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So, basically, what I'm getting from the people that say the crusades were good, is that because the Christians went to the Middle East, ostensibly to kill Muslims, which meant coming into contact with their culture, the Christians were civilised by the Muslims?
You're oversimplifying a good deal there, BE. Muslims offered second-class citizenship to Christians, Jews, and I think sometimes Zoroastrians (though not always; eventually the persecution got so bad that today there are no full copies of the Zend Avesta--their "Bible"--extant). Everyone else got the choice between conversion or the sword. They were quite vicious towards heretical Muslims. The RCC was equally vicious towards its own heretics, gave Jews what could only be described as third-class citizenship, and would have killed any unprotected Muslims they encountered (for much the same reason that Palestinians today are more savage to Jews than Israelis are to Arabs). That last would have been a very small item, as Western Europe was a ****hole for much of the Middle Ages and the Muslims had no reason to go there. Heretical Muslims attained refuge by splintering into rival caliphates; this option was not available to Christians until the Reformation, so many fled to Islamic regions for shelter.
So, uh, not a whole lot of difference. The second-class citizenship to People of the Book may be ascribed to benevolence, self-interest or indifference, depending on one's mood and biases. Christians and Jews were an important source of tax revenue, due to the lower taxes placed on Muslims; one of the early caliphates (Umayyads?) collapsed because the tax difference was too high and people were converting to Islam in droves to escape it. Even when they lowered it, the privileges given to Muslims were a strong incentive to external aggression, because Christians and Jews converting would slowly but inevitably collapse the tax base and drive a quest for new revenue.
Muslims were always at least nominally equal, not always so in practice. France would have been overrun in Charles Martel's time if not for a fortunately-timed revolt by Berber Muslims sick of being treated like cannon fodder by their Arab brethren. Muslim attitudes towards the arts and sciences varied greatly with the times, just as in Western Europe. At times they were great patrons, at other times woeful obscurantists. They could be just as corrupt as the popes, particularly the mid to late Abbasids.
In general, historians are very eager to make much of Muslim virtues and Catholic vices. I would say that the bulk of their cultural differences are best ascribed to their different starting conditions. At the start of the Middle Ages, England and Germany were barely developed--the latter was mostly pagan-infested woodlands--and France had been picked over by endless barbarian invasions. They were also initially splintered into dozens if not hundreds of tiny polities that fought routinely. They were starting to get things together around the time the Vikings started marauding.
The Muslims, by contrast, inherited half the old Roman world largely intact and began in perfect unity. They were able to destroy the Sassanians and knock the Byzantines on their butts thanks to beautiful historic timing; Muhammad's lifetime saw a decades-long war between the two empires that exhausted both and left them ripe for plunder. Also the Byzantines had managed to alienate most of the land the Muslims eventually took over. Until the Crusades they faced no significant external threats.
Is it really any surprise that the former people developed a barbaric and insular point of view, or that the latter were comparatively magnanimous?
I think things started going downhill for the ottomans after 1600 or so. Before they were largely admired by the westerners. actually the book that I didn't buy talked about ingrained turkophilia by the west but I discard it as an attempt to create an isolationist coccoon comsotheory to greece.
in isolation, only dicators prosper.
In the mazaower book it also talked about how the balkans actually started to get all bloody because they simply espoused french ideals about the modern nation state. minus the west's biological racism, thankfully
anyway I'm not saying that the ottomans were saints just a whole of a lot better than the catholics.
and it's awlays about taxation isn't it?
some things never change.
I don't know a lot about the Ottomans specifically, since I'm more interested in the Medieval and Byzantine stuff that ended by the time they arrived on the scene. But I haven't heard anything exceptionally terrible about them compared to their contemporaries. I do know they were a major power for centuries, it took combined European might to counter them--and they started to decline around the same time the West took off. Part of this may be ascribed to colonial revenue, I'm sure, but there is something to be said for Western individualism. It can be taken too far, and has, particularly in the U.S., but it has paid dividends.
The trick, I think, is to recognize individual freedom as a prerequisite for human flourishing, and not identical to flourishing in itself. We should not be teaching children to be themselves, follow their dreams, and never give up without thinking about whether their "selves", dreams and plans are good things to begin with. I think we've all but abolished the notion that self-determination can lead you to bad places. We are like people who noted that water is necessary for life, so they decided to live at the bottom of a lake.
I don't know about "Turkophilia" today. Possibly by real policy wonks, but I think most Americans don't even realize Turks are ethnically distinct from Arabs.
Yeah from my POV such books while interesting in reading about differences and the byzantine way are far too often used by some (and very "knowledgable people" to create a wedge between greece and the rest of europe.
always like that, you know axing at the foundations of a modern liberal tolerant state.
it's always the same. like there is some kind of ancient mysticism that we have abandoned and that is superior to cold west and we should re-find it.
and it doesn't matter if greece is wealtrhy or not. happened before and happens now. it pisses me off because it's a very nice jusitication why noone is doing what needs to be done to get out of this mess.
instead just surrender to some sort of mystical manifest destiny that the hellenic orient possesses.
laughable.
I admit that it can hold water on ecclesiastical matters though
I suspect every country does something similar in hard times. Whenever things go wrong, the first question is "where did we go wrong?" You look back to an earlier time in history when things were okay, and note what changed since. "Obviously" the solution is to turn back the clock, so things will be as simple as we imagine they used to be before that point of departure. This is not rational, but I think it's more or less human nature to do it. It makes superficial sense, and it's extremely flattering to one's cultural pride.
Okay, looking back: what exactly are you claiming WRT Christian-Islam fusion? Do you think that there is some sort of special affinity between the two (even beyond their common roots as Abrahamic faiths?), or just that it's possible to fuse them? The latter really is possible for any two faiths you care to name; I've known plenty of spiritual-but-not-religious folks who just mashed together, say, Christianity and Buddhism, which have no common roots and only a few very broad things in common.
Or do you simply mean that they can coexist in peace? I'd say certainly; despite fourteen years of bombing the snot out of Muslim countries, we in the US have very, very few problems with our Muslims.
Okay, looking back: what exactly are you claiming WRT Christian-Islam fusion? Do you think that there is some sort of special affinity between the two (even beyond their common roots as Abrahamic faiths?), or just that it's possible to fuse them? The latter really is possible for any two faiths you care to name; I've known plenty of spiritual-but-not-religious folks who just mashed together, say, Christianity and Buddhism, which have no common roots and only a few very broad things in common.
Or do you simply mean that they can coexist in peace? I'd say certainly; despite fourteen years of bombing the snot out of Muslim countries, we in the US have very, very few problems with our Muslims.
Well they have blown you to pieces they decapitate you regularly. It not like they love you or they don't fight back. Maybe those living in the Us are too few and too afraid.
But yes I was talking about the obscene practice of discovering new enemies paint them as devils and then kill them. Or the alleged incompatibility between Muslims and Christians. It just isn't there
Last edited by Bereta_Eder; August 31, 2015, 09:48.
No, I mean, I hear reports about how rowdy Muslim communities in Europe can get--stories about North African teens rioting in the streets of Paris, etc. By and large, we don't get that from Muslims. I've read claims that it's because our Muslims are more ethnically diverse, among other explanations. But even in European countries, if you've got millions of Muslims and the streets aren't constantly slick with blood, it would seem that most of them are peaceful, no?
In general, we're much more scared of Mexicans, for various reasons. But even they don't riot. They just take the crappy jobs we don't want to do, and our curses for "stealing" said jobs from us.
No, I mean, I hear reports about how rowdy Muslim communities in Europe can get--stories about North African teens rioting in the streets of Paris, etc. By and large, we don't get that from Muslims. I've read claims that it's because our Muslims are more ethnically diverse, among other explanations. But even in European countries, if you've got millions of Muslims and the streets aren't constantly slick with blood, it would seem that most of them are peaceful, no?
They are probably too afraid to riot. Take a look at this thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/c...did_your_life/ , rioting Muslims would probably get shot dead by Evangelical Protestants. European Muslims are more like African Americans, stuck in a vicious circle of mutual distrust and aggression with The Man.
Graffiti in a public toilet
Do not require skill or wit
Among the **** we all are poets
Among the poets we are ****.
I don't think it's fear of getting shot. Black people are still feared and hated by a lot of people, and the police shoot them a lot, and they still riot from time to time.
I have minimal experience with Muslims, but lots with Arabs, since I spent about ten years going to an Arab Christian church. The Antiochian (Arab) archdiocese has always been much more willing than others to assimilate and welcome converts. Back when Greeks and Russians were holding services all in their respective languages and giving the stink-eye to curious WASPs who showed up on Sundays, the Antiochians were welcoming in something like three thousand converts from evangelicalism en masse. I think it's because, even before 9/11, Arabs were widely regarded as hopelessly foreign, wrong and weird in a way Greeks and even Russians were not. They didn't want to be different; they wanted to be ordinary, happy, prosperous Americans.
No, I mean, I hear reports about how rowdy Muslim communities in Europe can get--stories about North African teens rioting in the streets of Paris, etc.
That's different. In these countries there was the issue of colonization.
It changes perpsectives.
Kind of like being a non black in places like magadaskar.
There is a feeling that (of course not to all, of course) that since you're the "colonizer" and have "exploited" them, they are very em, unscrupulous towards you. (never mind if you have nothing to do with that or your country)
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