The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum
=> From Farid: "The Forced Conversions Rag"
| From Farid: "The Forced Conversions Rag" |
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Posted by
Jeff
(Guest)
- Sunday, October 22 2006, 19:18:54 (CEST) from 69.14.30.71 - d14-69-71-30.try.wideopenwest.com  Commercial -  Windows XP -   MozillaWebsite: Website title: |
Turns out Islam never condoned or practised forced conversions. I haven`t come across a single instance of such a thing to date...(no doubt though Syriac manuscripts are FILLED with such tall tales)...Naturally enough, it was the Christians who did that...to Jews...and pagans..they mostly just murdered Muslims....except in Spain. In all the reading I`ve done...much of it in Durant, there isn`t a single mention of any Christian being forced to convert to Islam...not one mention. But Christians regularly forced Jews to convert...and pagans...hell, they even forced each OTHER to convert! The church still sings this song because it`s embarrassing otherwise to explain why Christianity died out in BetNahrain. Christianity completely disappeared from Africa...for Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco etc....it`s always been around in Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iran and Iraq...but in very small numbers. Now Aprim and Peter ("there would have been ten million of us today")will tell you that`s because Christians were WIPED OUT by Islam...either murdered outright or forced to convert...but they are notorious for being liars or worse...maybe it`s just that thay believed whatever was told to them when they were three years old and never got any farther along in life intellectually. Islam forbade forced conversions especially...as well as doing violence against Jews and Christians..unless, of course, they made themselves your political enemies...in which case they were fair game..but kill them JUST because of their religion....no. That again is something the Christians did...to the Jews and not all that long ago either. The choice given was; "Conversion, Tax, or death"..it was never "convert or die". The choice for pagan Arabs was indeed, "convert or die"....but never for the "People Of The Book"( which even came to include the Persians and their "Avesta"...another Holy Book). Christians converted because they`d gotten used to converting and couldn`t stop themselves...or because they could see greater opportunities if they conformed to the religion of the conquerers,,,,as many Christian heretics converted to Christian orthodoxy for the same reason..or because they were freed from paying the poll tax...even though it meant becomming eligible for military service. Since the Church has to damn those who convert away...it doesn`t look too good admitting you lost your flock of sheep to another shephard and have to now damn your once "dear children"...it proved much better to say Christians were MASSACRED as a way to explain their sudden dwindling numbers. There were certainly periodic persecutions of Christians and Jews in Islam...but so what...when did Christians NOT persecute each other and everyone else? These were temporary and isolated incidents in no way reducing ENTIRE populations. Usually too such brief incidents occured because of some new wave of orthodoxy among the people....when calling to your followers to go back to the "good old days"...when your religion was "pure" and "undefiled", you can`t help but set off a wave of resentment at those religious minorities among you who refuse your religion and who can be easily pointed out as its enemies, by their indifference...orthodoxy ALWAYS brings a wave of violence and intolerance with it...look at America today. What also affected the size of the population of Christians was their own religion....woman and marriage were seen as traps...this physical earth was merely a holding station...REAL life would begin after death etc. In the pagan world the family had been the center of focus...among Christians the focus shifted to the individual and his individual salvation, not the well-being of the race or state....thousands entered monastaries....so much so that the eastern Empire hadn`t the manpower to defend itself....Christians removed THEMSELVES from procreation...also they banned polygamy while both Musilms and Jews reveled in it.,...even seeing it as a duty. Under those circumstances the number of new Christians would be drastically reduced (especially since they only married other Christians) while Muslims and Jews strove for large families and multiple families.....even the children of concubines were legitimate and must be provided for....it turns out that no one HAD to massacre the Christians, they were half in love with death and dying out all on their own....really made unfit for life in the real world... More than that...it was even due to Muslim intervention, conquest and indifference that all the various heretical Christian sects survived at all....if the eastern Romans (or western Christians) had had their way and been victorious, they would have imprisoned or burned to death thousands of heretics (Monophysites, Nestorians, Arians etc)....in truth, Islam brought no harm to Christians such as Christians would have visited on each other if there had been no Conquest, rather they protected the various heretical sects and allowed them to reproduce so that their members are alive to this day. In all three religions there are "oral traditions", sayings credited to the prophets that are looked at askance by many and believed by many. Someone swears his uncle heard Muhammad say something...or some other bit of oral saying is presented as possibly issuing from the mouth of Jesus, or Moses, or Muhammad (apocrypha)...there is nothing in the Koran that tells Muslims to kill Christians or Jews, or to convert them, quite the oposite.....it is the INFIDEL, the pagan, the heathen ARAB that Musilms are told to make war against and convert....but, especially after Christianity became the official religion of the Romans and Greeks, both enemies to Persia, Iraq AND Islam, it was looked at suspiciously...and for good reason as we can see today when Christians of Iraq are supposedly eager to have their country killed, by foreign Crusaders, over Christ... Muhammad knew nothing of the veil, or purdah, or female circumcision or all the restrictions placed on women. Indeed after the first hundred years it was the Persians who influenced Islam...until the Turks took over...real Arab control barely outlasted Muhammad..and at that, within a few years, his most hated enemies of the Quriash Ummayads took control of Islam...much of the stuff that is pointed to by ditzy Christians as being part and parcel of Islam,,,meaning of Muhammad, had NOTHING to do with him or the religion. ...and, how can I end without yet another indictment against organized religion....ever wonder why democracy never took hold in Islam..or in so many places...or why it means so little, practically speaking, in places like Iraq? We all know that a vigorous democracy, worthy of the name..the sort of place Aprim and Jassim THINK they want, depends on an educated populace....without that and Culture and freedom and liberty and mutual respect and toleration...all you have is mob rule...a counting of noses. If 51% of a population decide they want to eat their children alive and 49% vote against it....the cannibals will "win". That`s ALL democracy, as a political system, promises. That`s what they`ll have in Iraq, if they`re lucky. Here again the culprit is religion..it HAS to be, because no religion can afford to educate its people...not REALLY educate them. The people have to be raised to value Faith over Reason, certainty over curiosity, orthodoxy over exploration...more than that, they have to hold reason and the unfettered intellect suspect....the churches produce people EAGER to "believe"...as they are to ignore or dispense with facts....it`s almost a sign of their devotion that they DON`T demand proof. Muslims are far more pious than Christians...at least their ritual takes up much more of their time and thought.,...going to church one hour a week is one thing...praying FIVE times a day is another. Democracy COULDN`T appeal to pious Muslims...or Christians...it couldn`t because it demands each individual THINK and esplore and examine...in other words, EDUCATE him and herself...and not merely learn by rote the dictats of a religion...religion prepares you to be ruled by a tyrant, who is more like a god, and expected to be, than a president of a republic should be. When you wonder what on earth happened to the United States in the last 10 years and how we ELECTED a Bush and went off on this Crusade...look no further than the rekindled interest in FAITH and religion...people NEEDED to believe that Bush spoke with god...that he was speaking to SOMEONE! They desperately rushed to believe Saddam had DMDs and were almost mad with delerious joy to believe so WITHOUT any proof....as who should ask for proof that Christ existed...or Moses? They needed to believe so much that even after the attack, even after no such weapons were found...even after the hoax was exposed, they believe in it ANYWAY...just to show you how "powerful" and "beautiful" TRUE faith is. Religion and true democracy don`t mix...the one requires some independence of thought, an unwillingness to buy bridges in distant cities, sight unseen, it requires being able to see the other person`s point of view and respecting it...not seeing opposition as "heresy" for which the stake is the only answer...democracy requires pluralism,,,allowing for a "loyal opposition" instead of seeing ANY kind of opposition as the work of a devil or an enemy. And religion, especially when it is gripped in the clutches of recuring waves of orthodoxy and "let`s go back to the true old days", cannot afford or allow ANY of the prerequsites for a meaninglful, cultured, democracy...and even without formal religion we have still been trained to a sort of secular orthodoxy..like Jassim, whom we THOUGHT was not religious at all....but turns out, at the first scratch, to be zealously orthodox after all....that`s what this "Assyrian" business does to people...even if Christ isn`t mentioned once, the very ways and means of being "Assyrian" are all deeply "religious"...they contain the same bigotry, narrowness, prejudices, ignorance etc that religion thrives on. --------------------- |
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