Still in the XI cent. Palestine had a Christian majority. The "forced conversion" is historically inaccurate.

Submitted by Sus (Germany), Aug 16, 2014 at 15:51

Sir, thank you for your answer. There are several problems with your answer. I focus on the two main ones. Until the beginning of the eleventh century, the majority of the population in Palestine (but also in Egypt, Syria and other areas) remained predominantly Christian; this confirms that Islam was generally not imposed to the local populations. Furthermore, as Clermont-Ganneau (PEF) noted more than one century ago, "Mussulman Arabs, who founded their empire on the ruins of the Byzantine and Persian Kingdoms, intentionally left untouched the civilization which they found already installed and in use [...] the fellaheen of Palestine, taken as a whole, are the modern representatives of those old tribes which the Israelites found settled in the country, such as the Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Philistines, Edomites, ect.".

Finally, Arabicì - introduced in the region long before the Islam - has the same sound system as Cana'nite, reflected in the 28-sign alphabets of both. Ugaritic also has the same sounds, except that the 30-sign alphabet has three signs for the aleph: ā, ū, ē. The history of the region is very much based on continuity, as the millenary names of most of the local cities confirms. So quite the opposite of what you claim. And again, "It is ridiculous to call the English of today invaders and occupiers, on the grounds that England was conquered from Celtic peoples by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the fifth and sixth centuries. The population was "Anglicized" and nobody suggests that the peoples which have more or less preserved the Celtic tongues – the Irish, the Welsh or the Bretons – should be regarded as the true natives of Kent or Suffolk, with greater titles to these territories than the English who live in those counties."

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