Muslim conquerors often killed civilians

Submitted by byzantine historian (United States), Mar 7, 2007 at 17:04

No one is so naive as to argue that because Jesus councils "runing the other cheek", or because the early church did not engage in fighting battles, or because Catholicism developed a "just war" theory that condemns gratuitous killing that Christians did not kill civilians when they conquered large territories, as in the conquest of the Americas.

But Alex parrots the naive, historically inaccurate view constantly promoted in the popular media that because many Islamic jurists condemned the killing of civilians, then Muslims must not have commonly killed civilians until "Islam" was recently "hijacked" by extremists. That Muslim conquerors very often killed non-combatants in their conquests of formerly Christian regions of the Byzantine empire, the Balkans, and elsewhere is abundantly and independently confirmed by the primary sources: the accounts written by those Christians whose territory was being conquered by Muslims.

Read John of Nikiu on the Muslim conqest of Egypt; read Sebeus and Lewond on the Muslim conquest of Armenia in the seventh and eighth centuries. Read the Chronicle of Thomas the Presbyter. Read Sophronius' sermons referring to the Muslim invasion of Palestine. Read Theophanes. Read Matthew of Edessa and Scylitzes on the Turkish conquests of E. Anatolia in the eleventh century. Read Doukas on the Ottomans' destruction of the Byzantine empire, including the final assautl on Constantinople. Read the letters of Manuel II Paleologus. All these primary sources and many, many more show that Muslims were quite willing to set aside any prohibition on killing civilians in order to take over as much Christian-ruled land as possible.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".