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Posted by pancho (Guest) - Tuesday, November 7 2006, 1:36:28 (CET)
from 189.156.25.146 - dsl-189-156-25-146.prod-infinitum.com.mx

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I think someone goofed. The title of this article may have convinced
the lazy that it was a slam at Islam...when it`s anything but...Hanna
must have fallen asleep at his sewing machine...

Conversion by the Sword – the Cutting Edge of Religious Power
By Carolina Cositore
October 23, 2006

The forced conversion to Islam of two journalists in Palestine has
added to the current wave of anti-Muslim xenophobia, not seen since 9/11,
although the journalists in question appear to be substantially
empathetic to their captors. "Do away with the veil" says British ex Foreign
Minister Jack Straw, with PM Tony Blair declaring the veil a mark of
cultural division. Even the Pope got into the act.

Non-Muslims may know very little about the Koran or Islam but, to judge
by the plethora of googleable websites and screaming, that is capital
letters, going on in posts, they do know about conversion at the point
of the sword and feel threatened.

To put minds and hearts at ease: traditionally, forced religious
conversion typically has less to do with pleasing a deity than obtaining
power, usually over territory, and has been practiced by all major
religions; and it would seem much less by Muslims than by Christians throughout
history.

Judaism is notable for not proselytizing and even discouraging converts
and has been this way for 2,109 years. However, in the fourth century
BCE, the Maccabean ruler Aristobulus conquered the Iturean Arab kingdom
(now southeast Lebanon) bordering Judea and forcibly converted the
Itureans. Before that, in 112 BCE another Maccabean, King Hyrcanus
conquered Idumea, which bordered Judea on the south, and permitted the Idumeans
to stay in the country if they would be circumcised and follow the
Jewish way of life.[i]

Agreed, Jews have repudiated this practice and anyway, 2,109 is a great
many years. The conversion issue now is whether a convert into one
branch of Judaism is acceptable to others, particularly to the Orthodox.

Another story far away and long ago concerns Theodosius, inheritor of
Constantine, who in 389 CE began persecuting pagan worshipers.
Christianization, and not incidentally consolidation of the Empire, became quite
a violent process with torture and death to the intransigent.

Crusades against the Wends (today the Baltic countries and Finland)
took place perhaps as recently as the 13th century, and it is polemic
whether those crusades were religious or served the ambitions of the kings
and bishops of the time.

While Christian sources pass over any coercion involved – although
mention is made of justifiable punishments to the obstinate -- Muslims and
Jews were converted en masse in much of civilized Europe. The most
memorable being the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.

The Spanish Inquisition, established by Ferdinand and Isabella of
Columbus fame, began in 1478 and was not categorically abolished until 1834.

The Inquisition was motivated in large part by the multi-religious
character of Spain -- Jews, Muslims and Catholics – with enclaves of power
held by the different religious groups. For example, Barcelona and
Valladolid were mostly Jewish, while Granada was under Moorish control.

As a consequence of late 14th century pogroms (persecution and
extermination), some Jews converted for economic and social rather than
religious reasons. Then, in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella gave all Jews the
option of conversion, and expelled all the hundreds of thousands of those
who would not convert.

During the subsequent Inquisition the faith of the "converses/marranos"
was questioned and, not unlike current practices in Guantanamo Naval
Base and secret CIA prisons, they were denounced, could not face their
accusers, locked up in prisons without due process, most deprived of
their possessions, tortured or whipped, and given long sentences. Unlike
today's suspected terrorists thus far, many suffered the Auto de Fe (act
of faith); meaning if they affirmed Christianity, they were strangled
first, if not, they were burned alive. Not the sword, but the fire.

By the 16th century the Inquisition in Spain focused more on
internecine rivalries, persecuting and killing off recalcitrant Protestants,
chiefly Lutherans. However, in 1570 they began concentrating – 82% of the
accused -- on the moriscos (converts from Islam) as well. The Muslim
converts got off a bit easier than the Jews and Protestants, and fewer
were sent to be burned at the stake, but hundreds of thousands were
expelled in 1614. Those few, mostly believing Christians, who remained faced
new trials in the late 17th century.

In the New World apostates, converses, moriscos and Protestants, were
also persecuted by the Inquisition and the first auto de fe for two Jews
was held in Mexico in 1528; two other Jews chose conversion at the
time. The three branches of the Inquisition tribunals were in Mexico (for
Mexico, Guatemala, Havana, New Galicia, and the Philippines) and in Peru
(for everything South), and the third in Cartagena, from 1610, handled
Panama, Santa Marta, Puerto Rico, Popayan, Venezuela, and Santiago de
Cuba.

The New World procedure was to nail an Edict of Faith to church doors
enumerating the customs of Lutherans, Muslims and Jews so the people
could be on the lookout. Torture was used only when the prisoner refused
to "confess" or name names. The auto de fe's primary role was to
frighten newly converted Native Americans, and the expectation was that
heretics would convert at the last moment, and many did. [ii]

Islam began of course with Mohammed who, finding his people between the
Christian Empire and the Persian, not only founded a new religion, but
consolidated a tribal people under a theocratic monarchy. At Medina
around 624, Muhammad made a pact with non-believers giving them religious
freedom but demanding political loyalty. The Jewish tribes did not
cooperate religiously or politically and were expelled.

Islam began its spread by conquest and by Muhammad's death in 632 was
in control of most of the Arabian Peninsula. By 800 CE, a Muslim empire
extended from the Atlantic Ocean to central Asia; there is no doubt it
was conquered, but whether there were forced conversions is a
controversy even among Muslims today.

The Islamic Golden Age, a period of intellectual, artistic and
scientific triumphs on the Iberian Peninsula beginning approximately in 718,
was particularly accepting of Jews, and Jewish cultural life flourished
there until they were expelled from Granada in 1066.
The Mughal Empire began in 1526 through invasion of India, then
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and lasted until the Indian rebellion in
1857. Periods of religious intolerance alternated with acceptance of
Christians, Hindus and Sikhs. Stories of mass forced conversions may be
based on fact, but India remained majority Hindu and Bangladesh had only
a small minority of Muslims when the British took over in WWI.

...that would indicate that there were no forced conversions to
Islam..else, where did they all go to?

In more recent history, the Ottoman Empire existed from 1299 to 1923,
and was certainly as brutal as some other nations of the period, but
forced conversion was not the rule, with the notable exception of the
Albanians.

..it was not only NOT the rule...it wasn`t part of the practise.

In most of its nearly 700 years, non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were
of inferior status, but they had religious freedom and autonomy. As did
the Russian czars later, who took Jewish boys as young as 12 forcibly
into the army in the 18th and 19th centuries, from the 14th through the
17th century, the Ottoman state forcefully took young Christian boys to
be educated – the Ottomans however, gave them a choice of the army or
administration. As in Russia, although the children were not made to
convert, many did due to the formative years immersed in the culture.

When, after the Ottoman's Golden Age of the 15th and 16th centuries,
the Ottoman Turks began to feel an economic pinch, they increased taxes
on the Roman Catholic Albanians as non-Muslims, to encourage conversion.
The Christians rebelled (1687 to 1690) and the Ottomans forced entire
villages to accept Islam, chiefly in the areas easiest to access.

..this part doesn`t make sense...as in the excerpt I posted earlier,
the viziers were upset that a Caliph wanted to force Christians to
convert, because there would be an economic crisis due to lost taxes..the
paragraph starts out saying there was an "economic pinch"...so that taxes
were INCREASED...so then the Ottomans FORCED them to convert? Did this
improve the economic pinch? Am confused.

That the Ottoman Empire was brutal is beyond question, as were many
other kingdoms and nations before and since. By the end of the empire over
a million and perhaps more than two million Greeks, Assyrians and
Armenians were dead by murder or starvation. Of course, the Armenians also
killed Muslims.

The point of the essay, should anyone have missed it, is that
regrettably no religion is completely free of extremism in the name of truth,
fortunately, other than the lamentable internecine Jewish, Christian and
Muslim feuds that continue today with varying degrees of violence,
humanity may have left forced conversions, as a religious-political
doctrine, behind. Of course, mixing religion and politics is never a good
idea.

.it`s interesting though that inspite of it`s atempt to be fait and
balanced...this article WILL NOT mention the RELIGION of the other grat
"brutal empire"...probably because the Christians have been by far the
BIGGEST brutes.

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