Has anyone looked at the historical legacy of religious violence

Submitted by Counting Islamists (Canada), Oct 20, 2008 at 22:30

It is quite interesting that readers talk about religious violence and point only to Muslims. Historically Christians have been more responsible for religious violence.

There were the 100 Years war, crusades, War of 1914, Second world war, Vietnam war, and wars to stop the legitimate govenment take control over their destiny etc. These wars were motivated by greed and more greed. The crusaders going to MiddleEast even sacked the Byzantine capital - Christian against Christian imagine what this Christian would do to a non - Christian. Well the massacre of the Muslims when Jerusalem capitualted stands in contrast to the behaviour of Suleiman the Magnificant who allowed safe passage. History is a testament to such behaviour.

Then there were other wars to stop the natural growth of Islam and eradicate Muslims. The Catholics first carried out this in Spain where the centuries old Muslim population was forced to convert at sword - the so called Spanish inquisition - Muslims were hunted down and forced to eat pork and drink alcohol to confirm their conversion - many died as Muslim martyrs in Spain. I wish the present day Pope should apologize for this historical legacy and better make some of these muslims saints!

The Catholic zeal of the Portugues and Spanish then turned to Africa and the new world. The annihilation of the aboriginal population and their habitat is a documented legacy. Unfortunately history is always written by conquerors not by the vanquished. We will never learn the details and the misery of the aborigianls nor the milllions of slaves brought from Africa by the same Catholic nations. Ironically Brazil received the largest number of African Muslim slaves. They were also forced to convert and kneel at the image of white Jesus.

Well we can say this happened centuries ago, Is this still relevant. My answer would be yes. Look at the thriving Christian communities in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt - why cannot we find a similar Muslim community in Spain, Sicily, Italy, Malta..........just few years back Muslims in Bosnia faced genocide! The Albanians are still struggling both in Albania and Kosova. Muslims have no rights in Greece; are treated as third class citizens in Serbia, Bulgaria, & Macedonai. European history is taught in school as if Muslims never existed in Europe when infact they were an integral part of the Europe. Why the whitewash! Is this because of insecurity - it is easy to point fingers at Muslims to say they were engaged in forced conversions! Were they really? History shows otherwise. Muslims ruled India for centuries but never forced the native population to convert. Indonesia the largest muslim country was never part of any Muslim invasion! On the contrary France did her best to assimilate Algerians by banning the teaching of Arabic in schools; gave power to the Maronite Christians in Lebanaon when they were a minority.

I do not condone religious violence of any form but I also do not support baseless arguments that are ethnocentric and lack historical validity.

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