Posted on 11/27/2006 6:49:57 AM PST by askmuslim1
An Israeli Journalist's response to Pope Benedict regarding recent talk about Muhammad's Sword
Muhammad's Sword:
The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece . Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith--and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries.
The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire ) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book." In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service--a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims--the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now? There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism"-- when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
About the Author: Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist and peace activist. He was a member of the Knesset from 1965 to 1973 and from 1979 to 1981.
As a youth, he was a member of the Revisionist Zionist paramilitary group, Irgun. During the 1950s and the 1960s he was the publisher and chief editor of the Haolam Hazeh weekly magazine.
He founded the Gush Shalom “The Peace Bloc” movement, which he leads up to this day. In 2002, a documentary was made about Avnery's life entitled Uri Avnery: Warrior for Peace.
http://www.askmuslims.com/facts.html
The article "Muhammad's Sword" by Uri Avnery, an Israeli Journalist. The link to the full article is http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/avnery/avnery9.html
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
And Mohammed was demonically possessed by the devil/allah.
What Muslims never mention is that all Jews were expelled from Muslim Spain by the Muslims in the 12th century. Maimonides was one of those who left; most of them went to Christian parts of Spain or to other parts of the Middle East. Muslims made the Jews were a yellow star sewn to ther clothing, and Christians had to wear a yellow cross. Many of the things later done by Christians to Jews in Spain were practices that they had learned from their Muslim masters in the past, who originally applied these techniques to both Jews and Christians to control them.
No wonder the author's party is called the Revisionist Zionists.
So. Why did Spain have to be reconquered?
How about the Albanians and Bosnians?
What a load of crap. All of North Africa, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and large parts of Saudi Arabia were all Christian. Now they are a memory or a shrinking persecuted minority.
For example in the "Golden Age of Islam is Spain"
Muslim Spain was Christian Spain for over 400 years before being conquered by Islamic Armies in the 8th Century. That is the way the Islamic Religion has been historically spread, though military invasion and occupation. Treatment of conquered people has the same goal, the minimizing of other religions and conversion of the indigenous people. Among other rules for non Muslims in Muslim Spain; Christians and Jews could not bear arms -- Muslims could; Christians and Jews could not ride horses -- Muslims could; Christians and Jews had to get permission to build or fix places or worship -- Muslims did not; Christians and Jews had to pay certain taxes which Muslims did not; Christians could not proselytize -- Muslims could; Christians and Jews had to bow to their Muslim masters; Christians and Jews had to live under the laws set forth in the Koran, not under either their own religious or secular law; Christian’s and Jew's word in a court of law was not equal to a Muslim's Word; Christian and Jewish families had to give up a son for conversion and military service in Muslim armies and the most beautiful and largest Christian Churches were converted to Mosques. And the list goes on.
The saga of the self-loathing Jew continues...
How about the Albanians and Bosnians?
How are the Jews doing in Saudi Arabia? Iran?
Do you think he'll answer that one?
Welcome to Free Republic. Are you wearing a seatbelt?
I think he's a troll who will soon be zotted.
One might describe this post as a suicide belt.
Yup
Welcome to Free Republic. Now be gone!
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