An Historical Perspective of Muslim-Christian Relations

[Hawk1981]

The early period of Islamic rule had been one in which relations between Christians and Muslims were fruitful. With the inception of Islam in the 7th century the earliest community of Muslims saw itself in continuity with Jews and Christians. The Qur’an refers to many of the prophets detailed in the Hebrew Bible and clarifies that Muhammad is to be the last in the long prophetic line. Next in importance to Muhammad in this lineage is Jesus, who in the Qur’an is specifically not the son of God and not in any way divine. Political resistance to the Prophet Muhammad created a series of conflicts resulting in the crystallization of Islam into its own separate religion and identity. Theological differences were articulated early and have continued throughout history to present major challenges to interfaith relationships.

A combination of factors led to the rapid spread of Islam after the Prophet’s death in 732. The Persian Sassanian and the Greek Byzantine Empires were exhausted after many years of struggle, and Islam was able to occupy what amounted to a power vacuum in many of the areas to which it spread. Military expeditions were political in nature and not undertaken for the purpose of forcing conversion to Islam. Christians and Jews were given dhimmi status, paying a poll tax for their protection. Dhimmis had the right to practice their religion in private and to govern their own communities. Special dress was required and new church buildings could not be constructed.

The Christian church as a whole was divided into five apostolic sects at the beginning of Islam, located in Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. The resulting sectarian divisions had significant consequences for the spread of Islam. The coming of Islam improved the position of the Nestorian and Monophysite Churches, by removing the disabilities from which they had suffered under Byzantine rule.

As Islam developed, it did so in a largely Christian environment, and Christian scholars played an important part in the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical thought into Arabic. The languages which the Christians had previously spoken and written continued to be used, Greek, Syriac and Coptic in the east, Latin in Andalusia, and some of the monasteries were important centers of thought and scholarship.

As time went on, however, the situation changed. The dominant Muslim minority turned into a majority, and acquired a strong autonomous and self-confident intellectual and spiritual life. Within the Islamic community early attitudes of seeming tolerance and even appreciation of Christians and Jews soon gave way to more narrow interpretations of the Qur’an and Islamic law, resulting in growing intolerance.

Certain periods in world history reflected harmonious interactions among the three Abrahamic faiths. Medieval Andalusia, for example, provided a venue for Muslims and Christians, along with Jews, to live in proximity and even mutual appreciation. It was a time of great opulence and achievement, and social intercourse at the upper levels was easy. It was also a period during which a number of Christians chose to convert to Islam. Medieval Andalusia has often been cited as an ideal place and time of interfaith harmony.

To some extent that claim may be justified. If so, however, it was fairly short and was soon supplanted by the tensions, prejudices, and ill treatment of minorities by both Muslims and Christians that more often have characterized relationships between the communities. By the 10th century the Iberian Peninsula was characterized by hostilities between the Christian kingdom of León in the north and the considerably larger Muslim al-Andalus in the south.

Other encounters, such as those experienced through the centuries of the Crusades, have left both Christians and Muslims bitter and angry. The question of sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem remained an ongoing issue. The two centuries in which Christians occupied Palestine witnessed a constant pattern of shifting alliances. The Crusades lasted for several centuries, ending finally in victory for Islam.

 

[Hawk1981]

By the close of the Middle Ages hostilities between Islam and Western Christendom once again were intense, with active warfare for several centuries. A number of events served as a kind of transition from the Middle Ages to a new era of international engagement. The fall of Constantinople in the middle of the 15th century and the final expulsion of Muslims from Andalusia at the end of that century illustrate this transition. For some eleven centuries Constantinople had stood as the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Its fall to the invading Turks in 1453 signaled a dramatic change in the power relationships between Islam and Christendom.

In the 15th and succeeding centuries Muslim navies roamed the Mediterranean, attacking European ships and coastal towns. Raids were carried out as far north as England and Ireland. Muslim fortunes, however, were reversed in Spain, where, after centuries of glory, they suffered a steady loss of territories under the Christian Reconquista. Initially under Christian rule Muslims were the recipients of a policy of toleration. Gradually, however, the two communities became completely segregated, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism had consequences for both Muslims and Jews. The struggle for sectarian control ended with the union of the Spanish kingdoms under Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. By the turn of the 15th century Muslims in Spain had to choose between conversion, emigration, or death.

The rise of rationalism, a fascination on the part of the West with the cultural trappings of the East, and the necessities of international political and economic exchange soon drew the worlds of Islam and Christendom closer together. At the same time, under the influence of Western missionary agencies, a very negative perception of Islam continued to develop in Europe. It is important to note some of the nonmilitary, cultural, and intellectual ways in which East and West encountered each other. Much has been made of the interchange between the Crusaders and the Arabs. In some cases each side found in the other chivalry and respect worthy of admiration and even emulation.

 

[Hawk1981]

For the most part European thinking had little influence on Arab culture. While the West found great benefit from early Islamic thought in the fields of culture and science. It discovered that in the Islamic world the concept of divine unity led to an understanding that the arts and sciences, as we would call them today, are but different dimensions of the unified study of God’s many-faceted world. Westerners learned from their encounters with Islamic civilizations in all major scholarly and scientific fields, including philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and mathematics as well as the arts and music. It is well known that ancient Greek philosophy and science came to the West through the medium of Arab translation. Arab-Islamic medical science had a great influence on the development of the disciplines of medicine in Europe.

Unfortunately, since the Middle Ages it has been politics that has dominated thinking on both sides, and a legacy of confrontation, distrust, and misunderstanding has prevailed until the present day. The Ottoman Empire, at its height during the 16th and 17th centuries under Suleiman the Magnificent, suffered gradual decline in succeeding centuries, culminating in its defeat as an ally of Imperial Germany during World War I. Having already lost most of its European territories before the war, the empire suffered a breakup into what is now Turkey and the countries of the Middle East, whose boundaries were drawn by the victorious Western allies.

Meanwhile in other parts of the Muslim world, especially Africa and South Asia, colonialists wreaked havoc, supplanting Islamic educational systems with secular or Christianity-based systems. By 1900 more than 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa was already under European control.

Throughout the nearly fifteen centuries of Muslim-Christian encounter, individual adherents of both traditions often have lived peaceably with each other. At the same time, Muslim expansion into Christian territories and Christian imperialism in Muslims lands have fostered fear and ill-will on both sides.

 

[Hawk1981]

For a long period Western scholarly research on Islam was dominated by the desire to convert Muslims to Christianity. It is only in the 20th century that more objective scholarship emerged, especially efforts launched following the publication of Edward Said’s epic Orientalism published in 1978.

In his controversial work, Said proposes that much of the Western study of Islamic civilization was an exercise in political intellectualism; a psychological exercise in the self-affirmation of "European identity"; not an objective exercise of intellectual enquiry and the academic study of Eastern cultures. Therefore, Orientalism was a method of practical and cultural discrimination that was applied to non-European societies and peoples in order to establish European imperial domination. In justification of empire, the Orientalist claims to know more—essential and definitive knowledge—about the Orient than do the Orientals.

Based upon fictional, Western images of the Orient, the history of European colonial rule and political domination of Eastern civilizations, distorts the intellectual objectivity of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning, and culturally sympathetic Western Orientalist; thus did the term "Orientalism" become a pejorative word regarding non–Western peoples and cultures.

 

[Sunni Man]

Based upon fictional, Western images of the Orient, the history of European colonial rule and political domination of Eastern civilizations, distorts the intellectual objectivity of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning, and culturally sympathetic Western Orientalist; thus did the term "Orientalism" become a pejorative word regarding non–Western peoples and cultures.

^^^^ The best explanation I've ever read that explains why the scholarly term "Orientalism" was demoted to the politically incorrect category. ...

 

[Marion Morrison]

Them Crusades, though!

 

[Sunni Man]

I found the OP's synopsis of the dynamics between Christians and Muslims over the centuries to be an excellent read. ...

 

[Marion Morrison]

I found the OP's synopsis of the dynamics between Christians and Muslims over the centuries to be an excellent read. ...

Hmm..Ethiopians were protecting the Ark at least 550 years before there ever was a Mohammed.
They still do to this day.
Ethiopians were part of the 1st church Jesus set up.

 

[Picaro]

lol a load of revisionist rubbish; the 'Andalusian Paradise' myth is easily refuted by Jewish historians themselves, when they note the several uprisings over the centuries under the Muslim/Jewish oppressions wherein the natives so hated the dictators they tried to exterminate the Muslim/Jewish invaders to the last man, woman, and child. There was no 'peaceful coexistence', just a constant state of tensions, plundering the conquered in Spain and North Africa piracy, and warfare from frequent Muslim attempts to conquer Europe. The Crusades were acts of self-defense. The much denounced 'Inquisitions' were pretty mild stuff compared to the routine Muslim/Jewish atrocities against their subjects, and in fact it made sense not to trust any of the 'converts' after the reconquests of Spanish lands and get rid of as many of them as possible. They were given far better terms than they ever gave others, they could leave of their own volition or convert; many chose to lie instead and stay among people who hated them for good reason.