The Long Forgotten History of Tolerance for Religions of All Kinds in the Middle East

[unrepentant progress]

Muslims are not intrinsically intolerant. Right back in the 1860s the ruler of Egypt, named Ismail and titled Khedive (a Turkish term meaning “viceroy”) reproved an adviser for speaking in a derogatory way about a Christian official in the government. The Khedive did not merely say that the Christians deserved respect as (in the Koranic phrase) a “people of the book.” He was more radical. “All are Egyptians alike,” he declared.

Even the concept of a country called Egypt was a fairly novel one at the time: it was technically a province of a wider Islamic state, the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the successors of the Prophet Mohammed. To suggest that all its citizens, regardless of religion, were somehow equal claimants to a shared identity was nothing short of revolutionary. Ismail, and others liked him, were ushering in a century of emancipation for the hitherto marginalized minorities of the Middle East.

But then a different wind began to blow. Liberalism went out of fashion, partly discredited by Arab defeat in 1948 at the hands of Israel. Sterner interpretations of Islam were favored both by the West (as a way to contain Communism) and by influential, oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Islamist movements which wanted to unify all Muslims around the world, and persuade them to define themselves by religion and not by nationality, grew stronger; the Islamist vision offered non-Muslims at best tolerance, not equality. The Islamist movements profited from geopolitics: relations between Muslim countries and Christian colonizers became increasingly confrontational.

Their main focus, though, was often internal - fighting globalization, banning alcohol and curbing sexual immorality - and their increasing influence was partly due to economic changes which had enriched the conservative rural working classes and caused them to migrate to the cities. Religious leaders meantime presented themselves as less corrupt and self-serving than their secular rivals. More recently, anarchy has prompted people to seek whatever means by which they can protect themselves. In societies where the blood feud and tribal identity had never been far from the surface, an ugly sectarianism has resulted.

Full article: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157236

[Igel]

1. From Andalusia to Indonesia,

there's a history of tolerance. When necessary, and in a few cases (in the mid 1800s and afterwards) essentially imposed from without.

There's also a history of pernicious oppression and even pogroms.

We cite the glories of Andalusia because it makes us seem enlightened. We ignore the beheadings that were carried out when Xians dared to preach.

We say how wonderful the Ottomans were. And we ignore the 1850s pogroms that killed thousands of Xian Arabs in Aleppo when the Muslims lost to the Russians. Or the centuries of the devsirme before it was finally ended, in which Xian villages in the Balkans had to pay a child tax--which is to say, a tax payable in children that were taken and raised as janissaries.

We like to cite Maimonides freedom to write. And overlook that when he wrote in Arabic he had to use Hebrew letters because as a Jew he was forbidden under severe penalty of law from using the sacred script.

It's a mixed bag. Compare the worst in Europe to the best in Muslim countries over the course of a millennium and the Muslim countries come out looking great. Flip the metric--compare the best in Europe to the worst in Muslim countries and the opposite happens. But such one-sided metrics don't allow for dialog, reason, or even something approaching accuracy and fairness.

[The Stranger]

2. I think that's the point.

But the Western media is in full-on Neocon trying to apply war paint and portray the Other as Satanic.

They have created the palpable feeling amongst hoi polloi that someone is literally standing outside their front door with a curved sword waiting to decapitate them.

Somehow 15,000 men with nothing more than knives and machine guns 8,000 miles away are going to confront the most powerful entity in the history of the world by unprecedented orders of magnitude, over a quarter billion citizens, unfathomable resources, and a military that controls the world, monitors the world's inhabitants in real time, and wields the power to annihilate the very planet hundreds of times over?

Yet they are incapacitated with fear at this phantom menace.

This shows you the power of media over the human mind.