that the Ottomans were originally a purely warrior band and had no one trained in administration. Of course they used Christians as administrators. There was no one else to do the job. The original Ottomans comprised the cavalry and higher officers of their army. The were quite occupied with military duties. OTOH was their ever a conquest of muslim lands by a Christian army which lacked an administrative cadre of its own?

Of course, this only lasted untill the end of the 16th Century, when, facing the limits of their reach and draw agasint Austira and a defeat in Persia, the same process I described earlier, a demand by religious authorities to return to an imagined purer form of the religion set in. Even as it got worse, though, a European was treated better in the Empire than vice versa.

Really? By the end of the 16th century a Christian European could immigrate to the New World and grab enough land to make a Duke envious.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by GePap


Compared to their 16th century contemporaries committing genocide, mass burnings of accused witches, and basically all the accusations you make against the Ottomans, well, YEAH.

The basic difference- a non-Muslim had a better life under the Ottomans than a non-Christian anywhere in Europe. Not a good life, but better in comparison.

Exactly. But some people refuse to see the obvious.