Lahore's only Hindu temple razed

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by molly bloom


What's your evidence for this assertion that the 'majority' of peasants in Islam were non-Muslim at the beginning of the Crusades in the Levant in 1097 ?


And what decree or edict forbade non-Arabs to convert for nearly two centuries ?

IIRC albert Hourani in "the arabs" states that the majority of peasants in EGYPT were christian at least as late as 1000 CE. My impression has always been that Egypt remained predominantly Chrisitan somewhat longer than the the Maghreb or the Levant, but I dont really know. And id be very surprised at an edict to stop conversions - IIRC from Hourani, there were numerous conversions to Islam in the first couple of generations after conquest, though largely confined to the urban classes.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok
Yes, they do, but one of the reasons the crusade, inquisitions, etc. are so memorable is that they contradict the religion they were done in the name of. The hypocrisy of it all was staggering. So, until you find a verse in which Jesus said, "and you shall take the Jews, and apply the hot metal tweezers unto their reproductive organs," I don't see how the actions were really consequences of the ideas.

well Jesus didnt say "lets all hold a car wash to raise money for antimalarial vaccines" Yet I dont think youd have trouble with someone who said that flowed logically, given the conditions of today. Well to generations of christians, things like crusades and inquisitions DID flow naturally - after all, if youre gonna suffer in hell for being a heretic, than torturing a few folks spreading heresy to save everyone elses soul is an act of charity - yeah theres collateral damage, but then the airplane taking those vaccines to the 3rd world is spewing out noxious chemicals, and someday maybe what we do will be seen as hypocritical. That these things are seen as contradictions is due to their conflict with modern interpretations of ancient texts - now maybe weve finally reached the "right" interpretations, but it seems a little precious to identify the religion only with its "right" interpretations. Do you want, then, to give Christianity credit for the acts of Christians giving out antimalarials, but deny it credit for cathedrals and art works created by those who didnt share the "right" interpretation?

Now mind, you, im not in THAT different a boat from you. I beleive in a religion thats evolved, and I DONT accept many historical interpretations. And if powerlessness has largely denied us the joy of mass badness since the conversion of the Idumeans, my faith has certainly been responsible for cruelty on a smaller but equally sharp scale, from women denied remarriage under rabbinic law, to gays, etc. But struggling with that, and struggling for change, cant be so shallow as to throw out any 6th c rabbi who thought those men who lay with men deserved death as "not really Jewish" so much as a mature acknowledgement that it WAS Jewish, but Judaism had not yet become right on this issue. .

[Elok]

Dude, QUOTE and /QUOTE tags, copy-and-pasted, make your response a lot easier to read...

Anyway, as you've seen in earlier arguments with me, I don't know the details of Israel too well. But, based on general principles, this outsider's perspective remains the same:

The fact that a people occupied a land nearly two thousand years ago does not give them any special right to it, regardless of how they feel about it. Two thousand years ago, my ancestors were probably all over the place, and I'd have an equally valid claim to half of Europe. If you go farther back, we'd all have a special claim to eastern Africa, that being our ancestral home. It's just a matter of relative time periods. So I honestly don't see how Zionism is different from Manifest Destiny as far as non-Jews are concerned. And I still haven't heard of the people in the area getting any compensation for the sudden intrusion and seized land. Barring that, I can't think of any mitigating circumstances which would make Zionism right.

Granted, the Palestinians have acted barbarously (insanity begets insanity and so on), and I'm hardly suggesting that Israel pack up and leave, but I don't see how the conflict there will be resolved so long as people keep pretending that it didn't begin on the wrong foot. It probably doesn't help that they keep building walls on Arab property and suchlike either, though I don't know the details of that. The Palestinians have some excuse (though not enough) for their misbehavior, in that half of them have been living like Katrina refugees for the past half-century. Growing up in squalor can't be very conducive to the growth of civilized feelings.

[Elok]

Ahem. The teachings of Christ were strictly anti-legalistic, as evidenced by the constant verbal abuse of Pharisees. And He went out of His way to point out that we are responsible first and foremost for our own conduct (look at the plank in your own eye before the speck in your neighbor's, etc.). When His teachings were rejected by the Jews, he complained but didn't press the issue, or force it on them. He treated Samaritans (i.e. heretics) with respect, and only scolded them for plain immorality by their own standards (as in the case of the woman at the well). The Prodigal Son was allowed to leave, and come home on his own time when he was ready. And so on. The whole life and teachings of Christ contradict Inquisitions and the like. Whereas charity was broadly encouraged. There's no grounds for what you're saying.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Elok
Dude, QUOTE and /QUOTE tags, copy-and-pasted, make your response a lot easier to read...

Anyway, as you've seen in earlier arguments with me, I don't know the details of Israel too well. But, based on general principles, this outsider's perspective remains the same:

The fact that a people occupied a land nearly two thousand years ago does not give them any special right to it, regardless of how they feel about it. Two thousand years ago, my ancestors were probably all over the place, and I'd have an equally valid claim to half of Europe. If you go farther back, we'd all have a special claim to eastern Africa, that being our ancestral home. It's just a matter of relative time periods."

What people, qua people, do you belong to that was evicted from Europe? Or from East Africa? and that continued to exist as a stateless people in exile?



"And I still haven't heard of the people in the area getting any compensation for the sudden intrusion and seized land. "

Sudden intrusion? Are you familiar with the history of Jewish migration back to Israel, from 1200 on?

Seized land? Prior to 1948 all land Jews used in Palestine was PURCHASED. Diaspora Jews made donations to the Jewish National Fund (little blue boxes) to fund the purchase of land. It was done, despite the tendency of some arabs to kill any arabs who sold land to Jews (a tactic that continues to this day) In 1948 land abandoned by those who left was taken by the state to house refugees who came in, huge numbers of whom came from Arab states where they left behind property that was not compensated. It was of course impossible to work out mutual compensations while Palestinian refugees lived in lands that did not recognize Israel, and themselves called for its destruction.

However under the Oslo peace process, compensation for lost property is clearly one of the items for a final peace settlement. I hope those negotiations can start again.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok
Ahem. The teachings of Christ were strictly anti-legalistic, as evidenced by the constant verbal abuse of Pharisees. And He went out of His way to point out that we are responsible first and foremost for our own conduct (look at the plank in your own eye before the speck in your neighbor's, etc.). When His teachings were rejected by the Jews, he complained but didn't press the issue, or force it on them. He treated Samaritans (i.e. heretics) with respect, and only scolded them for plain immorality by their own standards (as in the case of the woman at the well). The Prodigal Son was allowed to leave, and come home on his own time when he was ready. And so on. The whole life and teachings of Christ contradict Inquisitions and the like. Whereas charity was broadly encouraged. There's no grounds for what you're saying.

He couldnt force it on them, as he didnt control a state. And he didnt have the responsibility of running a state. Its widely held that the early Christians expected the imminent end of times. When that didnt happen, and Christianity emerged as a social force to be reckoned with, and then took control of the state, the men who ran the church had to decide what to do. Now you can say they were mistaken, and that they should have made the Roman empire into an enlightened liberal democracy, cause you have decided thats the deeper truth of Jesus' message, but its just silly to think that they didnt look at that message, and determine that THEIR approach was completely in line with it.


Now Im NOT going to search out the proof texts that were used by Christians from 200 CE to 1700 to justify what they did.


Youre doing just what fundamentalists do, Elok. Youre saying that there is ONE right interpretation of the text, and its YOURS, and any different interpretation is not "Christian" (as fundie Jews and Muslims do with their texts as well) Its just you dont see your view as fundie, cause it doest agree with JErry Falwell, or whomever.

I believe that there is no ONE right interpretation of a religious text. Fortunately in my religion there is textual backup for the notion of different interpretations, that enables me to look respectfully on Jewish history, even when i disagree.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Except there's no evidence they possessed the modern notion of 'race'.

True enough, they focused on tribal identity. First the two tribes that supported Mohammed, then the others of the Mecca-Medina area, and finally all the tribes of the peninsula holding common language and culture. I.e., those tribes that weren't Jew or Christian (I recall there being 2 and 4 of these, respectively).

Once outside the Arabian peninsula the tribal "we" and "they" coincided with the modern notion of "race" quite neatly, so the results are indistinguishable.

What's your evidence for this assertion that the 'majority' of peasants in Islam were non-Muslim at the beginning of the Crusades in the Levant in 1097 ?

The Crusades began in western Asia Minor, which had only been held by the Othmanli a decade or so. The Crusader forces were initially far to weak to take typical walled cities of 250k+ by force, but often found Christian defenders who would betray their Muslim commanders.

Armenia and other eastern regions had been conquered a century or so earlier. Peasants in cities and towns were still almost entirely Christian (plus Zoroastrian in the east).

In these areas the Turks were the conquering tribes, rather than Arabs, but the "religion of the conquerors" attitude was the same.

And what decree or edict forbade non-Arabs to convert for nearly two centuries ?

Some guy named Mohammed told them to convert or exterminate idolators, but to permit Jews and Christians to continue their beliefs. It was this whole religion thing called "Islam." Maybe there are references for it somewhere.

The Ummayyads were concerned at losing a tax base as non-Muslims were taxed differently from Muslims, but the Abbasid Dynasty saw the beginning of the alteration of Islam from being an Arab-dominated entity to being a non-Arab dominated entity.

It was an Iranian Muslim, Abu Muslim, who toppled the Ummayyads in Damascus, and the Kharijites had already attracted large numbers of non-Arab converts to Islam.

What I read many years ago indicated the first non-Arab converts were Copts in Egypt near the end of the seventh century. Sorry, mental goof saying it was "nearly two centuries" by thinking end of 700s.

There were many who converted to Islam in the hopes of escaping the taxation applied to non-Muslims. Arabs treated these converts with disdain, making them pay the jizra and giving them third class status barely above non-Muslim.

Many continued to believe in Christianity in private. I can offer no scholarly source to back up that part. It does appear that when Christians conquered a place the native Christians would come out of hiding. It has been many years, maybe I read it somewhere, maybe it is my conclusion.

The genuine non-Arab converts were mostly the Berbers and Turks. Turks were new to the region and had been polytheists, and thus were heavily proselytized. They also formed their own ruling class, and thus were accorded the same status as free Arab tribes.

Berbers were predominantly pagan before conversion to Islam. This was the main Kharijite stronghold, not Christians in Syria and Egypt and in Greco-Roman cities of North Africa.

[Straybow]

Yes, LOTM. Hourani, Lewis and numerous other sources (dead tree rather than internet) who aren't among the fawning Orientalists.

[lord of the mark]

I fear you misremember those sources, though. The Othmanli are not historically known at the time of the first crusade, for example. I think youre confusing them with a diffferent Turkish group, of which there were many.

[Elok]

Er, according to scripture, he could force it on them (I'm refraining from capitalizing 'He,' as, looking at it, it's really annoying). Being the son of God and all. Based on the texts we have to work with, that's the only conclusion. I understand that the Messiah was expected to be a military conqueror by some.

Please don't be a total ass and call me a fundie. If believing that there is a single truth is fundamentalist, yes, that's me, but that's not what the word typically means. Naturally, I'm going to be inclined to believe in the interpretation that seems most likely to be true. Hence, yes, "my interpretation is correct." Or rather, "this interpretation seems correct, I believe it rather than the others." That should be common sense. If there is no truth to be found in a teaching, it is useless, plain and simple. Beliefs and values exist as a guide for living, not to be collected like baseball cards and shown off to friends. As such, which particular ones you happen to have is not arbitrary.

Why the deuce would you believe on principles you do not believe have any grounding in reality? And what would a text be good for, if what it says could be read, with equal validity, "a = b" and "a > b" AND "a < b" ? That's not a scripture, that's a Rorschach inkblot test. I'll admit that I could be wrong, but texts exist to be studied in order to glean truth from them. If different people have contradictory readings, either one of them is right, all of them are wrong, or all of them are equally right and therefore the text is meaningless. We can be open-minded and listen to each others' arguments, but...it's just plain logic that if the texts and traditions have any meaning, that meaning is not "A" and "Not A."

I am saying that the text in question has been read incorrectly. Or not read at all, or blatantly ignored. Please address that concern, or I will read your next post as "I, LotM, am responsible for 9/11," and insist that my interpretation of it is just as valid as what you say it means. 'kay?

WRT Israel, I was led to believe that Israel was in essence transferred from the British Empire (which hadn't paid for it) to the would-be Israelis (who may have paid the Brits, but hadn't paid the Arabs by any means). If what you're saying is correct, and it was fairly purchased, I'm baffled as to why you don't bring it up more often, but okay. I'm also baffled as to why anybody would try to move into a neighborhood after receiving positive proof that the new neighbors hated their guts, such as killing the people who sold them the property. Valuing that particular hunk of land over the lives and safety of your own people seems, well, freaking nuts. Who knowingly moves his family into a war zone, given any other option?

Zionism is still a hunk of crap though. From an outsider's point of view, the identity of the "returners" is irrelevant. If a group of space aliens came to Earth and claimed it because they'd been forced out twenty million years ago, I wouldn't give a rat's rear about their cultural identity, and I don't see how I would be wrong to not care. All that matters is, are they going to play nice to get their land back? The humans currently living on Earth certainly didn't have any part in ejecting said aliens, why should we give it up just like that? We can sell it, we can give it, we can be nice and share it, but they have no automatic right to it by any rules I can think of.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by molly bloom
Except there's no evidence they possessed the modern notion of 'race'.

True enough, they focused on tribal identity. First the two tribes that supported Mohammed, then the others of the Mecca-Medina area, and finally all the tribes of the peninsula holding common language and culture. I.e., those tribes that weren't Jew or Christian (I recall there being 2 and 4 of these, respectively).

Once outside the Arabian peninsula the tribal "we" and "they" coincided with the modern notion of "race" quite neatly, so the results are indistinguishable.

[

The Arabs had states outside of the Arabian peninsula, and Arabs lived all through the Middle East and into the Roman and Sassanid Empires, as well as in independent Arab buffer states, so I don't see how the tribal 'we' and 'they' in any way coincides with the modern notion of race.

The Crusades began in western Asia Minor, which had only been held by the Othmanli a decade or so.

Incorrect- it was the Muslim Seljuk Turks.

Peasants in cities and towns were still almost entirely Christian (plus Zoroastrian in the east).

I'll ask, shall I ?

Where's your evidence for this ?

Steven Runciman in 'A History of the Crusades Part 2: the Kingdom of Jerusalem' mentions the Turkish and Arab aristocracies, and an urban Christian population in northern Syria made up of Jacobites,Nestorians and Armenians.

However he also mentions the Shi'ite Nosairi, the Druze, Arab nomads moving from the deserts, Muslim Kurds and Turcomans.

So I'm still not seeing any proof for your assertion that the majority of the peasants in Islam at the time of the Crusades were non-Muslim.

Some guy named Mohammed told them to convert or exterminate idolators, but to permit Jews and Christians to continue their beliefs. It was this whole religion thing called "Islam." Maybe there are references for it somewhere.

I'm not sure how that was meant to answer this:

And what decree or edict forbade non-Arabs to convert for nearly two centuries ?

Because it doesn't.

In fact the invasion of Visigothic Spain was led by a force of Muslim Berbers, Moors and Arabs- in 711 A.D.

One of the earlier converts to Islam was an Ethiopian, Bilal ibn Rabah.

And as I've mentioned, it was an Iranian who led the overthrow of the Ummayyads. So other than what I've already said about the taxation issue I'm not saying any evidence about forbidding converts to Islam.

It does appear that when Christians conquered a place the native Christians would come out of hiding. It has been many years, maybe I read it somewhere, maybe it is my conclusion.

Riiigghhhtttt....

I can offer no scholarly source to back up that part.

Sums that up too, I think.

Berbers were predominantly pagan before conversion to Islam.

Actually you'll find that Berbers had converted to Judaism and Christianity too. Queen Kahina led a mixed force of Jews and Berbers against the armies of Islam.

And of course if you have evidence that the Berbers were mostly pagan in the 7th and 8th Centuries, I'd love to see that as well.

This was the main Kharijite stronghold, not Christians in Syria and Egypt and in Greco-Roman cities of North Africa.

Can't remember asserting otherwise. However, kharijism originated with Arab tribes and proved a useful 'liberation' theology for any Berbers who resented Arab domination.

Turks were new to the region and had been polytheists,

Well they weren't actually new to the region, since Turks had been migrating individually and in groups since the the 10th Century. What was new was the size of the Seljuk forces, an influx on a much larger scale than any seen previously. And different Turkish people had been proselytized since well before the Crusades began- for over 200 years in fact.

[Straybow]

The Arabs had states outside of the Arabian peninsula, and Arabs lived all through the Middle East and into the Roman and Sassanid Empires, as well as in independent Arab buffer states, so I don't see how the tribal 'we' and 'they' in any way coincides with the modern notion of race.

And all were considered free Arab tribes or states, second in status only to the ruling tribes. Still pretty much coincides with "race."

meh, so "overwhelming majority" applied only to western Asia Minor, and "large minority" would apply in other areas. And I can't remember, off the top of my head, sitting here on my couch, which Turks took Asian provinces from Constantinople. What's more, still other Turkish tribes had dribbled and drabbled into the region and been proselytized for some time.

That's such a huge difference... or not. The point stands that all those Syrian and Berber "converts" were just eager to escape the taxes. Or to find steady employment and loot fighting for the Arabs.

And the point still stands in my response to Cort Haus. Dar al Harb is a doctrine of conquest and rulership by divine right. That doctrine and attitude persists to this day despite how apologists try to weasel out of it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow
And I can't remember, off the top of my head, sitting here on my couch, which Turks took Asian provinces from Constantinople. What's more, still other Turkish tribes had dribbled and drabbled into the region and been proselytized for some time.

Yeah, Manzikert being such an unimportant battle in world history and all....

The point stands that all those Syrian and Berber "converts" were just eager to escape the taxes. Or to find steady employment and loot fighting for the Arabs.

So ? Charlemagne converted the Saxons to Christianity by force. I had supposed Christianity to be 'the religion' of peace, yet surprisingly throughout its history (and through the use of scriptural and doctrinal justification) it has been anything but.

Many of the Crusaders were effectively dispossessed by primogeniture inheritance laws in the West; the Crusade to regain the Holy Places also represented a chance to carve out states of their own and to plunder. Not so different from the activities of their Viking ancestors then, in the case of the Norman French....

Once Christianity became the official state religion of Rome and of the Roman ruling classes it also became more popular too- especially when pagan temples were closed and pagans persecuted.

One of the main reasons Islam had such rapid success in the Hellenized Middle East was because of the violent disagreements between fellow Christians- Orthodox Byzantines overtaxed Monophysites and Jacobites and Armenians (all viewed as heretical in one way or another) and persecuted Nestorians.

And of course many of these Christians were Arabs, and so welcomed the rule of people speaking the same language who didn't care what sect of Christianity they belonged to.

[Straybow]

Manzikert is in Armenia, not on the western end of Asia Minor directly across from Constantinople. Although, of course, they were overwhelmingly Christians and fled into the west from the murderous Seljuks, only to be later conquered there (by whomever) as well. They reportedly lined the route of the Crusaders with cheering throngs.

"The Saxons," right. There were more Saxon kingdoms than you can shake a stick at. At least one was farther east than Charlemagne ever conquered, in what is now Poland. At least 4 Saxon kingdoms were in Britain, and they were Christian long before Charlemagne came to power.

C'mon, didn't you know that? Do your research, man!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow
Manzikert is in Armenia, not on the western end of Asia Minor directly across from Constantinople.

So ? Did I say it was anywhere else ?


Given that you confused the Seljuks with the Ottomans, it's not me that would appear to need a geography or history lesson.

Although, of course, they were overwhelmingly Christians and fled into the west from the murderous Seljuks, only to be later conquered there (by whomever) as well. They reportedly lined the route of the Crusaders with cheering throngs.

I have no idea who this 'they were' refers to.

"The Saxons," right. There were more Saxon kingdoms than you can shake a stick at. At least one was farther east than Charlemagne ever conquered, in what is now Poland. At least 4 Saxon kingdoms were in Britain, and they were Christian long before Charlemagne came to power.

I referred to the SAXONS of Continental Europe, not the ANGLO-SAXONS who settled in the British Isles some centuries before Charlemagne came to his throne..

Anyone at all familiar with the wars of Charlemagne would have been familiar with the distinction, especially as the monk Alcuin, sent from ANGLO-SAXON England to the court of Charlemagne to create an educational system for him, disapproved of his crusades against the SAXONS.

C'mon, didn't you know that? Do your research, man!

Oh, the irony....


This may help you distinguish the Saxony or Saxonia of Charlemagne's time from the later Kingdom of Saxony and the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England:

Saxony (which is today northwestern Germany and parts of the Netherlands) was still ruled by the Saxons, who had remained pagan. They were a semi-nomadic people who lived in part by preying on farming communities and they were a sore thorn in Charles' side.

The Carolingian Empire

Conquests: Saxony

http://historymedren.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=historymedren&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fhistory.boisestate.edu%2Fwestciv%2Fcharles%2F

A helpful map for you too.