Soccer Dad

Moslem Scholars Have A Funny Notion of Preaching

In a previous post, I wrote about an article describing a group of Moslem scholars who apparently were accepting the invitation to dialogue with the Pope. At the time, I focused on their claim that Islam was spread through preaching, not conquest--noting the long history of Islamic conquest, expansionism, and occupation.

But when a letter written by 38 Islamic scholars, including "all eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam" claims:

It points out that while as a political entity Islam was spread partly as a result of conquest, the greater part of its expansion came as a result of preaching and missionary activity. Moreover, Islamic teaching did not prescribe that conquered populations be forced or coerced into converting. [emphasis added]

--it appears that someone's been playing hooky.

Andrew Bostom shows that the respected 12th century Abu Hamid al-Ghazali approvingly describes the second-class citizenship of dhimmis under Islamic rule this way:

...the dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle.. .Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non-Muslims]...on offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]... They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells...their houses may not be higher than the Muslim's, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddler-work] is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths...[dhimmis] must hold their tongue. [emphasis added]

This form of Islamic "preaching and missionary activity" was no doubt highly efficient in effecting the conversions that Moslems deny were done under coercion.

In an article for The American Thinker, Bostom notes the activities of the Almohads--whose massacres and active persecutions of both Jews and Christians preceded the Spanish Inquisition by 300 years:

The Almohads (1130-1232) wrought tremendous destruction upon both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation—massacre, captivity, and forced conversion—was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim "inquisitors" (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. Maimonides, the renowned philosopher and physician, experienced the Almohad persecutions, and had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148, temporarily residing in Fez — disguised as a Muslim — before finding asylum in Fatimid Egypt. Indeed, although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews:

..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us…Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they…

It was for the sake of Jews who maintained their Judaism while outwardly forced to act as converted Moslems that Maimonides wrote the Iggeret HaShemad (Letter on Forced Conversion).

In his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, when Maimonides compares his work with the compilation of the Mishah by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, he draws the parallel between persecution of Jews during his own time by the Almohads and the persecution of the Jews during the time of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi.

The forced conversion of Jews under Islam was prevalent enough that there is a term to describe those Jews forced to convert but who secretly maintined their Judaism. The Encyclopedia Judaica has an entry for the term Jadid al-Islam (New Muslims) [9:1246] which was

...applied mainly in Persia to Jews who were converted by force to Islam but who, in many cases, adhered secretly to their former religion (see Anusim). The term is associated especially with the crypto-Jewish community of Meshed under the Kajar dynasty from 1839 onward but also with the victims of forced mass conversions in Persia in the 17th and 18th centuries, under Abbas I and Abbas II.

Such oppression of non-Moslems is a natural outgrowth of the Moslem view of these non-Moslems as second-class citizens--a view effectively hard-wired into Islam via the Koran and efficiently carried out by Moslems thoughout their history. In his article The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries when Mitchell Bard gives an overview of the Moslem persecution and murder of Jews over time and across geographic boundaries, he notes

The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. "They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God's signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors" (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:97­98).

Its noteworthy that 38 Islamic scholars have accepted the challenge to enter into dialogue with the Pope--but what is called for now is true dialogue, not apologetics.

Daled Amos

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Pope Benedict and Islam and Forced Conversion and Dhimmis and Rambam and Maimonides