Posted on 7/18/2004, 6:28:07 PM by quidnunc
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Constantinople's history is the history of its Turkish, Greek, Jewish and Armenian inhabitants, not to mention its slave population which, according to Halil Inalcik, was as high as 20 per cent in 1600 and was largely composed of Slavs, Russians and the people of the Caucasus. But we cannot let a few unfortunate historical facts get in the way of a "good feel" story about the wonders of multiculturalism. Of course the reason why the Armenians were not there may have had something to do with their treatment in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, firstly the massacres of 1894 - 96 and then the brutal exterminations of 1915. And those who feel romantic about the Kurds in the light of the recent Iraq war should be made aware that Kurds actively participated in these events.
Hirst's two comments on the capacity of Christians and Jews to practise their faith "openly" under Islam and the characterisation of medieval Muslim rulers presiding over "multicultural societies" only indicates Hirst's profound ignorance of how Christian and Jewish minorities fared under Islamic rule. The situation of Jews and Christians under Islamic rule was regulated initially by the Pact of Umar that is meant to date from the seventh century AD. Jews and Christians were considered to be "protected people" or dhimmis. This meant that they would be able to continue practising their religion, but under a set of conditions, or more properly disabilities, that emphasised both their inferiority and Muslim superiority. Amongst those disabilities were included the following:
• We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighbourhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks' cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
• We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.
In other words Christians and Jews were free to practise their religions so long as they did not do so publicly. Christians could not ring church bells or hold processions outside of their churches. The order prohibiting the repair and construction of churches was obviously not always followed, but it could be used to make the life of Christians difficult.
It is sometimes said in support of Muslim tolerance that they did not force the local Christian and Jewish populations to convert in the wake of the initial invasions of the seventh century. In fact initially it was very difficult for a non-Arab to convert to Islam, and they could only do so by becoming a member of an Arab tribe. Islam was seen initially as monotheism designed especially for Arabs. One can characterise the order created by the original Muslim Arabs as a giant protection racket, because dhimmis were required to pay a special tax, the jizya, in return for the protection given to them by their Muslim overlords. Under these circumstances Muslims had no incentive to make converts of those that they were protecting!
The tax on non-Muslims survived under the Ottomans as did the other disabilities to which they were subjected. These ranged over a number of matters. Dhimmis were not allowed to carry weapons or to ride horses. Their testimony carried no weight in a Muslim court in cases against Muslims where a penalty was involved. In civil cases it was advisable for Christians and Jews to have Muslim friends to testify on their behalf. They were forbidden to wear certain types of clothing or to wear special forms of clothing that identified them as dhimmis. A non-Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, nor own a Muslim as a slave. Even in the bathhouse they had to wear a chain or some other form of identification that marked them out as non-Muslims.
In return for these disabilities they could practise their religion and be subjected to their own laws in matters relating to their own community. The Ottomans possessed a genius for bureaucracy and attempted to formalise this structure by creating the millet system with a community leader at the top to whom the particular minority communities were responsible. Hence the Greek Orthodox patriarch sat at the top of the Orthodox community, possessing more power under the Ottomans than he had ever enjoyed under the Byzantine emperors. To become patriarch became quite a prize. This was reflected in the turnover of patriarchs, a situation that the Ottomans did not discourage, as every new patriarch had to pay a sum to the Sultan when he was installed.
Hence it would be inappropriate to describe the Islamic world as multicultural. It was multi-confessional, but always on the understanding that Islam was dominant and to be accorded the respect that such dominance brought. The Muslim male was always to occupy the superior position over both women and dhimmis. For example, in trade guilds composed of both Muslims and dhimmis in the Ottoman empire a Muslim was invariably in charge, even if the bulk of the membership was non-Muslim. According to the great Islamic thinker Ghazzali, a non-Muslim could not tell a Muslim not to commit adultery because in so doing, as Michael Cook states in his Forbidding Wrong in Islam, he "would be presuming to exercise an illegitimate authority over a Muslim, and would thus be humiliating him".
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(Excerpt) Read more at quadrant.org.au ...
We must keep a sense of perspective about these sorts of matters. Yes, compared to sixteenth-century Spain the Ottoman empire was very tolerant and, if one was a member of a persecuted religious minority, a far better place to live. But the tolerance of this Islamic world was based on inequality; it could never accept non-Muslims as being equal to Muslims.And the 16th-century Ottomans were more tolerant than many Islamists are today.
The problem with freedom of religion in Islamic countries, is that everyone would leave Islam for other religions, and there would be no one left to demagogue.
The Muslims are afraid of competition.
I think, to be fair to the Ottomans, that they felt that prohibiting false religions from being spread was their duty to God. One wouldn't claim that Tudor England would have been "afraid of competition" if Queen Elizabeth had outlawed Druidic temples.
There were no Druids in England during Elisabeth's reign.
My post said that they prohibited false religions from being spread. Prohibiting Christians from attempting to gain new converts, or from standing in the way of their own who wished to convert to Islam, is a prohibition on spreading, not practicing, Christianity.
False statement. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations" is as much a part of the practice of Christianity as "destroy the infidel" is part of your religion.
My religion? What on earth are you talking about? Did you even read my post? I was describing the effects of Ottoman prohibitions on religious practice.
That is true.
At the battle of Angora, the Ottomans vs Tamerlane, what nearly saved the day for the Ottomans was the heroic charge of the Serbian knights under Sultan Bayazid's brother in law and friend Prince Stephen of the Serbs. After Angora and the capture of Bayazid, had the Serbs revolted that would have been the end of the Ottomans.
And the early Ottomans made good use of Christian renegades.
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