The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Wheatcroft on conversions....

Wheatcroft on conversions....

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, October 23 2010, 20:24:34 (UTC)
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"In the Levant much of the Christian Arab population (and that includes us, before we found out we were assyrian) soon converted to Islam. The new faith was appealing:

The chief attraction of Islam was that it was practical; it did not demand seemingly superhuman efforts...the Christian East on the eve of the Islamic conquest had forgotten the limitations of human nature. Many members of the Church desired to imitate the angels; hence the mass movements towards the sexless life of monks and nuns; hence the exodus from towns and villages into the desert; hence the feats of self-mortification which showed the extent to which men could subdue their bodies to the dictates of the spirit. Some of these Eastern ascetics slept only in a standing position, other immured themselves in dark cells or lived on pillars, or ate only herbs, and even those not more than once a week.

Islam stopped all these excesses. It swept away the exaggerated fear of sex, discarded asceticism, banished the fear of hell for those who failed to reach perfection. quenched theological enquiry...Islam was like the sand of the desert...It created a sense of solidarity and brotherhood which had been lost among the CONTENDING CHRISTIANS (emphasis, mine).

Not surprisingly, from the first days of the Islamic conquest, the Orthodox hierarchy. the spiritual arm of Byzantine political power, saw the Muslims as a unique menace."

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