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<< [continued]
TOO TIRED TO FIGHT?:
The Monophysites before the
Islamic invasion had endured a devastating twenty year war between the
Byzantines and the Iranian Sassanids, with so much suffering, death and
misery, would a broken people have the stomach for a fight? I don’t
think so!
AH! HISTORY SPEAKS!:
One of the most silent chapters of
early Islamic history was the rebellion of Christians in the next few
decades after initial Islamic occupation. YES! The Christians who welcomed
the Muslims as enemies of their enemy (the Byzantines) and liberators were
the same Christians who REBELLED against Muslim rule.
Why?
As Bat Ye’or pointed in her book
“The Decline of Eastern Christainity”, the Christians under
Islamic rule were treated as second class citizens. Imagine that, a
majority people who, in their own homeland, were treated as second class
citizens! Under this “tolerant” second class treatment, Christians
were subjected to demoralizing humiliations that were a constant reminder
of the inferiority of their religion. This included paying an extra tax
called the JIZYA tax; restrictions on religious buildings
(cannot be repaired and no new buildings); the appropriation of
churches for conversions into mosques. Mind you, these conditions were
agreed upon from the very first Islamic conquest so it is not something
that was imposed later.
Interestingly enough, the
Christians who are cited as the ones rebelling against Islamic rule were
the Coptic Christians of Egypt. Just like today, their ancestors were sick
and tired of being abused as a “tolerated” religion. In their long
history, there have been specific episodes of the Copts applying the
principle “my enemy’s enemies are my friends” against the
hated Muslim rulers. One example is the Muslim siege on Byzantine
Constantinople in AD 717. Disgruntled Egyptian Christians who were forced
into slavery to row Muslim ships deserted en masse when the Byzantine
Emperor engineered an escape for them. The irony is that their former
Byzantine masters were now considered their friends! There is evidence of
Monophysites resettling in Byzantine territory after escaping Muslim rule
to form a vibrant community in the empire to the extent that Byzantine
religious authorities were shocked at such tolerance of formerly hated
heretics!
It was possible for significant
Coptic rebellions in the past because of their sheer numbers. Sadly, the
formerly 9 million strong Coptic population has been reduced to a pitiable
700,000 or so people.
ALAS! POOR HINDUS AND
ZOROASTARIANS!:
Any tolerance for them by Islam?
Alas, no such thing! They were not listed in the “People of the Book”.
Therefore, no tolerance, if it existed at all!
WHAT ABOUT THE JEWS?:
By now some Muslims will have
salivated at the prospect of my omission of the Jews. They would ask me to
explain Byzantine oppression of Jews from one religion to another as
opposed to the treatment of Islam regarding the Jews as more tolerant and
more benevolent.
My reply?
It’s a draw! Yes, the Byzantines
were vicious in their treatment of Jews. But so was Islam (to a lesser but
no more better extent)! The conditions of Jizya applied to the Jews, as
was the restriction of repairing and constructing religious buildings. The
Jews didn’t rebel because of their smaller numbers and vulnerability
(until the rise of the Jewish Khazar Khaganate who resisted and fought the
Islamic empire of the Ummayads and Abbasids)
CONCLUSIONS:
Realism
more than religious ideology has defined the “myth” of
tolerance. It wasn’t Muslim initiative to be tolerant and benevolent as
has been claimed by apologists, but rather, other extraneous conditions
that ‘apparently” created this façade of tolerance. The 7th
century Muslims used the sectarian rivalry of their new Christian subjects
to ease their occupation by employing them to run their empire. After all,
an infidel is preferable to a heretic right? Can you imagine the ferocity
of violence, intolerance and bigotry if their Christian subjects were seen
as Islamic heretics? They would be no better than the Byzantines, of whom,
they use as a consistent example to highlight their résumé of
“tolerance”!
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