Early Christianity in Asia and Africa

[Regina]

No it did, I don't see how it couldn't have been violent personally. But there wasn't this extreme "convert to Islam or die" sentiment behind it that has become fashionable among modern jihadists.

[abaris]

No it did, I don't see how it couldn't have been violent personally. But there wasn't this extreme "convert to Islam or die" sentiment behind it that has become fashionable among modern jihadists.

Which wasn't the case in the organised realms. At the most, christians and jews had to pay higher taxes to excercise their religion. Proselityzing, of course, was forbidden. But as a general rule, a jew was much better off in one of the Islamic kingdoms than he was in the West at the same time.

[Mudhammam]

No it did, I don't see how it couldn't have been violent personally. But there wasn't this extreme "convert to Islam or die" sentiment behind it that has become fashionable among modern jihadists.

So... what about the ninth Sura of the Qur'an (and in much of it elsewhere), where Muhammad explicitly gives the pagans four months to evacuate with the ultimatum that those who refuse will be summarily executed... Or the hadith in which, as one of his final statements, he signaled the desire that Islam be the only religion on the Arabian Peninsula... Or the 8th Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, who graphically describes the various assassinations, sieges, murders, etc. of Muhammad and his gang of degenerates?

[abaris]

Seems to me, you don't know very much about history and Islam in general. Christians and jews aren't considered Pagans. As opposed to the West and muslims.

[Regina]

No it did, I don't see how it couldn't have been violent personally. But there wasn't this extreme "convert to Islam or die" sentiment behind it that has become fashionable among modern jihadists.

So... what about the ninth Sura of the Qur'an (and in much of it elsewhere), where Muhammad explicitly gives the pagans four months to evacuate with the ultimatum that those who refuse will be summarily executed... Or the hadith in which, as one of his final statements, he signaled the desire that Islam be the only religion on the Arabian Peninsula... Or the 8th Muslim historian In Ishaq, who graphically describes the various assassinations, sieges, murders, etc. of Muhammad and his gang of degenerates?

What the Quran says Muhammad did, and what the Islamic expansionists in the following centuries did, are separate things.

And of course a lot the conquests were violent, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any conquest in history with absolutely no violence. The sieges, assassinations, rape and pillage and piracy of foreign lands did happen, I'm not refuting that.

However they were not walking into places literally saying to common people "you must convert to Islam, leave, or die". That's the argument here. We can see that didn't happen en masse because the survival of indigenous Middle Eastern and North African Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews into modern times suggests that didn't happen. We can talk all day about the violence of the expansions, they were violent, but it's not balanced to focus on early-period Islam as this unprecedently bloodthirsty violent civilisation in a time where pretty much everyone was very violent. Nothing was happening in a vaccuum, these were violent times.

By the same token though, yes I can recognise bullshit historical revisionism when I see it. I'm not down with pretending any medieval civilisation was a utopian beacon of peace, which is becoming fashionable among revisionist historians and cultural relativists in regard to Islam. That's silly as well. There's no balance here, you've got people on one end claiming this was the most perfect, civilised form of society ever to come out of humanity, while at the other end you've got others arguing it was literal Hell on Earth.

[Mudhammam]

Seems to me, you don't know very much about history and Islam in general. Christians and jews aren't considered Pagans. As opposed to the West and muslims.

I know the "People of the Book" aren't Pagans. They were given the opportunity to pay the Jizya or submit to Islam.

[Minimalist]

No it did, I don't see how it couldn't have been violent personally. But there wasn't this extreme "convert to Islam or die" sentiment behind it that has become fashionable among modern jihadists.

So... what about the ninth Sura of the Qur'an (and in much of it elsewhere), where Muhammad explicitly gives the pagans four months to evacuate with the ultimatum that those who refuse will be summarily executed... Or the hadith in which, as one of his final statements, he signaled the desire that Islam be the only religion on the Arabian Peninsula... Or the 8th Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, who graphically describes the various assassinations, sieges, murders, etc. of Muhammad and his gang of degenerates?

The koran is as much a pile of propaganda as your bible. 

What history is telling us is that the initial spread of the so-called islamic armies resulted in the defeat of the military forces opposing them; generally Persians and Byzantines.  But, regardless of the fucking koran, it appears that they did not indulge in ethnic cleansing - to use the modern euphemism for genocide - against the captured populations.  Again, when dealing with religitards it is important to figure out what they did.  That is history.  As opposed to what their holy books say, which is horseshit.

[Minimalist]

As much as they might love this book for showing clear examples of muslim toleration of xtians and jews at least at the beginning it is analysis like this which will get the fatwas and rocks flying.  Muslims are no longer "tolerant."

The Quran tells many familiar biblical stories, featuring Abraham, Moses, and other key figures of the Old Testament, in addition to lengthy passages concerning Jesus and Mary, and of course the Quranic focus on the Last Judgment strongly recalls biblical texts. But generally, the most potent outside influences seem to have come from Eastern forms of Christianity. Most of the Quranic stories about Mary and Jesus find their parallels not in the canonical four Gospels but in apocryphal texts that circulated widely in the East, such as the Protevangelium of James and the Arabic Infancy Gospel. The Quran cites the miracle in which the infant Jesus shaped a bird out of clay and then breathed life into it, a tale also found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Quran also presents the death of Jesus in exactly the language of those heretical Eastern Christians known as the Docetists, who saw the event as an illusion rather than a concrete reality: “They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them.” One sura includes the common Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the saintly young men who escaped a persecution by sleeping many years in a cave.18

So strong are these connections that over the past half century scholars have questioned whether the Quran could even have originated in Arabia, or whether it was collected or constructed somewhere else with a prominent Christian and Jewish population, perhaps in Syria or Mesopotamia. In a controversial work, German scholar Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the Quran is a confused translation from earlier Syriac Christian texts, at a time when Syriac was the lingua franca of the Middle East. Significantly, given the radical implications of the work and the possibility of an angry Muslim reaction, the name “Luxenberg” is a pseudonym, and his real identity remains secret. When the Quran was constructed, he notes, the only Arabic schools were in southern Mesopotamia, at al-Anbar and al-Hirah, where “the Arabs of that region had been Christianized and instructed by Syrian Christians.” Often, obscure Quranic phrases make sense when understood in the Syriac context, and can be elucidated from the well-known works of Syriac writers like Ephraem the Syrian.19

“In its origin,” claims Luxenberg, “the Quran is a Syro-Aramaic liturgical book, with hymns and extracts from Scriptures which might have been used in sacred Christian services.” The very name Quran, he thinks, derives from the root qr’, “to read,” and it is equivalent to the Syriac qeryana, the church lectionary used to proclaim the gospel in public readings. In his view, “the Quran intended itself first of all to be understood as nothing more than a liturgical book with selected texts from the Scriptures (the Old and New Testament) and not at all as a substitute.” Some of Luxenberg’s detailed readings produce jaw-dropping results. In the conventional translation, Sura 96—commonly thought to be the oldest part of the Quran—ends with the verse “Nay! obey him not, and make obeisance and draw nigh [to Allah].” Luxenberg’s retranslation reads: “You ought not to heed him at all, perform instead your divine service, and take part in the liturgy of Eucharist.” Or again, Syriac Christian visions of paradise promised the believers exotic fruits such as white raisins, or hur. For Luxenberg, when Syriac texts were absorbed into the Quran, translators made many errors, and believers were now promised not raisins buthouris, virgins. Hence the seventy-two virgins that martyrs will reputedly receive on entry into paradise.20

Luxenberg’s work has been much criticized, and not just by defenders of strict Islamic orthodoxy. Some critics think he underplays the influence of Jewish texts, particularly the Targums, while overplaying Christian elements. Others attack his linguistic knowledge. But whatever the scholarly verdict on Luxenberg’s theory, there is no doubt that Eastern Christians were a well-known presence in the Arabian world, and influenced the early development of Islam.

[abaris]

As much as they might love this book for showing clear examples of muslim toleration of xtians and jews at least at the beginning it is analysis like this which will get the fatwas and rocks flying.  Muslims are no longer "tolerant."

And why do you think this came to be? The region we're talking about is centuries of Ottoman oppression, followed by Western oppression, turning right into dictatorships. Sometimes Western, sometimes Soviet puppets.

They never had a chance at forming their own identity and culture. And looking at the map with its straight lines, shows everyone with two brain cells to rub together that these aren't grown but forced countries. Same as Africa.

[Minimalist]

As the book makes clear, it was the aftermath of the Mongol invasions which scared the shit out of the muslims.  Had the Mongols overrun the Mameluke kingdom of Egypt there would have been no major islamic kingdom left.  As it was the Mamelukes won the Battle of Ain Jalut and the Mongols were then distracted by dynastic problems and never did get back for a return engagement.  The Mongol Empire began to ebb but it was a near run thing and, as noted, the muslims did not lose sight of the fact that the Mongols had largely spared xtians because of earlier Nestorian missionary efforts in Central Asia.

Payback is a bitch.

The Ottomans were a different story.  They were muslims but by then the die was cast.