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From: martillo@hector.UUCP (Yakim Martillo)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion.jewish,net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: Arab tolerance
Message-ID: <187@hector.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Dec-85 13:50:49 EST
Article-I.D.: hector.187
Posted: Sun Dec  8 13:50:49 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Dec-85 01:49:17 EST
References: <460@mhuxm.UUCP> <740@whuxl.UUCP> <10822@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: martillo@hector.UUCP (Yakim Martillo)
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Lines: 63
Xref: lsuc net.politics:2349 net.religion.jewish:1677 net.nlang.india:510
Summary: 

In article <961@homxb.UUCP> mr@homxb.UUCP (M.RINDSBERG) writes:
>> In article <778@sfmag.UUCP> rajeev@sfmag.UUCP (S.Rajeev) writes:
>> >Yakim Martillo writes:
>> >> 
>> >> Muslims over the past millenium have subjected non-Muslims under their
>> >> rule to systematic humiliation and degradation which are mandated by
>> >> all schools of Islamic jurisprudence.  Further the contempt which  Islam
>> >> encourages Muslims to feel toward non-Muslims has caused periodic persecution
>> >> and pogroms directed at non-Muslims in all corners of the Islamic world.
>> >... and more somewhat extreme anti-Muslim views.

I am simply stating fact.  The position of Jews and other non-Muslim
minorities in the Muslim world has been in a state of almost
continuous decline for the past millenium.  Even at best the
non-Muslims were assigned second class status and continuous
humiliation by Islamic law.  Now at times there have been Muslim
rulers who treated non-Muslims much better than Islamic law permits.
For such behavior the individual and not Islam deserves the credit.
Recently, the flourishing of Persian-Indian music under the Moguls
was discussed in net.nlang.india as an example of Islamic magnanimity
and several respondents replied that Akbar was atypical of the muslim
rulers and that he was constantly feuding with the religious
leadership. The situation is similar in Muslim Spain.  There were many
Muslim rulers who for various reasons refused to treat the non-Muslim
population Islamically.

>> >I would like to request that such displays of intolerance be kept off 
>> I believe that the above is also incorrect.  The mast millenium certainly
>> includes the middle ages.  I believe it is because of the religious tolerance
>> of the Islamic world that we call Arabic numerals Arabic.  I believe they
>> were originally Hindu, and the Arab conquerors at the height of their conquests
>> allowed the practice of religions other than their own, as opposed to, say,
>> the Catholic Church which consolidated and centralized its power through the
>> prevention of religious liberty.
>> I believe that Jews in Spain fared better under the Moors than they did under
>> the Inquisition, and I'm under the impression that it was through the
>> Jewish scholars who studied with Arab mathematicians that the Christian world
>> ended up receiving the ancient Greek and Hindu mathematics.  
>> Also, I believe pogrom is a Yiddish word derived from the Russian for 
>> devastation (Webster's Collegiate) and not really appropriately used 
>> here.

By the standards of the Middle Ages Islam may have been slightly more
tolerant than Christianity but much of Christian intolerance was
learned from Muslims.  The inquisition did nothing which the Almohades
had not done centuries earlier.  In any case my point was that until
Islam shows some tolerance by *modern* standards, Islam is
unacceptable as a social/political/religious system in the modern
world and Muslims should not be permitted to rule territories.

>The word pogrom here is used to indicate that the masses of population went
>out to kill Jews. What is the difference where the word comes from.

Sefardic and oriental Jews and I suppose all non-Muslims in Muslim
countries have many words for Muslim pogroms on the non-Muslim
population.  I merely chose a recognizable word.  In any case the
attacks of the Muslims on Malaysian chinese in the late 60's were
called pogroms by the press. 

Joachim Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami