Christians and Muslims, Historically

At one time there were Islamic societies which led the world in their arts and sciences: notably mathematics and astronomy but also medicine, architecture, philosophy, and poetry. We owe to Muslims (and the Christian Byzantines) the preservation of much of the literature and knowledge of the ancient Greeks. By comparison, the Christian West was generally backward, and I am sure that the Muslims regarded it as even barbarian.

So how and why did the Islamic civilizations decline? I am not a historian but from what I do know, I think I can say this with hopefully only slight inaccuracy: wars with the Christians were a big factor.

In Spain, where there was quite a glorious Islamic civilization, with advanced medicine as well as philosophy and other arts and sciences--and, incidentally, generally remarkable tolerance of non-Muslims (Christians and Jews)--centuries of war (the so-called Reconquista or reconquest by Christian Spanish kingdoms) culminated in 1492 with the fall of Granada and thus the ending of the last Islamic kingdom in Spain. (In 1492, not coincidentally, Spain's Jews were expelled; the Muslims were granted tolerance but that promise lasted only some 30 years.)

In the Middle East, where notable Islamic civilizations centered on Baghdad and Persia, there similarly were several centuries of wars between Christians and Muslims, centering on the Crusades, which supposedly had the aim of recapturing Jerusalem for Christians but which caused enormous killing and destruction over a larger area. Wars between Christian states and Muslim powers lasted at least until the eighteenth century.

The last of the Muslim temporal kingdoms--and this is starting to get off the subject--was the Ottoman Empire, which had absorbed the Byzantine Empire (culminating in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople) but weakened over centuries until its final collapse with World War I.

Copyright © 2017

Does Religion Do Any Good?

This country is virtually carpeted in churches and awash in preachers of various stripes. But, despite volumes, mountains, torrents of preaching and reading and writing about religion, God, morality--proper human conduct--it's not clear that we have even the tiniest bit less lying, cheating, corruption, and even killing.

Human greed and lust impel men to lie, cheat, and murder for the sake of obtaining money, power, position, and sex.

Most people have a conscience--I say "most people" because it is clear that some criminals simply have no conscience whatsoever--but a person can do another person wrong and then confess, and then he is told, "Say twenty Hail Marys," and this institution of the confessional lets him or her shed all feelings of guilt whatsoever. It is said that some Mafiosi would murder other people six days a week and then go to church on Sunday and confess (and receive absolution).

Not only does religion, it seems to me, not lessen the net sum of human evil in the world; but religion sometimes even adds to it. There is evil committed in the name of religion. It is not only Islam (let me hasten to add, "as some people interpret it") that gives us terror attacks, with people being killed, almost daily, these days; but Christianity (if we look at the record) is far from blameless. The Crusades, for example, were very brutal: the aim, as incited by the Pope, to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims not only resulted in many Muslims being brutally killed, but the Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, would pass through many towns in Europe and massacre any Jews they happened to find there.

And let us not forget about the Hundred Years War, when Catholics and Protestants were brutally slaughtering one another.

So I am saying, if you care to take a cold and detached look: The good that religion does is, at best over-rated. Yeah, churches sometimes feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc. But I feel strongly that these things could and maybe would be done in the absence of religion. And to look at the large picture, as I have tried to do in the opening paragraphs, of whether religion has had success in ameliorating some of the kinds of evil that are prevalent in the world, I don't think it really does much good.

Copyright © 2017

Knowing What God Wants

Some years ago I introduced two of my friends to one another. I invited them both to my condo, probably mainly because they are both Catholic.

I was in the kitchen doing my host-ly thing but I could overhear the conversation from the living room. I came rushing out of the kitchen when I heard one of them say, "I always wear coat and tie to Mass because I think it shows respect for God." I said, "How do you know what God does or doesn't like? I think you're projecting your middle-class values onto God. Maybe he could not care less what you wear to church."

Then we have the pastor and members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas—largely all members of the family of Rev. Fred Phelps. These are the people who picket the funerals of military personnel with their signs that say "God Hates Fags."

And the Crusades marched (and slew tens of thousands, both Muslims when they got to the Middle East and Jews they encountered along the way) under the banner Dieu le veut, 'God wills it'.

My anger with my Catholic friend and with these other strongly stated positions is that I've always felt that it's arrogant to assert that you know what God wants or likes—or doesn't like.

We have preachers who continually exhort their flock by telling them that God wants them to do this or that—sometimes to vote for a certain candidate (never mind that that is not allowed as long as they want to keep their status as tax-exempt with the IRS).

Of course there are those who say "I know what God likes and wants because I read it in my Bible, and the Bible is God's word." Well, even if you believe that the Bible was in some way authored or dictated by God, there are the questions—blithely ignored by fundamentalists—of whether our modern texts are correct in all particulars. First, there were many biblical books that did not get included in the modern Bible; the decisions as to what would or would not be included in the Canon were made by men who might just be fallible.

Then there are questions about the accuracy of  the texts themselves. There are contradictions, evident omissions, and errors in the texts we have today. In any text that has been copied by hand through the ages, errors will creep in. Not to mention mistranslations of the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. There are many cases where modern scholarship has suggested a better translation, yet these corrections have not made it into most versions of the Bible.

So, if you take these things into account, knowing "what God wants," or having a good authority as to what God wants or likes—well, I think that if you look at the facts, no one should be so certain that he knows.

Copyright © 2013.

Who Has Been Tolerant, Islam or Christianity?

Various Muslim dynasties ruled Jerusalem up until Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, in the 12th Century, which stirred up Christians to travel to "the Holy Land" to wrest it from control of the Muslims.

Under the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Jerusalem had been tolerated. Once Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, nearly all the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem were slaughtered.

A similar pattern occurred about three hundred years later in Spain during the so-called Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of Spain, which was completed in 1492. In most of the Moorish (or Muslim) kingdoms of Spain—notably Andalusia,  known in Moorish days as el Andalus—Jews, Christians, and the Muslim Moors lived side-by-side, and most of the time the Muslims tolerated Christians and Jews. That ended in 1492 with the completion of the Reconquista. The Jews were immediately expelled in 1492 (actually, they were given three choices: convert, get out, or die). The Moors were promised toleration but, just 10 years later, that promise was broken and the Moors were told to convert or get out.

Many Jews and Muslims in newly-Christian Spain who agreed to undergo conversion were suspected of not being sincere in their conversions and were tortured by the Inquisition with various torture instruments or burned at the stake.

So in both cases, Jerusalem and Spain, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all co-existed peacefully when the Muslims were in power, and once Christians gained control the situation abruptly changed and the Jews and Muslims were driven out or killed.

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein

Some of the Things Done in the Name of Religion

In the sixteenth century, following the Spanish conquest of the Mexico, Bishop Landa, the bishop of Yucatan, tortured some 4,000 native Mayans in the process of trying to convert them to Christianity. Some 140 were tortured to death.

Nowadays we'd call that war crimes—so maybe there's been some progress for Mankind. But back then, it was just doing God's work, missionary work, trying to bring Christ to the heathens and save their souls.

I don't know how many people were tortured and killed by the Inquisition in the several centuries of its existence. There were the Muslims and Jews in Spain after 1492; and Protestants and suspected Protestants in Italy, for whom the Inquisition devised a new punishment, boiling in oil. And many more. We are just now learning some of these things as certain records of the Inquisition have only recently been opened up.

During the Crusades, the Crusaders, who had their Christian zeal stirred up by the preachments of the Pope, while on their way to the Holy Land to conquer it from Muslims, would kill any Jews that they happened to encounter along the way, in France or wherever.

These are just a few examples of many, many occurrences over 2000 years or more when, in the name of God, horrible things have been done. It should not surprise the religious that many of the non-religious—including me—view religion as more harmful than beneficial.

Was Religion to Blame for 9/11?

I don't want to just follow a trend; but today everyone is talking about the historic event now known simply as "9/11." So I will, as the saying goes, add my two cents' worth.

I remember the day well, and the officers of the company I was working for allowed employees to gather in a conference room and watch the TV coverage of the events of that day in New York. We saw footage of the planes hitting the towers and then footage of the towers collapsing. Both were beyond astonishing. It's been hard for everyone to get their minds around those events and all the consequences: both loss of life of a large number of innocent people; and peril to the health of the rescue personnel who were exposed to harmful smoke, ash, and so forth.

Of course America and, hopefully, most people elsewhere feel that this country and its civilians did not deserve anything of the sort. And we wonder, Why was this done?

There has been a lot of discussion about whether Islam in its prevalent forms tolerates or even preaches this kind of thing. From the limited amount I know about Islam, I tend to think it does not. But I also think that there has definitely been preaching, within some Muslim circles, of hatred of the West, hatred of "infidels" (which would not be a new idea), hatred of America, hatred of Christianity (and, while we're at it, Judaism).

But to take a larger perspective, every religion has tended to take a view of its challengers and opponents which is in various degrees intolerant. It can manifest itself in discrimination, in hostility, in persecution, in war and killing. So I hasten to point out, it's not just Islam. I even at times think that every religion contains within it, somehow intrinsically, a seed which can blossom into this kind of jihadist, holy war thing. If you want to look at it, Christianity is far from innocent. There have been wars between Catholics and Protestants in Europe over the centuries and in more recent times in Ireland. The Crusades involved capturing, for Christian control, the Holy Land. Once they captured Jerusalem, they slaughtered all its Muslim defenders and inhabitants plus virtually all the Jews there as well. (Incidentally a few Jews were slaughtered along the way as well. The Crusaders, revved up to be zealous for Christianity and militant against its enemies, as they passed through towns in Europe on their way to the Middle East, would slaughter whatever Jews they happened to find along the way.)

Not to mention the Inquisition. Prior to the completion of the "Reconquest" of Spain by Christians, the Islamic kingdoms in Spain—at least generally, and at most times—were models of toleration. Jews and Christians were tolerated and lived peaceably beside Muslims. However, it's no coincidence that as soon as the Reconquest was completed, in 1492, the Jews and Muslims were driven out of Spain. Any members of those groups wishing to remain had to convert to Christianity. Any who remained but were suspected of not being sincere converts would be tortured—perhaps to death—by the Inquisition.

The Inquisition generally was not a pretty matter at all; it even put to death numerous Christians who were suspected of having Protestant leanings; or anyone else whom they viewed as heretical, like Giordano Bruno (who was a Dominican friar and thus Catholic, but who held cosmological and theological views that were considered not sufficiently orthodox, so he was burned at the stake in 1600).

Here I have attempted to point out just a few examples of intolerance that have had religion at their root. Whether they kill 3 or 30 or 3,000—or six million—the less noble sides and corners and crannies of religion have been responsible for a saddening—no, shocking—amount of Man's inhumanity to Man.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Religious War, Episode Number-- Well, Some Thousand

As practically everyone must be aware, the pastor of a small, fringe church in Gainesville, Florida, Terry Jones, has inflamed (I use the word advisedly) world-wide controversy with his plan to burn 200 copies of the Quran on September 11, which is, of course, the anniversary of the famous "9/11" attacks. The 9/11 attacks are viewed (and I would not say wrongly) as attacks by Islam against not only the U.S. but the Christian West or Christianity.

This is the latest battle in an Islam-West (or Islam-Christianity) conflict that goes back not simply nine years to September 11, 2001, but 800 or 900 years, to the Crusades.

To refresh your memory of the history you learned: the Holy Land, so-called, was in the hands of Muslims, who had been conquering more and more of the Byzantine Empire of which it was part; and the Pope preached the Crusade—in fact there were four Crusades—to inspire (or incite) Christian knights to "recapture" the Holy Land for Christianity.

And—just to set the record straight, because I believe I heard someone getting it backwards—the Muslims then considered—and probably still consider—any and all non-Muslims to be "infidels."

So we've had 900 years of conflict, of hatred, of intolerance. In modern times we've also had Christians and Muslims battling each other in Lebanon and in the former Yugoslavia. These were all at least in part religious wars.

And if you want to look more broadly still, it's not only Christians and Muslims who have been at each others' throats. There have been wars between Catholics and Protestants--in Northern Ireland in modern times and elsewhere in earlier times.

And I am sure that the conflicts stemming from religion are as old as the invention of religion itself in human history.

I almost tend to think that there is something inherent in religion that is to blame. Every religion claims to be the "true" one, and fosters in its followers a certain smugness in the fact that they are the followers of the true faith.

And since we are right, we are justified in smiting all those who follow another religion, because theirs are false gods. In Old Testament times and in Classical Antiquity, a war between two peoples was a conflict between their respective gods, and the outcome indicated whose god was stronger or was the "true" god.

Yes, I blame religion for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, over the centuries, and for much human suffering. Religion has done some good, I'd admit; but its inherent tendency to demarcate humanity into "we" and "they," which I've commented on before, has to devolve itself into conflict, and often conflict of the most brutal and protracted kind.

Here is a link to a good article:
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/analysis-pastor-terry-jones-plan-to-burn-quran-latest-in-long-line-of-religious-fire-starters/19623998

If there is a God, I have a suggestion for Him: On September 11, let there be a very hard rain, a deluge, in Gainesville, Florida, and drown out Pastor Jones' bonfire of hate.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein