What made non-Muslims convert to Islam, leading to the creation of the Islamic world?
Early historical sources—both Muslim and non-Muslim—make clear that the Islamic empire was forged by the sword; that people embraced Islam, not so much out of sincere faith, but for a myriad of reasons—from converting in order to enjoy the boons of being on the “winning team” to converting in order to evade the dooms of being on the “losing team.”
Modern day Muslims and other apologists—primarily in academia, government, and mainstream media—reject this idea. They argue that the non-Muslims who embraced Islam did so from sheer conviction; that the ancestors of today’s 1.5 billion Muslims all converted to Islam due to its intrinsic appeal; that the modern day coercion and persecution committed by the Islamic State and other organizations is an aberration.
Of course, as mentioned, the primary texts of history are full of anecdotes demonstrating the opposite. However, because ours is an increasingly ahistorical society, in this essay I endeavor to show that sheer common sense alone validates what history records, namely, that the Islamic world and its populace was forged through violent coercion.
To do so, I will use Egypt—one of the most important Muslim majority nations and my ancestral homeland—as a paradigm. I will show how a historic fact that Islam’s apologists habitually boast of—that there are still millions of Christians in Egypt (approximately 10% of the population)—is not proof of Islam’s tolerance but rather its intolerance.
—–
In the 7th century, when Islam was being formulated, Egypt had been Christian for centuries,[1] before most of Europe had converted. Alexandria was one of the most important ecclesiastical centers of ancient Christian learning and, along with Rome and Antioch, one of the original three sees.[2] Much literary and ongoing archaeological evidence attest to the fact that Christianity permeated the whole of Egypt.
Writing around the year 400—roughly two-and-a-half centuries before the Arab invasion—John Cassian, a Christian monk from the region of modern day Romania, observed that
the traveler from Alexandria in the north to Luxor in the south would have in his ears along the whole journey, the sounds of prayers and hymns of the monks, scattered in the desert, from the monasteries and from the caves, from monks, hermits, and anchorites.[3]
And in recent times, both the oldest parchment to contain words from the Gospel (dating to the 1st century) and the oldest image of Christ were discovered in separate regions of Egypt.
The question now becomes: what made such an ancient and heavily Christian nation become Islamic? More specifically, what made the ancestors of today’s Egyptian Muslims—most of who were Coptic Christians—convert to Islam?
For an objective answer to this question, a completely overlooked factor must be considered.
—–
In the 7th century, when Muslim Arabs overran Egypt, and on into the medieval era, religion was not something to be casually adhered to or changed as it is today in the West. People of that era were true believers; there was no alternative narrative—no so-called “science vs God” claims.
Whatever religion a person was born into was accepted with absolute conviction—despite the many movies that project modernity onto Medieval Christians. (Thus the focal character of Kingdom of Heaven, Balian, and all other Christian protagonists reject the “fanatical Christians” and exhibit a more open, tolerant, and “nuanced” view on religion, including Islam. Such depictions are anachronisms with little grounding in history.)
In Medieval Europe, the truths of Christianity were etched into the minds of all, from youth on up. There was no doubt—because there was no alternative. As historian of Medieval Europe and the Crusades Thomas Madden puts it:
[T]he medieval world was not the modern world. For medieval people, religion was not something one just did at church. It was their science, their philosophy, their politics, their identity, and their hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth.
In this context, to apostatize, to leave the Christian faith, especially for another creed, was the most unthinkable of all transgressions against one’s own soul—a sin that would lead to eternal damnation.
It was of course the same with Muslims. The point here is that pre-modern man took the religion of his people, his tribe, his world, very seriously—especially when such religions taught that failure to do so, or worse, to willingly apostatize, would lead to eternal hell.
Put differently, even if Islam offered intrinsic appeal, the idea that pre-modern Christians were “free” to choose to convert—free of guilt, free of fear, free of existential trauma—is anachronistic and thus implausible.
Again, Western man, who lives in an era when people change religions as often as they change shoes, may have great difficulty in fully appreciating this idea. But it is true nonetheless.
After writing that “Christians saw crusades to the east as acts of love and charity, waged against Muslim conquerors in defense of Christian people and their lands,” Madden correctly observes:
It is easy enough for modern people to dismiss the crusades as morally repugnant or cynically evil. Such judgements, however, tell us more about the observer than the observed. They are based on uniquely modern (and, therefore, Western) values. If, from the safety of our modern world, we are quick to condemn the medieval crusader, we should be mindful that he would be just as quick to condemn us [regarding our values and priorities]…. In both societies, the medieval and the modern, people fight for what is most dear to them.[4]
—–
If Europeans were this dedicated to Christianity in the medieval era, what of the Copts of Egypt who were Christian many centuries earlier? Indeed, according to some historical sources, Egypt’s ancient Christians may have been especially tenacious in their zeal.
What, then, made them convert to Islam in mass is the question before us?
Is it plausible to believe that the primitive Muslim conquerors of Egypt did not discriminate against its indigenous Christians or pressure them to convert to Islam (even as Muslims do so now in the “enlightened” modern era)?
Is it true, to quote Georgetown University professor John Esposito, that Christians “were free to practice their faith to worship and be governed by their religious leaders and laws in such areas as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In exchange, they were required to pay tribute, a poll tax (jizya) that entitled them to Muslim protection from outside aggression and exempted them from military service.” (Rebuttal to this assertion here.)
And yet, though left in peace and unpressured, Egypt’s original Christians found the new creed of sword-swinging, camel-riding Arabs so intrinsically appealing that they willingly apostatized in mass from the religion of their forefathers—a religion that was so fundamental to their being, albeit in a way modern man cannot comprehend?
In fact, common sense suggests that nothing less than extremely severe circumstances and hardships—persecution—prompted the Copts to convert to Islam.
—–
Of course, for the historian who reads the primary sources—as opposed to the mainstream works of fiction being peddled as “history” by the likes of Karen Armstrong and others—the above exercise in common sense is superfluous.
For the primary sources make clear that, while Egypt’s Copts acquiesced to dhimmi status—constantly paying large sums of extortion money and accepting life as third class subjects with few rights simply to remain Christian—bouts of extreme persecution regularly flared up. And with each one, more and more Christians converted to Islam in order to find relief.[5]
One telling example: in Muslim historian Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi’s (d. 1442) authoritative history of Egypt, anecdote after anecdote is recorded of Muslims burning churches, slaughtering Christians, and enslaving their women and children. The only escape then—as it is increasingly today—was for Christians to convert to Islam.
After recording one particularly egregious bout of persecution, where countless Christians were slaughtered, enslaved, and raped, and where reportedly some 30,000 churches in Egypt and Syria were destroyed—a staggering number that further indicates how Christian the Near East was before Islam—the pious Muslim historian makes clear why Christians converted: “Under these circumstances a great many Christians became Muslims” (emphasis added).[6]
Alongside these times of extreme persecution, the entrenched dhimmi system saw the increasingly impoverished Egyptian people slowly convert to Islam over the centuries, so that today only 10% remain Christian.
Consider the words of Alfred Butler, a 19th century historian writing before political correctness came to dominate academia. In The Arab Conquest of Egypt, he highlights the “vicious system of bribing the Christians into conversion”:
[A]lthough religious freedom was in theory secured for the Copts under the capitulation, it soon proved in fact to be shadowy and illusory. For a religious freedom which became identified with social bondage and with financial bondage could have neither substance nor vitality. As Islam spread, the social pressure upon the Copts became enormous, while the financial pressure at least seemed harder to resist, as the number of Christians or Jews who were liable for the poll-tax [jizya] diminished year by year, and their isolation became more conspicuous. . . . [T]he burdens of the Christians grew heavier in proportion as their numbers lessened [that is, the more Christians converted to Islam, the more the burdens on the remaining few grew]. The wonder, therefore, is not that so many Copts yielded to the current which bore them with sweeping force over to Islam, but that so great a multitude of Christians stood firmly against the stream, nor have all the storms of thirteen centuries moved their faith from the rock of its foundation.[7]
—–
The reader will bear in mind that although the above exposition concerns Egypt, the same paradigm applies to the rest of conquered Christian lands. Today the whole of North Africa is reportedly 99% Muslim—yet few are aware that it was Christian majority in the 7th century when Islam invaded. St. Augustine—arguably the father of Western Christian theology—hailed from modern day Algeria.
Thus it is not an exaggeration to say that “the Islamic world” would be a fraction of its size, or might not exist at all, were it not for the fact that non-Muslims converted to Islam simply to evade oppression and persecution. Once all these Christians converted to Islam, all their progeny became Muslim in perpetuity, thanks to Islam’s apostasy law, which bans Muslims from leaving Islam on pain of death. Indeed, according to Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading cleric in the Muslim world, “If the [death] penalty for apostasy was ignored, there would not be an Islam today; Islam would have ended on the death of the prophet.”
Which leads to one of Islam’s most bitterest of ironies: a great many of today’s Christians, especially those in the Arab world, are being persecuted by Muslims whose own ancestors were persecuted Christians who converted to Islam to end their own suffering. In other words, Muslim descendants of persecuted Christians are today persecuting their Christian cousins—and thus perpetuating the cycle that made them Muslim in the first the place.
The long and short of all this is simple: Past and present, Islam has been a religion of coercion.[8] More than half of the territory that once made up Christendom—including Egypt, Syria, Turkey, North Africa—converted to Islam due to bouts of extreme violence and ongoing financial bleeding. The Islamic State and like organizations and Muslims around the world are not aberrations but continuations. The violence, intolerance and coercion they exhibit—pressuring Christians to convert to Islam, compelling Muslims to remain in Islam—created and sustains what is today called the Islamic world.
Not only do we have a plethora of original source material proving these conclusions, but sheer common sense demonstrates as much.
[1] St. Mark began evangelizing Egypt in the middle of the 1st century.
[2] That two of the three original sees of Christianity originated in what are now two Muslim nations—Egypt and Turkey—further speaks to the Christian nature of the Middle East before the Islamic invasions.
[3] Abba Anthony, Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, Saint Anthony Monastery, March 2014, issue #3, p.6).
[4] Thomas Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades (NY: Barnes and Noble, 2007), 223.
[5] As Muslims grew in numbers over the centuries in Egypt, so did persecution (according to Islam’s Rule of Numbers), culminating in the immensely oppressive Mameluke era (1250-1517), when Coptic conversion to Islam grew exponentially.
[6] Taqi Ed-Din El-Maqrizi, A Short History of the Copts and Their Church, trans. S. C. Malan (London: D. Nutt, 1873), 88-91.
[7] Alfred Butler, The Arab Invasion of Egypt and the Last 30 Years of Roman Dominion (Brooklyn: A & B Publishers, 1992), 464. One of the major themes throughout Butler’s book—which, first published in 1902, is heavily based on primary sources, Arabic and Coptic, unlike more modern secondary works that promote the Islamic “liberator” thesis—is that “there is not a word to show that any section of the Egyptian nation viewed the advent of the Muslims with any other feeling than terror” (p. 236):
Even in the most recent historians it will be found that the outline of the story [of the 7th century conquest of Egypt] is something as follows: …. that the Copts generally hailed them [Muslims] as deliverers and rendered them every assistance; and that Alexandria after a long siege, full of romantic episodes, was captured by storm. Such is the received account. It may seem presumptuous to say that it is untrue from beginning to end, but to me no other conclusion is possible. [pgs. iv-v]
Butler and other politically incorrect historians were and are aware of the savage and atrocity-laden nature of the Islamic conquests. The Coptic chronicler, John of Nikiu, a contemporary of the Arab conquest of Egypt and possibly an eyewitness, wrote:
Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiu [along the Nile]… seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches—men, women, and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found…. But let us say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed…
Not, of course, that the average Muslim is aware of this fact. Indeed, in 2011 the Egyptian Muslim scholar Fadel Soliman published a book that was well received and widely promoted in the Islamic world, including by Al Jazeera, entitled Copts: Muslims Before Muhammad. The book makes the ahistorical and anachronistic—in a word, the absurd—argument that Egypt’s 7th century Christians were really prototypical Muslims and that that is why Arabia’s Muslims came to “liberate” them from “oppressive” Christian rule.
[8] If not in theory, certainly in practice. See “Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation.”
Thank the Lord for helping Egypt discover oil in sea!!!
Gas field I think.
So the WORD in stone is the WORD in sand.
Koran find could rewrite history of Islam OLIVER MOODY THE TIMES AUGUST 31, 2015
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/koran-find-could-rewrite-history-of-islam/story-fnb64oi6-1227506001793
Then, like now, Islam appeals to the fringes of society – to the losers! Those are the ones that convert willingly. All others have to be severely pressured, one way or another, to convert grudgingly. Those that proselytized Christianity to the Pagans were often accompanied by signs that convinced people to abandon the faith of their fathers. The only signs of Islam are victory in battle, constant coercion, and the rhythmic babbling of the Quran.
Hell, of course I’d “convert” to Islam. What is the big-g-g intercoursing deal? It would give me a chance to kill the GD bastards on a better day.
Wrong with a capital STUPID.
The problem was not that there was NO choice for Christians, the problem was TOO MUCH choice. The Council of Nicea tried to end the many schisms within Christianity, and then the Council of Chalcedon tried to enforce this. Both failed. The Council of Chalcedon was rejected by the Copts, Armenians and the Syriacs. And it was certainly rejected by the Nazarene Sabaeans of Edessa and Amida. And this created a theological split between East and West.
So when the Muslims appeared over the horizon, some grave errors were made.
a. The Nazarene Sabaeans struck an alliance with Islam, to fight against their Romo-Byzantine Christian persecuters. Bad move. The Nazarene Sabaeans were never heard from again.
b. The Romo-Byzantine Christians of Constantinople and Rome were deliberately slow in coming to the aid of their (heretical) Christian brethren in Edessa and Amida (and then the rest of the region). And so the Syriac and Armenian Churches were subsumed under the thumb of Islam very quickly. Bad move.
In letting Islam in, the Romo-Byzantine Christians in the West had just assisted an even more heretical and decidedly more aggressive creed to take over their back yard. The internal fractious politics of Christianity had just allowed Islam to roll over Mesopotamia, Syria, Philistia and North Africa virtually unopposed.
And did these people submit willingly to Islam? Of course not. Everywhere you go in the East, you will find cities where the people have pulled down their own fine houses, in order to build hasty fortifications against the Muslim hoards. Imagine pulling your house down, to create a protective wall. Is that willing submission? Naahhh. That is the fear of god, that your family will be raped, tortured and slaughtered. Check also places like Didyma in Turkey and Baalbeck in Lebanon, where they pulled down their temples to form protective walls.
Below is Sbeitla in Tunisia. That wall either side of the entrance to the forum, was hastily made from the houses of the city, just as Islam rolled through the region. But the city was destroyed and left abandoned, its people slaughtered and taken into slavery:
http://archaeologicaltrs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Tunisia.jpg
This is the Temple of Didyma in Anatolia. The wall in the background was made by dismantling the temple itself – a desperate measure to create a fortification as Islam invaded Greek Anatolia:
http://www.sailingissues.com/turkey/yacht-charters-turkey.jpg
So?
Your long winded comment is beyond irrelevant to this fine essay. Ibrahim does not get into WHY Egypt fell to the Arab invaders — in which case your comments might pertain — but what happened afterwards.
The postulation here is that Christians converted to Islam because: “there was no alternative narrative”. But there were any number of sects, from Monophysites to Arians to Manacheans. As I said, the problem throughout this period was not a monolithic Church and no choice, it was a lack of unity among a host of squabbling sects and sub-sects.
So the base postulation is false. And the evidence from the early expansion of Islam is that the people were deliberately traumatised and petrified by the Muslim invaders and thence overlords. Islam is a Protection Racket, and that is how protection rackets work – by terrifying populations into submission and subjugation.
The base postulation is false.
I like to read from various academics in a given area. You and Raymond Ibrahim are both correct but have placed emphasis in slightly different areas. What everyone can agree with is that Islam spread via the sword from it’s inception.
You obviously misunderstood the entire article, especially since you misrepresent Mr. Ibrahim’s quote that “there was no alternative narrative” to mean that he is saying that Christians converted to Islam BECAUSE “there was no alternative narrative.”
In context, Ibrahim is saying the exact opposite, that people born into their faiths had no alternative narrative, and so were ardent believers, and so, if Copts converted in mass to Islam, it was because of something other than Islam’s appeal, as some argue — persecution.
Here are the words IN CONTEXT:
“In the 7th century, when Muslim Arabs overran Egypt, and
on into the medieval era, religion was not something to be casually adhered to or changed as it is today in the West. People of that era were true believers; there was no alternative narrative—no so-called “science vs God” claims.
“Whatever religion a person was born into was accepted with absolute conviction—despite the many movies that project modernity onto Medieval
Christians….
“In Medieval Europe, the truths of Christianity were etched into the minds of all, from youth on up. There was no doubt—because there was no alternative. As historian of Medieval Europe and the Crusades Thomas
Madden puts it:
“[T]he medieval world was not the modern world. For
medieval people, religion was not something one just did at church. It was their science, their philosophy, their politics, their identity, and their hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth.”
“In this context, to apostatize, to leave the Christian faith,
especially for another creed, was the most unthinkable of all
transgressions against one’s own soul—a sin that would lead to eternal damnation.”
The piece is so badly written, I have no idea what he is saying. He says:
“Though left in peace and unpressured, Egypt’s original Christians found the new creed of sword-swinging, camel-riding Arabs so intrinsically appealing that they willingly apostatized in mass from the religion of their forefathers.”
And then says:
“persecution prompted the Copts to convert to Islam.”
So what point of view is Ibrahim arguing from? Was this unpressurised peace, or was it persecution? The Koran gives three options – convert, become a dhimmi serf or die. I think it is clear that persecution and protection racketeering was the modus operandi that created a successful Islam and an enslaved Christianity and Judaism.
No worries. I get it. You are a liar. I thought your first misquote of Ibrahim was an accident. But now I see you continue to misquote him, obviously intentionally. Ibrahim did not make the assertion you claim he did. He rhetorically asked:
“And yet, though left in peace and unpressured, Egypt’s original
Christians found the new creed of sword-swinging, camel-riding Arabs so
intrinsically appealing that they willingly apostatized in mass from
the religion of their forefathers—a religion that was so fundamental to
their being, albeit in a way modern man cannot comprehend?
“In fact, common sense suggests that nothing less than extremely severe
circumstances and hardships—persecution—prompted the Copts to convert to
Islam.”
Note the question mark that you conveniently omitted. Thus Ibrahim does not contradict himself as you disingenuously suggest.
If you’re not intentionally misquoting him –for the second time now — I strongly suggest you take some courses in critical reading.
Off you go now.
You don’t make a statement rhetorical by just sticking a question mark at the end of it. You Introduce a question with: “It has been claimed…” or “Are we to believe that…”. And that is true of any language, so this is not a translation issue.
If Ibrahim cannot write a coherent text, he will never get his message across, which is a shame.
It’s very clearly a rhetorical question for anyone who reads the preceding paragraphs which set up the rhetorical pattern. For example, after asking “What, then, made them convert to Islam in mass is the question before us?” Ibrahim asks “Is it plausible to believe that the primitive Muslim conquerors of Egypt did not discriminate against its indigenous Christians or pressure them to convert to Islam (even as Muslims do so now in the “enlightened” modern era)?”
Give it up.
Go back to your mosque and lie to people who live to be lied to.
“The Romo-Byzantine Christians of Constantinople and Rome were deliberately slow in coming to the aid of their (heretical) Christian brethren in Edessa and Amida (and then the rest of the region). And so the Syriac and Armenian Churches were subsumed under the thumb of Islam very quickly. Bad move.”
There is a discussion going on another history forum about the rapid success of the Arabs – I’ll quote this below
“We don’t know much about the Arab conquest of the Levant, and so it’s quite adventurous to make assertions about it. But in my opinion, it’s quite puzzling the way the Romans led the whole campaign.
Before Yarmuk, the Arabs had led a two year campaign in which they’d defeated piecemeal all the Roman forces in the area; leaving many of the main Roman cities isolated and effectively besieged while others surrendered and opened their gates to them, like Damascus. By the time Heraclius reacted the Arabs were already in northern Syria (they’d already taken Emesa/Hims), menacing Antioch itself. This is a first sign pointing towards some kind of trouble with the Roman reaction to events, whatever it might have been (Heraclius’ dismissal of the threat, financial or recruiting difficulties, etc.).
By all accounts, the force that Heraclius gathered for his counteraattack was a large one and he outbumbered the local Arab forces, which were dispersed through a wide area. The Arabs retreated skillfully before the imperial army, avoiding battle systematically and the Roman army entered again Damascus without a fight. Then it pursued the retiring Arabs into Palestine via the Golan Heights, but then it stopped cold as Khalid ibn al-Walid had entrenched his forces in a strong position in the Yarmuk plain, south east of the Golan Heights. In here the Roman pursuit stopped and the Romans found themselves having to either fight a picked field battle against the Arabs (something that went against their military practice, as according to the Strategikon) or retreat back north.
They made things worse by encamping and stalling there for several weeks, because the Arabs kept receiving reinforcements while the Romans did not; when the battle finally happened, the Arabs were stronger that they were at the start. And to make things even worse, at the back of the Roman position there was a deep ravine crossed by a single bridge; this meant that in case of defeat a retreat would be impossible and would end in a massacre, which is exactly what happened. In other words, the Arab comamnders (Khalid ibn al-Walid, in this case) outmanoeuvered the Romans systematically during the campaign, avoiding having their forces destroyed piecemeal by the numerically superior Romans and concentrating them to seek a decisive encounter agaisnt their foes, something that the Romans had tried to avoid.
The reason for the Roman reluctance to engage in battle was probably that the overall strategical plan of Heraclius included a Sassanian offensive by Yazdgird III’s armies in Mesopotamia that failed to materialize, and thus he’d ordered his commanders to try to win as much time as possible.
What’s really interesting of these first Arab campaigns is the high rate of success and effectivity of the Arab armies in field battles, even in front of numerically superior foes, like at Yarmuk and Qadisiyyah.
It’s worth noting that at Qadissiyah the Persian commander Rustam also managed to get himself lulled into a battle in an enclosed plain surrounded that favoured greatly his Arab foes. The battlefield had two deep ravines or channels at both sides which effectively prevented the numerically superior Persian cavalry from maneuvering and enveloping the flanks of the (numerically inferior and mainly formed by infantry) Arab army, while at the Persians’ back there was a wide canal crossed by a bridge or ford that had the same disastrous (for the Persians) effect that the ravines had for the Romans at Yarmuk: it turned a defeat into an outright massacre because it prevented the retreat of the army.
The similarities between both battles are in my opinion enough to suggest that the Arabs knew their foes well and managed in both cases to lull them into accept battle in conditions that were highly favorable to the Arabs.”
I’ll also add that the Romans seemed to have a lot of problems administrating their army at Yarmouk.
At Yarmuk the extant sources do not allow us to ascertain exactly the command structure of the Roman army; what we know is that Heraclius was not present and that such command structure was very complicated. Probably the overall commander was the Armenian Vahan, but it’s quite surprising that one of the commanders was Theodore Trithourios, the imperial treasurer. This had led some scholars to speculate that his presence with the army could indicate that the Romans had difficulties with the army’s pay.
And the reason why Yarmuk was such an irreversible disaster is stated by the IX century Byzantine chronicler Teophanes: the emperor had no more men left. If the Syrian army was destroyed at Ajnadayn, the army at Yarmuk (a large army by all accounts) must have been the gathering of the Armenian field army (hence the presence of Vahan) and the central field army which usually would have been under the command of the emperor himself. When this army was annihilated at Yarmuk, the empire was left with only the weak garrison forces in Egypt, the Thracian field army in Europe and the provincial armies in Italy and Africa. So the Byzantines threw everything at the Arabs but it ended in disaster. Obviously they would have been better off pulling back to their provincial cities and fortifying them and letting the Arabs wear themselves out via attrition.
So it all comes back to the 20 year long war between Persia and Rome. By the end of that war neither empire had the resources left to be able to recover from a major military disaster. So it’s likely that after Yarmouk the Romand were out of money and out of men. So the provinces of Syria, Palestine and Egypt were on their own.
The author bought into the early history of Islam which is a myth. Muhammad was created. He never existed per a UK historian Tom Holland as reported in the wall Street Journal
The world has been lied to by these congenital Muslim leader liars.
thank you Raymond and God Bless You for your courageous and unapologetic representation of the truth.
This is
a topic that really needs to be explored further – it’s just a shame that there
are so few primary sources from this era.
It’s generally accepted that the religious policies of the Roman
government in Constantinople were deeply unpopular in the non-orthodox
christian communities of Egypt. But then again I don’t think there is one
recorded example of the Egyptian population revolting once against the Roman
authorities or even back until Alexander removed Persian rule.
So the Egyptians seemed pretty well assimilated into the East
Roman empire.
There were however multiple Jewish revolts around the time of
Trajan but also during the final Persian/Roman-Byzantine wars of the early 7th
century. Jews apparently collaborated with the Sassanian persians when they
conquered Jerusalem – undoubtedly the Jews in a frenzy were desperate to
restore the Temple and Monarchy they enjoyed from biblical times. Another
motivator was to also to get even with the christian population in Jerusalem
and the government of Judea which under Constantinople had largely continued
the policies of the early Roman emperors towards the Jews which was oppressive.
So there was civil unrest but the only group of people inside
the Eastern Roman Empire in the 7th century who really actively revolted
against Byzantine rule was the Jews during the Persian wars. Certainly though
there was probably low morale and little love the administration all round and
that can be explained below.
There were several factors I believe which left the Roman empire
so fragile in the 7th century and made it much easier for the arab muslims to
conquer. I have listed these here.
– Bubonic Plague of Justinian – First and most importantly the
plague of the early 540s devasted the urban centres particularly around the
Mediterranean and cities such as Constantinople lost up to half of their
population. This caused a major economic crisis and the Roman empire faces food
shortages, labour shortages, loss of skills (engineers and civil administrators
– no major new city construction projects occur after Justinian), decline in
military strength (The Italian campaign faltered), bankruptcy – revenue
collapsed.
Even if the world was at peace throughout this period it would
probably take at least a century and a half just for the population to recover
-Frequent and violent earthquakes – I think nearly every city of
late classical antiquity suffered some degree of earthquake damage during the
period of the 6-7th centuries – some were severely damaged if not entirely
destroyed. Initially these cities were repaired but with the escalating Persian
wars and after the plague, the Empire simply does not have the finances or
resources to maintain its cities.
Antioch in the mid-6th century got hit by 2 earthquakes which
completely landlocked its slowly failing harbour – Seleucia Pieria, and the
Persians took advantage of the situation and sacked it thoroughly. It never
recovered from those events so the 3rd greatest city of the Christian world was
lost even in the ‘golden-age’ of Justinian. This probably weakened Roman
administration in the Eastern provinces.
– Lastly of course we have the Persian wars in the early 7th
century that completely exhausted the resources and finances of both Empires
and left the entire region open for Islamic conquest.
To expand on this my belief is that things were so bad for the Byzantines
by the year 582 that the entire Empire was hanging together by a thread – The
borders in Italy, the Balkans and Africa were collapsing, the treasury was
empty, Persia remained a major threat…..
The emperor Maurice was an administrative genius and managed to
sign a new peace treaty with Persia – also ending the colossal amount of gold
the Romans were paying in tribute each year. He also stabilised Italy assigning
military governors and used the new peace with Persia to shift armies to the
Balkans to stop the slavic raids.
Maurice despite inheriting a bankrupt, overextended empire
crippled by plague and ruinous taxation actually put in place the policies that
would stabilise the borders and lead to economic recovery.
However his assassination in 602 created a disaster that the
ramifications have forever altered the course of history. From his death, the
empire plunged into civil war, the Persians invaded and spent the next 20 years
at war with the Romans and therefore opened up the region to Islamic conquest.
So to understand how the Islamic world was forged we need to
also realise just fragile Graeco-Roman civilization was in the early 7th
century from a combination of plague, natural disasters and relentless war.
A well-written article, mr. Ibrahim! Though, there is one important element that deserves additional emphasis:
The importance of tax-farming, and the fact that *this* was typically the main reason why Muslim rulers protected their non-Muslim subject communities. Their ‘tolerance’ was often about money more than anything else.
This is also why religious minorities in Muslim-dominated regions have always done better in places with more or less stable, strong governments. Those governments had a vested interest in sustaining their dhimmi communities, after all – so they usually provided the dhimmis some protection from an often hostile Muslim public.
And what happens when there’s no strong government to stand between the non-Muslims and the Muslim public? We really need to look no further than Syria, or the things that have been going on in Iraq ever since Saddam’s regime was toppled.
Though the extinction of indigenous Christianity in the Maghreb is also a valid example. It is no coincidence that this part of the Muslim world was also plagued with rebellions, sectarian violence (especially sectarianism within Islam), tribal warfare (both Berber and Bedouin) and frequent warfare in general, throughout the Medieval period.
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And your main point can’t be emphasized enough, of course. Plenty of people in modern Western discourse (both Muslim and non-Muslim) like to claim that Islamic ‘tolerance’ was rooted in lofty principles of compassion, or even egalitarianism – even though this has absolutely nothing to do with the historic situation.
Islamic ‘tolerance’ has always been relative (non-Muslims can never have legal equality with Muslims under any form of Islamic law), conditional (the dhimma is a treaty, not a charter of rights; and it’s purposely an unequal treaty at that), and, in more than a few instances, in no small part motivated by financial gain rather than high-minded principles. This is also why the Umayyads often outright resisted attempts to convert their empire’s non-Muslims – every conversion meant one less taxpayer, and (especially when it comes to conversion of the rich and well-connected; the Suha Arafat types of the first millennium) this was having a negative impact on their treasury.
Fortunately, though, there is something of a silver lining here.
As a medievist with a decent familiarity with contemporary academic literature on Islamic history (Medieval Islamic history, at least), I can tell you that the academic consensus is drifting away from what the likes of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito have claimed on this subject.
An example: a few passages from the Cambridge History of Christianity (the article ‘Christians under Muslim rule’, by Sidney Griffith), published in 2008;
“Externally, in terms of the contributions Christians made to the growth and development of classical Islamic culture, the record is in many instances extraordinary. But in spite of these accomplishments, the Christian experience in the caliphate up to the time of the Crusades, albeit one of a mighty and faithful religious witness, was not in fact an entirely happy one. From the very beginning of the Islamic conquest, Christians consistently testified to the multiple hardships they suffered at the hands of Muslims. In chronicles and other literary genres there is a continuous record of persistent deprivation and even intermittent persecution.
(…)
But there is one factor in the process that has not received as much scholarly attention as it should. It is the social condition of Christians, theoretically mandated in Islamic law, which one might most handily identify by the neologism “dhimmitude.”
(…)
There is no doubt that up to Crusader times, the dhimm¯ı populations in the Islamic world were “second-class citizens.” The legal disabilities which governed their lives required subservience, often accompanied by prescriptions to wear distinctive clothing and to cease public display of their religion, and, of course, to refrain from inviting converts from among the Muslims. What is more, Christian wealth, buildings, institutions, and properties were often subject to seizure. As a consequence, over the course of time, the number of bishoprics, churches, monasteries, and schools gradually decreased, having fallen victim to the conditions inherent in the official establishment of Islam as the public religion of the polity.” [from the pages 208 through 210]
Note how it outright states a number of truths that you and others like you have been writing about for years.
And like I said earlier: this is from the Cambridge History of Christianity. The Cambridge Histories series covers a broad range of subjects and disciplines (there’s a Cambridge Medieval History, for example, but also a Cambridge History of Arabic Literature and a Cambridge History of Music), and I can’t honestly can’t think of a work or series more indicative of academic consensus on any topic.
Arab Muslims killed their hundreds of thousands in Egypt and were not content with that so they went to India and killed tens of millions of Hindus….awwwww, the religion of peace!
The following work puts more light on the question of forged history with an exercise in Common Sense:
How Darwin’s Statements Imply His Muslim Monotheism & the History of the Ideas of Human Evolution Can be Traced Back to the 7th Century Qur’an
http://www.arfaglobal.com/p/western-media-education-distorts.html