City of Granada: Evacuated by the Muslims in 1492
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
July 9, 2015
Pope Apologizes For Catholic Church’s ‘Offenses’ Against Indigenous Peoples
By Nicole Winfield, Jacobo Garcia
“I humbly ask forgiveness…for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”
SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia (AP) — Pope Francis apologized Thursday for the sins and “offenses” committed by the Catholic Church against indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas.
History’s first Latin American pope “humbly” begged forgiveness during an encounter in Bolivia with indigenous groups and other activists and in the presence of Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president, Evo Morales.
Francis noted that Latin American church leaders in the past had acknowledged “grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God.” St. John Paul II, for his part, apologized to the continent’s indigenous for the “pain and suffering” caused during the 500 years of the church’s presence on the continent during a 1992 visit to the Dominican Republic.
But Francis went farther.
“I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America,” he said to applause and cheers from the crowd.
Read further in the Huffington Post
We, the editorial team of the Muslim Times, applaud Pope’s kindness and humility, but, the 1.5 billion Muslims are wondering, when will he apologize for crimes against the Muslims of Spain during Inquisitions and the Muslims of Jerusalem during the First Crusade?
Moriscos (Spanish: [moˈɾiskos], Catalan: [muˈɾiskus], [moˈɾiskos]; Portuguese: mouriscos [mo(w)ˈɾiʃkuʃ], [mo(w)ˈɾiskus]; meaning “Moorish”) were former Muslims who converted or were coerced into converting to Christianity, after Spain finally outlawed the open practice of Islam by its sizeable Mudejar population in the early 16th century.
Estimates of Morisco populations at the time of expulsion vary, many estimates being based on the number of recorded expulsion edicts (around 275,000). However, modern studies estimate around one million Moriscos present in Spain at the beginning of the 16th century.[2]
Of the Granada Moriscos, 80,000 are estimated to have dispersed in Andalusia and Castile during the deportation from the Kingdom Granada carried out as a result of the War of the Alpujarras.[3]
Cordoba Mosque in Spain from 8th century, now a Cathedral. Cordoba was a metropolitan city of a million, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together, in peace for a long time
A wide number of recent genetic studies of modern day Spanish and Portuguese populations have ascertained an unusually high level of North African admixture, which is generally attributed to Islamic rule and settlement of the Iberian peninsula.[39]
A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades totals nine during the 11th to 13th centuries. This division is arbitrary and excludes many important expeditions, among them those of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. In reality, the crusades continued until the end of the 17th century, the crusade of Lepanto occurring in 1571, that of Hungary in 1664, and the crusade to Candia in 1669.
My goal here, by collecting this information, is not to push the Christians and the Muslims apart, rather bring them together, by better understanding of the past history and sharing a positive vision for the future.
I have not only tried to bring out the compassionate message of the Holy Quran: Two Hundred Verses about Compassionate Living in the Quran; but, also of the Holy Bible: A Message of Compassion and Love from the Holy Bible.
The Knights Hospitaller continued to crusade in the Mediterranean Sea around Malta until their defeat by Napoleon in 1798.
The Muslim Times has nominated Karen Armstrong for Nobel Prize in literature, in pursuit of bringing the Christians and the Muslims closer in brotherhood and has frequently tweeted about it to our 35,000 followers.
There were frequent ‘minor’ Crusades throughout this period, not only in the area the crusaders called Outremer but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe, against Muslims and also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs.
Let us proceed with some details from individual crusades starting with the first one. The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks. They were unsuccessfulthough and on 15 July 1099 the crusaders entered the city. [2] They proceeded to massacre the remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and pillaged or destroyed mosques and the city itself. [3] One historian has written that the “isolation, alienation and fear” felt by the Franks so far from home helps to explain the atrocities they committed, including the cannibalism which was recorded after the Siege of Maarat in 1098. [4]
Fifteenth century painting of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont , where he preached an impassioned sermon to take back the Holy Land.
Read the account of the taking over of Jerusalem in the seventh century by Umar, may God be pleased with him, in the writings of Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun and reclaiming of the holy city by Urban II, four centuries later and you will be convinced of the great enormity of what is called the First Crusade.
I have examined the Treaty of Jerusalem signed by Umar in my other articles and here I will give some account of the First Crusade mostly in the words of Thomas Asbridge, a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Queen Mary, university of London, from his recent book, The First Crusade: A New History: The Roots of Conflict between Christianity and Islam published by the Oxford Press in 2004. He writes in the first chapter:
The image of Muslims as brutal oppressors corjured by Pope Urban was pure propaganda – if anything, Islam had proved over the preceding centuries to be more tolerant of other religions than Catholic Christendom. Likewise, the fevered spontaneity of Bohemond’s decision to take the cross, dutifully recorded by one of his followers, was almost certainly a facade masking calculated ambition.
Asbridge starts his book by describing the horrific imagery and forceful exhortation that launched the First Crusade:
A race absolutely alien to God has invaded the land of Christians, has reduced the people with sword, rapine and flame. These men have destroyed the altars polluted by their foul practices. They have circumcised the Christians, either spreading the blood from the circumcisions on the altars or pouring it into the baptismal fonts. And they cut open the navels of those whom they choose to torment with loathsome death, tear out their most vital organs and tie them to a stake, drag them around and flog them, before killing them as they lie prone on the ground with all their entrails out. What shall I say of the appalling violation of women, of which it is more evil to speak than to keep silent? On whom, therefore, does the task lie of avenging this, of redeeming this situation, if not on you, upon whom above all nations God has bestowed outstanding glory in arms, magnitude of heart, litheness of body and strength to humble anyone who resists you.
Asbridge gives us enough details in his very first chapter of his almost 400 page book, he writes:
A central feature of Urban’s doctrine was the denigration and dehumanisation of Islam. He set out from the start to launch a holy War against what he called ‘the savagery of the Saracens’, a ‘barbarian’ people capable of incomprehensible levels of cruelty and brutality. Their supposed crimes were enacted upon two groups. Eastern Christians, in particular the Byzantines, had been ‘overrun right up to the Mediterranean Sea’. Urban described how the Muslims, ‘occupying more and more of the land on the borders of [Byzantium], were slaughtering and capturing many, destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God. So, if you leave them alone much longer they will further grind under their heels the faithful of God’. The pope also maintained that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being subjected to horrific abuse and exploitation. While the wealthy were regularly beaten and stripped of their fortunes by illegal taxes, the poor endured even more terrible treatment:
‘Non-existent money is extracted from them by intolerable tortures, the hard skin on their heels being cut open and peeled back to investigate whether perhaps they have inserted something under it. The cruelty of these impious men goes even to the length that, thinking the wretches have eaten gold or silver, they either put scammony in their drink and force them to vomit or void their vitals, or – and this is unspeakable – they stretch asunder the coverings of all the intestines after ripping open their stomachs with a blade and reveal with horrible mutilation whatever nature keeps secret.’
These accusations had little or no basis in fact, but they did serve Urban’s purpose. By expounding upon the alleged crimes of Islam, he sought to ignite an explosion of vengeful passion among his Latin audience, while his attempts to degrade Muslims as ‘sub-human’ opened the floodgates of extreme, brutal reciprocity. This, the pope argued, was to be no shameful war of equals, between God’s children, but a ‘just’ and ‘holy’ struggle in which an ‘alien’ people could be punished without remorse and with utter ruthlessness. Urban was activating one of the most potent impulses in human society: the definition of the ‘other’. Across countless generations of human history, tribes, cities, nations and peoples have sought to delineate their own identities through comparison to their neighbours or own identities through comparison to their neighbours or enemies. By conditioning Latin Europe to view Islam as a species apart, the pope stood to gain not only by facilitating his proposed campaign, but also by propelling the West towards unification.
So, it was different political and other sinister motivations that launched the First Crusade four centuries after Jerusalem had been taken over by the Muslims in an almost bloodless siege and unprecedented Treaty known as the Treaty of Jerusalem.
Urban II died in Rome in 1099. He was beatified in 1881 by Pope Leo XIII. [5] As we judge Urban II so would be the verdict for the whole of the Catholic Church, from 11th till the 16th century. According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by Western Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. Their objectives were to check the spread of Islam, to retake control of the Holy Land, to conquer pagan areas, and to recapture formerly Christian territories; they were seen by many of their participants as a means of redemption and expiation for sins. Between 1095, when the First Crusade was launched, and 1291, when the Latin Christians were finally expelled from their kingdom in Syria, there were numerous expeditions to the Holy Land, to Spain, and even to the Baltic; the Crusades continued for several centuries after 1291, usually as military campaigns intended to halt or slow the advance of Muslim power or to conquer pagan areas. Crusading declined rapidly during the 16th century with the advent of the Protestant Reformation and the decline of papal authority.
As long as the papal authority lasted the Crusades of one form or the other continued. Despite knowing all this history, I do not hold any grudge against any Christian or any Catholic. We are always ever ready to not only make peace, but, advance in brotherly love and fellowship.
We, in the Muslim Times have always endeavored to bring the Muslims and the Christians closer, by emphasizing, what unites us, rather than what divides us. Here, I link our two such specific pursuits: My Favorite Christian Prayer; and: Man of the Decade: President Jimmy Carter in the Light of His Books.
Additional Reading
Trinity and other dogma at the point of sword: Christianity drips with blood!
Caliph Umar Farooq versus Emperor Heraclius: Who gave us our Religious Freedoms?
Tear down the Spanish Wall of Islamophobia!
Categories: Europe and Australia, Highlight, Islamophobia, The Muslim Times