CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY ON MUSLIM CONQUESTS

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

B. CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY ON MUSLIM CONQUESTS

Says Will Durant ^[1] in The Age of Faith (pp. 187-190, 218-219, 227):

“Mohammed had appointed no successor to his power, but he had chosen Abu Bekr (573-624) to conduct the prayers in the Madina mosque … this mark of preference persuaded the Moslem leaders to elect Abu Bekr the first Caliph of Islam … Abu Bekr was … simple and abstemious, kindly but resolute; attending personally to details of administration and judgment, and never resting till justice was done; serving without pay till his people overruled his austerity; and then, in his will, returning to the new state the stipends it had paid him … the Moslem leaders were passionate disciples of Mohammed, prayed even more than they fought … The Arab troops were more rigorously disciplined and more ably led; they were inured to leadership … could fight on empty stomachs … ‘Be just’, ran Abu Bekr’s proclamation, ‘be valiant; die rather than yield; be merciful; slay neither old men, nor women, nor children. Destroy no fruit trees, grain, or cattle. Keep your word, even to your enemies. Molest not those religious persons who live retired from the world’ … 

Omar (the second Caliph) … Having beaten a Bedouin unjustly, he begged the Bedouin— in vain—to inflict an equal number of strokes upon him. He was a severe puritan, demanding strict virtue of every Moslem … Moslem historians tell us that he owned but one shirt and one mantle, patched and repatched; that he lived on barley bread and dates, and drank nothing but water; that he slept on a bed of palm leaves, hardly better than a hair shirt; and that his sole concern was the propagation of the faith by letters and by arms. When a Persian satrap came to pay homage to Omar he found the conqueror of the East asleep among beggars on the steps of the Madina mosque … The Patriarch Sophronius agreed to surrender Jerusalem if the Caliph would come in person to ratify the terms of capitulation. Omar consented, and traveled from Madina in stately simplicity, armed with a sack of corn, a bag of dates, a gourd of water, and a wooden dish … He received Sophronius with kindness and courtesy, imposed an easy tribute on the vanquished, and confirmed the Christians in the peaceful possession of all their shrines … Omar forbade the conquerors to buy or till land… 

 

“The Jews of the Near East had welcomed the Arabs as liberators … they stood on equal terms with Christians, were free once more to live and worship in Jerusalem, and prospered under Islam in Asia, Egypt, and Spain as never under Christian rule. Outside of Arabia the Christians of western Asia usually practised their religion unhindered; Syria remained predominantly Christian until the third Moslem century; in the reign of Mamun (813-33) we hear of 11,000 Christian churches in Islam—as well as hundreds of synagogues and fire temples. Christian festivals were freely and openly celebrated; Christian pilgrims came in safety to visit Christian shrines in Palestine; the Crusaders found large numbers of Christians in the Near East in the twelfth century; and Christian communities have survived there to this day. Christian heretics persecuted by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Antioch were now free and safe under a Moslem rule that found their disputes quite unintelligible. In the ninth century the Moslem governor of Antioch appointed a special guard to keep Christian sects from massacring one another at church. Monasteries and nunneries flourished … relations between the two religions were so genial that Christians wearing crosses on their breasts conversed in mosques with Moslem friends. The Mohammedan administrative bureaucracy had hundreds of Christian employees … Sergius, father of St. John of Damascus, was chief finance minister to Abd-al-Malik, and John himself, last of the Greek Fathers of the Church, headed the council that governed Damascus. The Christians of the East in general regarded Islamic rule as a lesser evil than that of the Byzantine government and Church. 

 

“Despite or because of this policy of tolerance in early Islam, the new faith won over to itself in time most of the Christians, nearly all the Zoroastrians and pagans, and many of the Jews, of Asia, Egypt, and North Africa … Gradually the non-Moslem populations adopted the Arabic language and dress, the laws and faith of the Koran. Where Hellenism, after a thousand years of mastery, had failed to take root, and Roman arms had left the native gods unconquered, and Byzantine orthodoxy had raised rebellious heresies, Mohammedanism had secured, almost without proselytism, not only belief and worship, but a tenacious fidelity that quite forgot the superseded gods. From China, Indonesia, and India through Persia, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt to Morocco and Spain, the Mohammedan faith touched the hearts and fancies of a hundred peoples, governed their morals and molded their lives, gave them consoling hopes and a strengthening pride … 

 

“… We must concede that the early Caliphs, from Abu Bekr to al-Mamun, gave successful organization to human life over a wide area, and may be counted among the ablest rulers in history. They might have devasted or confiscated everything, like the Mongols or the Magyars of the raiding Norse; instead they merely taxed. When Omar conquered Egypt he rejected the advice of Zobeir to divide the land among his followers, and the Caliph confirmed his judgment: ‘Leave it’, said Omar, ‘in the people’s hands to nurse and fructify’. Under the caliphal government lands were measured, records were systematically kept, roads and canals were multiplied or maintained, rivers were banked to prevent floods; Iraq, now half desert, was again a garden of Eden; Palestine, recently so rich in sand and stones, was fertile, wealthy, and populous … the caliphs gave reasonable protection to life and labor, kept career open to talent, promoted for three to six centuries the prosperity of areas never so prosperous again, and stimulated and supported such a flourishing of education, literature, science, philosophy, and art as made western Asia, for five centuries, the most civilized region in the world.”

 

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[1] It may be remembered here that, as a good Christian, Will Durant is always ready to attack and insult Islam and its promulgator on the flimsiest grounds.

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times

TERMS OF MERCY, TOLERATION AND REGARD FOR HUMAN CONSCIENCE

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

IN TERMS OF MERCY, TOLERATION AND REGARD FOR HUMAN CONSCIENCE

 

1. WITH REFERENCE TO WAR

In connection with the comparative evaluation of Islamic and Christian moral Idealism in terms of the ethics of war, we may take up the most difficult virtue, namely, magnanimity and forgiveness in respect of the enemy. As such, we may refer to the practical effects of the Christian teaching in that behalf and the parallel Qur’anic teaching, as recorded in history. Such a comparison will fix the merit of Islam’s moral Idealism in the perspective of history, and will at the same time expose the baselessness of Christian propaganda against Islam.  

 

Who have been more tolerant, more humane, more forgiving, more just and more chivalrous in history—the believers in the Bible or the believers in the Qur’an? Just one pair of events contrasting Christian and Muslim behaviour will suffice—the one relating to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders on July 15, 1099 A.C and later on its conquest by Ghazi Salah al-Din Al-Ayyubi (named Saladin in European history) in November 1187 A.C, wherein Christendom and Islamdom demonstrated their ethico-religious Idealism because both fought a holy war—a war in the name of religion; and for the Christians it was a war initiated by them right in their Holy Land where Christ had delivered his message of Mercy. 

 

We will quote here only the reputed Christian authorities whose accounts are based on eye-witness reports and first-hand information.

Charles Mills says about the Crusaders and the Crusade:

“They abandoned themselves to every grossness and libertinism. Neither public treasures nor private possessions were spared. Virgin modesty was no protection, conjugal virtue no safeguard … Among the Crusaders, particularly distinguished for ferocity, were two thousand Normans or French. That they destroyed children at the breast and scattered their quivering limbs in the air … that their crimes were enormous, is the general confession of the Latin writers … The Christians dragged the corpses from the sepulchre and despoiled them of their dress and ornaments. They severed the heads from the trunks, and 15 hundred of them were exposed on pikes to the weeping Turks; and some were sent to the Caliph of Egypt in proof of victory. The dignity of age, the helplessness of youth and the beauty of weaker sex were disregarded by the Latin savages. Houses were no sanctuaries, and the sight of mosque added new virulence to cruelty … the attendants and followers of the camp pillaged the houses of Antioch as soon as the gates had been thrown open; but the soldiers did not for a while suffer their rapacity to check their thirst for blood; when however, every species of habitation, from the market place to the meanest hovels, had been covered into a scene of slaughter, when the narrow streets and the spacious squares were all alike disfigured with human gore, and crowded with mangled carcasses, then the assasins turned robbers, and became as mercenary as they had been merciless … They were soon reduced to their old resources of dog’s flesh and human carcasses. They broke open the tombs of the Musalmans; ripped up the bellies of the dead for gold, and then dressed and ate fragments of the flesh … Their cruelty could not be appeased by a bloodless conquest; extermination, not clemency, marked their victory … Such was the carnage in the mosque of Omar that the mutilated carcasses were hurried by the torrents of blood into the courts; severed arms and hands floated into the current that carried  into contact with bodies to which they had not belonged. Ten thousand people were murdered in this sanctuary. It was not only the lacerated and headless trunks which shocked the sight, but the figures of the victors themselves reckoning with the blood of their slaughtered enemies. No place of refuge remained to the vanquished, so indiscriminately did the insatiable fanaticism of the conquerors disregarded alike supplication and resistance. Some were slain, others were thrown from the tops of the churches and of the citadel … It was resolved that no pity should be shown to the Musalmans … the subjected people were, therefore, dragged into the public places, and slain as victims; women with children at breast, girls and boys, all were slaughtered. The squares, the streets and even the uninhabited places of Jerusalem were stewed with dead bodies of men and women and the mangled limbs of children. No heart melted into compassion or expanded into benevolence.”²¹⁵

                                                 

²¹⁵ Charles Mills: The History of Crusades (2 vols), London 1821, vol. 1, pp. 68, 71, 185, 228-229, 254, 260. 

 

Referring to the occasion when the Muslims, fighting under Saladin, recovered Palestine from the Crusaders and re-occupied Jerusalem, the same author observes:

“In solemn procession the clergy, the queen, and her retinue of ladies followed. Saladin advanced to meet them and his heart melted with compassion, when they approached him in this attitude and with the air of suppliants. The softened warriors uttered some words of pity … with courteous clemency he released all the prisoners when the women requested, and loaded them with presents.”^[1]

 

In the same context, Stanley Lane-Poole remarks :

“After that he (Saladin) commanded that to the dames and damsels whose lords were dead there should be handsomely distributed from his own treasure, to some more and to others less, according to their state, and he gave them so much that they gave praise to God and published abroad the kindness and honour which Saladin had done to them … Islam in its essence and as professed by such a man as Saladin is a religion of noble simplicity and austere self-sacrifice.”^[2]

 

Edward Gibbon has the same tale to tell:

“Instead of a rigorous exaction of his debt he (Saladin) accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants for the ransom of 7 thousand poor; two or three thousand more were dismissed by his gratuitous clemency … In his interview with the queen (Sybilla of Jerusalem) and her captive husband his words and even his tears suggested the kindest consolations … Thus did the Saracens show the mercy to the fallen city. One recalls the savage conquest by the first crusaders in 1099, when Godfrey and Tancred rode through streets choked with the dead and dying, when defenceless Moslems were tortured, burnt and shot down in cold blood on the towers and root of the temple, when the blood of wanton massacre defiled the honour of Christendom and stained the scene where once the gospel of love and mercy had been preached. ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’ was a forgotten beatitude, when the Christians made shambles of the Holy City. Fortunate were the merciless, for they obtained mercy at the hands of the Moslem Sultan. If the taking of Jerusalem were the only fact known about Saladin, it was enough to prove him the most chivalrous and great-hearted conqueror of his own, and perhaps of any age.^[3]

 

Before concluding this discussion, we regard it necessary to make certain observations:

1.       In respect of the history of Islam, we have purposely avoided reference to its early period which, being truly idealistic, is naturally expected to enshrine Islamic moral Idealism at its highest. Instead, we have referred to the period in which Muslims had deviated considerably, in the natural historical process, from the Islamic Idealism as such. This we have done to be just to Christianity. 

 

2.       In respect of Christianity: Most unfortunately, the heartrending record of cruelty and absolute absence of human feeling that has been presented in the foregoing does not stand in history as a solitary lapse. Rather, the political history of Christianity—and even its religious history—, since the acquisition of political power under Constantine, reveals an amazing record of violation without mercy of the Sermon on the Mount and of all the other noble moral teachings given by the Holy Prophet Jesus (Peace be on him!). The injustice, the cruelty, the wanton barbarism which the Christian nations have practised throughout, and continue to practise without blush till today, in international politics and warfare both, forms—as recorded by Christian historians themselves—an amazing example of revolt against God as well as human goodness.

And, then, they have practised utmost cruelty and injustice not only against their political opponents but also against the other people by imposing the most cruel form of slavery upon, and uprooting, defenceless populations, as they did in respect of the Blacks of Africa, and by staging mass murder of indigenous populations, as they did in the Americas and Australasia;—all this for their material power and glory!^[4] 

 

3.       A student of history is, indeed, amazed to find that with all their emphasis on religiosity and on certain basic moral principles, none of the existing religions except Islam possesses any record, in its history of inter-national and interreligious relations, of practising the ideal of ‘respect for humanity’. Even the Jews with all their ‘worship of the One God’, whom their centuries-long persecution by the Christians should have made exceptionally conscious of the evils of international cruelty and injustice, are indulging, after acquiring political power, in the same evils—and that, against their own cousins, the Arabs, and against those who gave them asylum when their present friends persecuted them, i.e., the Muslims.

                 

What, then, is the difference in practical terms between ‘religion’ and ‘irreligion’? 

The basic cause seems to lie in the fact that religions other than Islam have, either not given any ethics of war,  or have given a wrong one; while Islam has given it in a full-fledged manner, on the one hand, and based it on sound humanitarianism,^[5] on the other. Then, that ethics has been properly exemplified for practical guidance by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him!). 

 

Thus: The merit of Saladin is not basically his personal merit, but the merit of the Islamic ethics of war and of the Ideal set by the Holy Prophet of Islam ^[6]—at its highest in his conquest of Makka. And, the brutality demonstrated by the Christian nations in Palestine and elsewhere in their history, before and after, is due to the absence of ethics of war in Christianity and of its practical model; whereby the Sermon on the Mount alone could not do the job of saving them from committing crimes against humanity in their holy wars. Indeed, sermons do not achieve much by themselves! Because, the human nature is so constituted that, unless it has been properly disciplined spiritually and morally, the human being is always inclined to follow the behest of his instinctive self and to indulge in unbriddled vengeance. 

And, for that spiritual and moral discipline, the first prerequisite is the possession of a sound moral code and a source of inspiration in the personality of him whom a person loves and respects above all as his guide and benefactor,—though, that in itself is only a pre-requisite. For, what is finally needed is the achievement of the requisite spiritual and moral discipline. It means that not only the followers of other religions and philosophies but even those who are members of the Muslim community in a formal sense, and are thereby related nominally to a humanitarian ethics of war and the highest source of humanitarian inspiration in the Holy Prophet’s personality, but have not achieved the requisite spiritual and moral discipline, are likely to behave merely as ‘human animals’.

 

Anyhow, in the final analysis, in respect of teaching as well as inspiration and its practical realisation in history, even today Islam alone provides humanity with what it needs in this behalf; and, those who insult the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him!) for his permission of, and participation in, war, and adore the ascetic-pacifist Ideal, would do well to revise their opinion in the interest of humanity;—as also in their own interest, because by insulting him and depriving themselves of the appreciation of his merit, they only insult themselves.

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[1] op. cit., pp. 330, 441.

[2] Stanley Lane-Poole: Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. London 1906 pp. 232-233, 373.

[3] Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London 1922 vol. 6, pp.116. 233.

[4] Even for filthy lucre!!! For instance, in respect of what has been termed in Christian history as ‘trade’ and which “at all times was little distinguished from piracy”: “the first voyage of 1562 of John Hawkins left him the wealthiest man in Plymouth, his second voyage of 1564 left him the wealthiest man in England, and his third voyage of 1567, led to open naval warfare between England and Spain.” (The New Cambridge Modern History, 1961, vol. 1, p. 457).

[5] Ref: vol. 2: “The Structure of Islamic Society”.

[6] Lest it be understood that Saladin’s is a solitary example, we may refer to another. Says Will Durant (The Age of Faith, p. 308):

“… Alp Arslan lived up to his name—‘the lion-hearted hero’—by conquering Heart, Armenia, Georgia, and Syria … Emperor Romanus IV collected 100,000 … troops to meet Arslan’s 15,000 … warriors. The Seljuq leader offered a reasonable peace; Romanus rejected it scornfully, gave battle at Manzikert in Armenia (1071), fought bravely … was defeated and captured, and was led before the Sultan. ‘What would have been your behaviour’, asked Arslan, ‘had fortune smiled upon your arms?’ ‘I would have inflicted upon your body many a stripe’, answered Romanus. Arslan treated him with all courtesy, released him on the promise of a royal ransom, and dismissed him with rich gifts.”

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times