Quotes and Factoids (11.24.06)
According to Nielsen Media Research, the average American home now has more television sets than people: 2.73 TVs and 2.55 people.
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But ... the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
“The truth shall set you free? Maybe. But first the Truth must be set free.”
Muhammad's Sword By Uri Avner:
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"? Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
To read the whole article, you may go here.
— Reported by the Associated Press Sept. 21.
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But ... the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The truth shall set you free? Maybe. But first the Truth must be set free.”
Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright, educator.
Muhammad's Sword By Uri Avner:
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"? Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
To read the whole article, you may go here.
posted by fromclay at 11/24/2006 12:27:00 AM
3 Comments:
An excellent and true article :) Here is a post on that very subject.
The Prophet's letters to Christians:
http://darvish.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/the-prophets-letters-to-christians/
Ya Haqq!
This is a complicated matter that cannot be settled with either side pointing how evilor benevolent Christians were and how evil or benevolent Muslims were.
For instance, GW Bush may be a born again Christian and i am a born again Christian but i find him criminally and morally culpable for deciding to invade Iraq.
Of course dhimitude was more advantageous to the coffers of Islamic states which might go a long way in explaining why they were not being aggressively converted to Islam.
As far as the Jews are considered i am told that 50% of Medina's population was Jewish before Muhammad. During and immediately Muhammad's time i understand the Arabian continent was pretty much de-Judaised, is that right?
Celal, there's no need to back and forth, but your dhimitude reference is utter nonesense. The coffers of the Islamicate was well endowed on its own accord. This whole "dhimitude" is part of the bile that paved the way to sedate a public to approve of a war that you find morally corrupt.
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