Erdogan's purge in Turkey

[Craig B]

That's enormously far from truth.

I'll let Jewish commentators argue with you.

The major Jewish presence in Iberia continued until the Jews were forcibly expelled en masse due to the edict of expulsionby Christian Spain in 1492 and a similar decree by Christian Portugal in 1496.​

Whereupon

The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded in escaping to Turkey. Sultan Bajazet welcomed them warmly. "How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king," he was fond of asking, "the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?" Among the most unfortunate refugees were those who fled to neighboring Portugal. In 1496, King Manuel of Portugal concluded an agreement to marry Isabella, the daughter of Spain's monarchs. As a condition of the marriage, the Spanish royal family insisted that Portugal expel her Jews. King Manuel agreed, although he was reluctant to lose his affluent and accomplished Jewish community.
In the end, only eight Portuguese Jews were actually expelled; tens of thousands of others were forcibly converted to Christianity on pain of death. The chief rabbi, Simon Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in earth up to his neck for seven days until he died. In the final analysis, all of these events took place because of the relentless will of one man, Tomas de Torquemada.​

 

[A'isha]

I didn't compare the interpretations of ISIS to interpretations of other groups, but rather the interpretations of ISIS to what the texts actually say.

No you didn't. You compared them to a cherry-picked version of the texts, deliberately intended to "prove" the answer you already wanted: that Islam is evil.

That's why you completely ignored things like the hadith about Muhammad telling his followers not to kill the Jewish woman who attempted to poison him (or, indeed, the entire concept in Islam of sabr, forbearance).

You can, of course, interpret the texts differently.

Indeed.

It's just that if Mohammed and Allah wanted Muslims to act differently, there's a fairly simple way they could've done it: make the most straightforward interpretation a lot more benign.

Why is that so hard to grasp?

Because its not "the most straightforward interpretation" at all.

I can summarize this very easily: because Muslims are more concerned about how Mohamed lived, and not very concerned about what the results of his teachings would be.

Of course they are.

Great job. Did I mention a sufficient number of times this is exactly what's fueling pretty much every ******** organization in the area, from AKP to ISIS, or do I need to repeat myself further?

What, that there's no single "definitive" interpretation of the texts, and that individual scholars have different views (often shockingly different views)?

I did say earlier that a series of chaotic, conflicting commands should be expected to produce chaotic, conflicting results at least some of the time, did I not?

Yes, which contradicts your own claim that there's a "most straightforward interpretation" (which you, naturally, say is the one that ISIS follows).

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Even the sheer linguistic parsing of the Qu'ran is a beast. At least in the pieces that I have read, there is a lot of specificity that needs to be interpolated to make any sense at all from the text. The idea that such a text could have a "straightforward" interpretation at all is nonsense.

 

[Craig B]

Constantinople was the largest and most important city of the orthodox Greeks, until it was conquered and ethnically cleansed by the highly tolerant Ottomans.

Where, out of interest, have I used the expression "highly tolerant"? What did I in fact state in #73?

Your readers would be entitled to suppose from your wording that you believe that Constantinople was cleared of its Christian and Jewish inhabitants in, or shortly after, 1453. Are you stating that? If not, what are you asserting?

 

[McHrozni]

That's not a definition.
Did you know that the Queen of the UK is head of the CofE?

Yes. Did you know that this means the state rules over the religion, as opposed to it being the other way around? Orthodox Christian states have a similar arrangement, where Church is subservient to the state. This leads to it's own problems, but it's an order of magnitude less problematic than vice versa.

Note that there are lots and lots of issues with Morocco, but simply having their monarch claim descent from some historic religious figure is not unusual. It's how lots of monarchies work, and have worked throughout history.

Claiming legitimacy due to ones' descent from the founder of religion is a tad different to claiming legitimacy due to descent from a historic figure, who might have some religious importance as well.

I was using this smallest of issues with Morocco to illustrate the point of what I meant by "varying extent", not as an exhaustive list of issues with Morocco.

So a figure pulled out of your arse.

You're free to dispute it if you want.

And as I said, my argument was entirely about that sentence I quoted. It was bollocks.

My point was that you only saw what you wished to see.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

I'll let Jewish commentators argue with you.

The major Jewish presence in Iberia continued until the Jews were forcibly expelled en masse due to the edict of expulsionby Christian Spain in 1492 and a similar decree by Christian Portugal in 1496.​

Whereupon

The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded in escaping to Turkey. Sultan Bajazet welcomed them warmly. "How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king," he was fond of asking, "the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?" Among the most unfortunate refugees were those who fled to neighboring Portugal. In 1496, King Manuel of Portugal concluded an agreement to marry Isabella, the daughter of Spain's monarchs. As a condition of the marriage, the Spanish royal family insisted that Portugal expel her Jews. King Manuel agreed, although he was reluctant to lose his affluent and accomplished Jewish community.
In the end, only eight Portuguese Jews were actually expelled; tens of thousands of others were forcibly converted to Christianity on pain of death. The chief rabbi, Simon Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in earth up to his neck for seven days until he died. In the final analysis, all of these events took place because of the relentless will of one man, Tomas de Torquemada.​

What is your argument here, exactly? That Islamic states weren't predisposed against the Jews, because Christian Spain expelled them?

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

No you didn't. You compared them to a cherry-picked version of the texts, deliberately intended to "prove" the answer you already wanted: that Islam is evil.

That's why you completely ignored things like the hadith about Muhammad telling his followers not to kill the Jewish woman who attempted to poison him (or, indeed, the entire concept in Islam of sabr, forbearance).

I didn't ignore it, I focused on a different example in the life of Mohamed. Kind of what you did, and then criticized me for doing the same. Curious.

Because its not "the most straightforward interpretation" at all.

Really? What is the most straightforward interpretation and why is it more straightforward?

What, that there's no single "definitive" interpretation of the texts, and that individual scholars have different views (often shockingly different views)?

No, that this above is, in itself, a massive problem with Islam, and a reason why Islam is rightfully blamed for violence in the name of Islam.
If Muslims aren't able to tell whether Mohamed ordered them to kill and subjugate the unbelievers, or treat them with tolerance and compassion, then Islam itself is a problem.

Yes, which contradicts your own claim that there's a "most straightforward interpretation" (which you, naturally, say is the one that ISIS follows).

No, it doesn't, there's important difference between chaotic and random.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

That's enormously far from truth. Christian Church and state were two separate institutions from the onset.

Maybe it started that way, but it sure didn't remain that way. I'm actually reading a book right now about the Tudor period in England by Jasper Ridley, which notes that "one of the duties of a king was to decide what religion his subjects should adopt and issue orders from time to time telling them exactly what they should believe about religion and exactly how they should worship", and that this was the reason why "[w]hen there was a Catholic sovereign, [the bishops, noblemen, and justices of the peace] could supervise the burning of Protestant martyrs; then, when the King changed his policy, or was succeeded by a new King who made England Protestant and suppressed the Pope's supporters, the mayors and JPs could arrest and torture the Papists, and revert once again to burning Protestants if a Catholic sovereign came to the throne."

Which, of course, is exactly what happened under the alternating reigns of Henry VIII and his children.

That said, with the exception of Vatican (a state formed solely for the purpose of having the Pope of Rome subject of no man) today is secular. Every single Muslim state is either Islamic, or on a path towards becoming one.

Countries like England and Norway have an established state church where the sovereign is the head of the religion, while Bangladesh has secularism an explicit part of its Constitution.

What you describe as "tolerance" is more accurately described as "subjugated second class citizen".

As the Bernard Lewis (who metacristi loves to quote) put it in What Went Wrong?,

"In the world of Islam, governments might discriminate against non-Muslims, including Jews; but they rarely persecuted them. There might be contempt, degradation, even occasional repression, but there was nothing in Islam to compare with the specific hatred, both theoretical and popular, that was directed against the Jews in Christendom."

Is it? Orthodox Greeks were the majority population of the entire Asia Minor, until the highly tolerant Seljuk Turks arrived and cleansed them from their homes. Constantinople was the largest and most important city of the orthodox Greeks, until it was conquered and ethnically cleansed by the highly tolerant Ottomans. The lands between Sinai peninsula and the Atlantic ocean were predominantly Christian, until the highly tolerant Arabs conquered the lands and made them into second class citizens in their own lands. The highly tolerant Sultans of Andalusia in Cordoba placed Jews into high positions, until they highly tolerantly massacred them so they wouldn't amass too much power. Malta was depopulated and remained almost unsettled for two centuries when the highly tolerant Muslim invaders took the island in 870.

It wasn't "ethnic cleansing". The Islamic conquerors incorporated the peoples they conquered into their empire (and, for the first few centuries of Islam, even discouraged any of them from converting to Islam), while it was always the practice of Christian Europeans to completely wipe out members of other religions (just compare how many pagans were left in the Baltic after the Northern Crusades with how many Jews and Christians remained in Iberia after the Islamic conquests there).

That's why Islamic Spain had such huge minorities of Christians and Jews, while after the Reconquista every single Muslim and Jew was expelled or killed, or why Greece under the Ottomans still had a mostly Orthodox population but expelled every single Muslim and destroyed all the mosques post-indpendence, or why Egypt today, 1500 years after it became Muslim still has a larger percentage of Christians among its population than any Western country including France has Muslims.

 

[McHrozni]

Where, out of interest, have I used the expression "highly tolerant"? What did I in fact state in #73?

You didn't, but it seems to me it was appropriate to use nonetheless.

Your readers would be entitled to suppose from your wording that you believe that Constantinople was cleared of its Christian and Jewish inhabitants in, or shortly after, 1453. Are you stating that? If not, what are you asserting?

That the Ottoman Empire could not be described as tolerant as easily as you wish them to. There were less tolerant states at the time, but that's as far as it goes. The Ottomans were so tolerant the Christian population of Constantinople converted to Islam en masse to avoid repercussions, thousands were killed in systematic looting and some 30,000 were enslaved - two thirds of the population of a conquered city was either killed or enslaved by a state you consider a model of Islamic tolerance. Remember that the next time you want to consider ISIS an aberration within Islam please.

It's kind of like North Korea and Belarus, if you will. Neither country is particularly tolerant of political dissent, but North Korea is way worse. That doesn't mean Belarus tolerates political dissent.

Use a different pair if you wish, I tried to use two who were similar enough to be compared, yet still different enough and not connected to the question in a significant way.

McHrozni

 

[Craig B]

What is your argument here, exactly? That Islamic states weren't predisposed against the Jews, because Christian Spain expelled them?

McHrozni

My argument is that they were more generously treated in the Ottoman Empire than in post-Reconquest Spain. That included both Sephardic immigrant exiles from Spain and other Jewish communities who had been established in Ottoman territories prior to the Turkish conquest.

By the way, what is your problem with the Pope being subject to human government? What about, for example, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, or the Archbishop of York? Is it in order for these clergymen to be subject to the laws of nations like other people? If so, why not the pope?

 

[McHrozni]

Countries like England and Norway have an established state church where the sovereign is the head of the religion, while Bangladesh has secularism an explicit part of its Constitution.

And Islamists working hard to subvert that. Bangladesh is admittedly one of the less problematic states - British influence perhaps?

It wasn't "ethnic cleansing". The Islamic conquerors incorporated the peoples they conquered into their empire (and, for the first few centuries of Islam, even discouraged any of them from converting to Islam), while it was always the practice of Christian Europeans to completely wipe out members of other religions (just compare how many pagans were left in the Baltic after the Northern Crusades with how many Jews and Christians remained in Iberia after the Islamic conquests there).

Compare that to the number of non-Muslims in Islamic lands and you get a similar result in all but a handful of cases. On the top of it, most Islamic lands fell into Christian hands for a period of time, and the percentages of non-Muslims still barely budged. This leads me to believe your entire premise is utterly false.

That's why Islamic Spain had such huge minorities of Christians and Jews, while after the Reconquista every single Muslim and Jew was expelled or killed, or why Greece under the Ottomans still had a mostly Orthodox population but expelled every single Muslim and destroyed all the mosques post-indpendence, or why Egypt today, 1500 years after it became Muslim still has a larger percentage of Christians among its population than any Western country including France has Muslims.

Spain and Greece were two countries who remained non-Muslim despite centuries-long Muslim occupation. They were also two least tolerant states, Spain was such in the historic sense.

But I'm sure this was just a coincidence.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

My argument is that they were more generously treated in the Ottoman Empire than in post-Reconquest Spain. That included both Sephardic immigrant exiles from Spain and other Jewish communities who had been established in Ottoman territories prior to the Turkish conquest.

Yes. Spain was Bad at the time. And? What's your point, exactly?

By the way, what is your problem with the Pope being subject to human government? What about, for example, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, or the Archbishop of York? Is it in order for these clergymen to be subject to the laws of nations like other people? If so, why not the pope?

It's not my problem, it a problem the Roman Catholic Church has, and it has been resolved in this manner by the Catholic world. I take no sides in that decision. I mentioned Vatican solely because it is the sole Christian theocracy in existence.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

I didn't ignore it, I focused on a different example in the life of Mohamed. Kind of what you did, and then criticized me for doing the same. Curious.

I openly acknowledge the variety of different interpretations in Islam. You're the one who claims there is a "most straightforward interpretation" (and that it just so happens to be ISIS').

Really? What is the most straightforward interpretation and why is it more straightforward?

There isn't one.

If Muslims aren't able to tell whether Mohamed ordered them to kill and subjugate the unbelievers, or treat them with tolerance and compassion, then Islam itself is a problem.

It's no more a problem than any other religion, such as Christianity, whose followers draw mixed and contradictory messages from its teachings. That's how religion works.

No, it doesn't, there's important difference between chaotic and random.

Not really, because even "chaotic", the state of being disorganized or disordered, contradicts your assertion that there's a "most straightforward interpretation".

 

[A'isha]

And Islamists working hard to subvert that.

True, but that's just you moving the goalposts.

Compare that to the number of non-Muslims in Islamic lands and you get a similar result in all but a handful of cases.

Really? Can you name another non-Christian country or territory conquered by Christian Europeans at the same time Egypt was conquered by Muslims, which has kept the same percentage of the original religious population ever since?

On the top of it, most Islamic lands fell into Christian hands for a period of time, and the percentages of non-Muslims still barely budged. This leads me to believe your entire premise is utterly false.

You started out describing historical events from the early to mid medieval period, then when it was pointed out to you that the Christians of the period acted worse than the Muslims of the period, you decide to suddenly start (illegitimately) comparing historical events from the early to mid medieval period to events from the 19th Century.

Sorry, but no.

Spain and Greece were two countries who remained non-Muslim despite centuries-long Muslim occupation. They were also two least tolerant states, Spain was such in the historic sense.

But I'm sure this was just a coincidence.

Islamic Spain was one of the "least tolerant states"?

 

[Craig B]

You didn't [ use the expression "highly tolerant"] but it seems to me it was appropriate to use nonetheless.

Was it appropriate to put it in quotation marks as if you were citing some expression I had employed in my post to which you were replying?

Can you clear up the point about the cleansing of Christians from Post conquest Constantinople please?

... two thirds of the population of a conquered city was either killed or enslaved by a state you consider a model of Islamic tolerance.

Sources please. Was the city cleared of its Christian inhabitants and made purely Muslim or not? An implication that it was not is contained here.

In the fraught year of 1798, the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, Anthimos I (1717–1808), published in Constantinople a short tract that simultaneously offered an apologia for the quasi-concordat between the Orthodox Church and Muslim state and a critique of the revolutionary ideas fashionable in Western Europe ...

The all-mighty Lord, then, has placed over us this high kingdom, “for there is no power but of God,” so as to be to the people of the West a bridle, to us the people of the East a means of salvation. For this reason he puts into the heart of the Sultan of these Ottomans an inclination to keep free the religious beliefs of our Orthodox faith and, as a work of supererogation, to protect them, even to the point of occasionally chastising Christians who deviate from their faith, that they have always before their eyes the fear of God. . . .​

 

[McHrozni]

I openly acknowledge the variety of different interpretations in Islam. You're the one who claims there is a "most straightforward interpretation" (and that it just so happens to be ISIS').

(...)

There isn't one.

Let's take this argument at face value as a mental experiment. This still means the interpretation of ISIS would be comparably valid to the one made by non-terrorist Muslims.

I fail to see how this drastically improves the standing and merits of Islam.

It's no more a problem than any other religion, such as Christianity, whose followers draw mixed and contradictory messages from its teachings. That's how religion works.

Sure, but in other religions they don't form into death cults with tens of thousands of followers who are willing to die so infidels would die as well in their quest for global domination.

That's kind of important. I'm less concerned about Sovereign Military Order of Malta whose main concern is "assisting children, homeless, handicapped, refugees, elders, terminally ill and lepers around the world without distinction of ethnicity or religion" than I am about ISIS. Both are groups of highly religious people, doing what they believe their religion commands them to, and both claim sovereignty.

Yet you seem to think they're essentially the same thing. Curious.

Not really, because even "chaotic", the state of being disorganized or disordered, contradicts your assertion that there's a "most straightforward interpretation".

Not really. But if that's really your sole concern about my assertion, I adequately addressed it above.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

Really? Can you name another non-Christian country or territory conquered by Christian Europeans at the same time Egypt was conquered by Muslims, which has kept the same percentage of the original religious population ever since?

I can't name a territory conquered by Christian Europeans at the time, because there wasn't one. It's kind of an unfair demand of me to ask of one who was conquered and furthermore had another condition followed, don't you think?

Islamic Spain was one of the "least tolerant states"?

Spain after the Reconquista, obviously.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

Was it appropriate to put it in quotation marks as if you were citing some expression I had employed in my post to which you were replying?

Did I do that? Where?

Can you clear up the point about the cleansing of Christians from Post conquest Constantinople please?

Sources please. Was the city cleared of its Christian inhabitants and made purely Muslim or not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople#Plundering_phase

The city was not cleared of every non-Muslim if that's what you want to hear. I fail to see how that argument makes the Ottoman empire tolerant. If you're considered tolerant as long as there's a single member of the offending religion still present in your lands there will be very, very, VERY few examples of non-tolerant states in history. I'm sure there was at least one Jew present in Spain at all times for example, so by the standard you applied to Ottoman Empire, late medieval and early modern Spain was tolerant.

I find this notion somewhat silly.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

Let's take this argument at face value as a mental experiment. This still means the interpretation of ISIS would be comparably valid to the one made by non-terrorist Muslims.

I fail to see how this drastically improves the standing and merits of Islam.

The interpretation ISIS has of their religion is indeed a huge problem. But it still isn't the "most straightforward interpretation". Most other Muslims, especially the Muslim victims of ISIS' violence, would disagree with you on that.

Sure, but in other religions they don't form into death cults with tens of thousands of followers who are willing to die so infidels would die as well in their quest for global domination.

You just described everything from the Crusades to events currently happening in Africa.

That's kind of important. I'm less concerned about Sovereign Military Order of Malta whose main concern is "assisting children, homeless, handicapped, refugees, elders, terminally ill and lepers around the world without distinction of ethnicity or religion" than I am about ISIS. Both are groups of highly religious people, doing what they believe their religion commands them to, and both claim sovereignty.

Yet you seem to think they're essentially the same thing. Curious.

Sovereign Military Order of Malta is hardly the only devout Christian organization out there (just like ISIS is hardly the only devout Muslim organization).

I can't name a territory conquered by Christian Europeans at the time, because there wasn't one. It's kind of an unfair demand of me to ask of one who was conquered and furthermore had another condition followed, don't you think?

The Baltic countries that were the object of the Northern Crusades that I linked you to above? Charlemagne's conquests of the Saxons?

If you don't even know history, why are you trying to talk about it?

Spain after the Reconquista, obviously.

Your argument is that the reason Greece and Spain were so intolerant of Muslims and Jews in their lands, killing and expelling them after taking control, is because those countries had large Christian minorities in them that the Muslims didn't kill or expel when they ruled those lands?

Okay. Thanks for helping prove my point, I guess.

 

[McHrozni]

The interpretation ISIS has of their religion is indeed a huge problem. But it still isn't the "most straightforward interpretation". Most other Muslims, especially the Muslim victims of ISIS' violence, would disagree with you on that.

Until the 16th century most Chinese believed the Earth was flat. That had no effect on the shape of Earth whatsoever either.

You just described everything from the Crusades to events currently happening in Africa.

Your knowledge of Crusades is severely lacking and the article you posted is under a paywall. Try again please.

Sovereign Military Order of Malta is hardly the only devout Christian organization out there (just like ISIS is hardly the only devout Muslim organization).

Certainly. It's the only one that claims national sovereignty like ISIS though.

The Baltic countries that were the object of the Northern Crusades that I linked you to above? Charlemagne's conquests of the Saxons?

Northern Crusades began some 550 years after Egypt fell to Muslim invaders. How wide is your net of "around the same time" anyway?

Your argument is that the reason Greece and Spain were so intolerant of Muslims and Jews in their lands, killing and expelling them after taking control, is because those countries had large Christian minorities in them?

Nope, because they were repressed under Islamic rule for so long, which bred frustration and hate of anything foreign.

You know, kind of what is currently used as an excuse for Islamic terrorism these days? People look at Muslims with distrust, which drives them to commit violent acts against the infidels.
Now replace "looking at you with distrust" to "daily humiliation of a life as second-class citizen", and you can clearly see that Spain could've turned far, far worse than it did.

McHrozni