The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> my evidence

Posted by AssyrianMuslim (Guest) - Thursday, September 24 2009, 2:39:46 (CEST)
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I will again post only some of my evidence about the spread of Islam and its tolerance of others. I will quote from a prominent English historian, who is well respectec and he was also a Chrsitian missionary who spent over 25 years of resarch for just one of his few books on Islam. This is not my aunt nor my version of Fred Aprim but a Christian historian who is free of biases and a missionary of his religion. Let's see what he says:

" Jizyah"

"There is abundant evidence to show that the Christians in the early days of the Muhammadan conquest had little to complain of in the way of religious disabilities. It is true that adherence to their ancient faith rendered them obnoxious to the payment of Jizyah – a word originally denoted tribute of any kind paid by the non-Muslim subjects of the Arab empire, but came later on to be used for the capitation-tax as the fiscal system of the new rulers became fixed [2]; but this Jizyah was too moderate to constitute a burden, seeing that it released them from the compulsory military service that was incumbent on their Muslim fellow-subjects. Conversion to Islam was certainly attended by a certain pecuniary advantage, but his former religion could have had but little hold on a convert who abandoned it merely to gain exemption from the jizyah; and now instead of jizyah, the convert has to pay the legal alms, zakat, annually levied on most kinds of movable and immovable property. [3]"

Tolernace

"That the conversion were in the main voluntary, may be judged from the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of Brahmanabad, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion, and generally, where submission was made, quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise of their own creeds and laws. (p. 272)"

Christians prefering Muslim rule

" the Turkish population and of the number of the renegades who were constantly entering the Sultan’s service – the treatment of their christian subjects by the Ottoman emperors – at least for two centuries after their conquest of Greece – exhibits a toleration such as was at that time quite unknown in the rest of Europe. The Calvinists of Hungary and Transylvania, and the Unitarians of the latter country, long preferred to submit to the Turks rather than fall into the hands of the fanatical house of Hapsburg; and the Protestants of Silesia looked with longing eyes towards Turkey, and would gladly have purchased religious freedom at the price of submission to the Muslim rule. It was to Turkey that the persecuted Spanish Jews fled for refuge in enormous numbers at the end of the fifteenth century, and the Cossacks who belonged to the sect of the Old Believers and were persecuted by the Russian State Church, found in the dominions of the Sultan the toleration which their Christian brethren denied them. (p. 156)"

Nestorians and others

"Indeed so far from the development of the Christian Church being hampered by the establishment of Muhammadan rule, the history of the Nestorians exhibits a remarkable outburst of religious life and energy from the time of their subject to the Muslims. Alternately petted and persecuted by the Persian kings, in whose dominions by far the majority of the members of this sect were found, it has passed a rather precarious existence and had been subjected to harsh treatment, when war between Persia and Byzantium exposed to it the suspeicion of sympathising with the Christian army. But, under the rule of the Caliphs, the security they enjoyed at home enabled them to vigorously push forward their missionary eneterprises aborad. Missionaries were sent into China and India, both of which were raised to the dignity of metropolitan seas in the eighth century; about the same period they gained a footing in Egypt, and later spread Christian faith right across Asia, and by the eleventh century had gained many converts from among the Tatars.(p. 68)"

Then here is Dr George Khoury who also has soemthing to add on that:

"With its God-and-man doctrine of Christology (in contrast to the orthodox doctrine which held that while in Christ two natures existed, these were moulded into one person), its protest against the deification of the Virgin Mary and its unusual vitality and missionary zeal, this Church at the rise of Islam was the most potent factor in Syrian culture which had impressed itself upon the Near East from Egypt to Persia. Members of this community from the fourth century onward had studied and translated Greek philosophical works and spread them throughout Syria and Mesopotamia. From Edessa the Church extended eastward into Persia. Even under Islam this Church had an unparalleled record of missionary activity. And there was, on the other hand, the western branch of the Syrian Church with its God-man Christology and its exaltation of the Virgin to the celestial rank, and which was comparatively lacking in missionary endeavour. Its theology was monophysite, giving prominence to the unity of Christ at the expense of the human element. In Syria the Monophysite communion was called by hostile Greeks “Jacobites” after Jacob Baradacus, bishop of Edessa in the mid-sixth century."

The above are just a few examples by respected authors and historians. They are not Muslims but honest historians who must be truthful no matter what.

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