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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (10977)	1/2/2003 5:00:08 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Thank you for responding. As I said in my earlier post, I value your first hand knowledge. As a budding young scientist growing up in the heart of the bible belt of this country, I'm more than familiar with some of the problems to which you allude. Nevertheless, I'm surprised at some of your statements. Actually, I think of sharia like the Inquisition, and it is a relatively new phenomena. In the Ottoman Empire, for example, where the Padishah was in fact the head of all Muslims (like the Pope, if you will), there was no sharia. It was my understanding that the sharia existed from the First Caliphate onward. As for the Ottoman Empire, not only did they have the Sharia, but exercised a particularly heinous practice of devshirme. Christian fathers were annually forced to appear in town squares with their sons, the strongest and brightest of whom would be sized from their parents, converted to Islam and trained to be the Sultan's elite fighting force, the Janissaries. This practice was not stopped until the Janissaries were massacred in their barracks because they were perceived as a threat to the Sultan. Is it not now part of the law of some Middle Eastern countries, that the penalty for apostasy (abandonment of faith) is death?... I have been in some countries where there was no such law, but I cannot answer your question as to whether or not there are indeed some countries who have these laws. Saudi Arabia for one. I can, however, say that the Quran is very clear about never trying to convert anyone to Islam by force. I grant you that the Qur'an has a famous tolerance verse "There shall be no compulsion in religion" (Sura 2:256). But what has been the practice? The Qur'an also states that Muslims must "fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute [jizya] out of hand and are utterly subdued" (Sura 9:29). While the minimum jizya is one gold dinar per year, the maximum is not specified. This has allowed considerable abuse. Remember the Muslims conquered largely Christian lands. Now these lands are predominantly Muslim. It would be naïve to believe that the Christians converted voluntarily. Some insight can be gleaned from Bat Ye’or who describes the jizya in nineth century Egypt: In lower Egypt, the Copts, crushed and ruined by taxation and subjected to torture, rebelled (832). The Arab governor ordered their villages, vines, gardens, churches, and the whole region to be burned down; those who escaped massacre were deported. Or for a view of what the jizya was like in the Ottoman Empire, Fregosi says in “Jihad In The West” Christianity, whether as a religious entity to be protected within the Ottoman empire or as a religious entity to be assailed outside the empire, was always first and foremost a cow to be milked. The jizya had to be paid in public with the tax official hitting the payer on the head or back of the neck symbolizing the subjugation. Those men too poor to pay the tax were condemned to slavery along with their wives and children. This practice of collecting the jizya persisted until the beginning of the twentieth century in some Islamic countries. I could go on about many other ways non-Muslims were degraded and chastised in Muslim lands from the First Caliphate right on through to the present, but unless needed I will refrain. Rather I will merely state again that I’ve come to believe that a serious cultural problem exists. – not a few wild-eyed extremists. Part of the problem is the intimate intertwining of church and state. Another part of the problem is an inability to accommodate change. The modern world places a high premium on swiftness to change. The lethargic pace of change in the Muslim world will condemn them to fall ever further behind. This in turn will reinforce their view of themselves as being victims. As victims, they will strike out at their perceived victimizers. If America continues to behave as it has recently, it will (IMO) continue to be perceived as the number one victimizer. lurqer