Writing Wrongs against Muslims

Writing Wrongs against Muslims

            How can it be that in Spain the Muslim rulers gave special protection (dhimma) to the Christians and Jews because Muslims understood that people of all three faiths—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—were People of the Book, and yet 400 years later the West showed no understanding of the beliefs of Islam?  Being monotheistic and having some of the same prophets, they had enough in common to get along during the Golden Age of Islam in Muslim Spain, creating a vibrant culture that coincided with the Dark Ages in other parts of Europe.  Jews (and other religious minorities) were treated significantly better in Muslim-controlled Iberia than in Christian Western Europe, living in a unique "golden age" of tolerance, respect and harmony.   The one limit on the freedom of religion for the Jews and Christians was that they not proselytize.  Even Bernard Lewis, the Orientalist, in his 1984 book The Jews of Islam, allows the following:

            Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they   were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character.           That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two c       communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population.

            On the whole, according the BBC web site on religions http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtm

“the lot of minority faith groups was to become worse after Islam was replaced in Spain by Christianity.”            So how is it that four centuries later in the late eleventh century, the Song of Roland, as Robert Harrison says in the introduction to the 1970 translation (page 20), Masilla, the Muslim ruler, is described as a person who “does not love God, but worships Muhammad and Apollo”? 

            It is strictly forbidden (shirk) in Islam to worship Mohammad or any other person, and Apollo is a pagan god, so of course the Muslims could not worship him. 

            As Cunningham and Reich say in Culture and Values/A Survey of the Humanities, the unknown writer or writers of The Song of Roland “had little interest in historical accuracy or geographical niceties” (196), so this tale of evil (Muslims) and good (Christians, exemplified by Roland) was used successfully as propaganda.  Cunningham and Reich relate how it was “sung to inspire the Norman army before the Battle of Hastings in 1066” and how Pope Urban II used it to appeal to French patriotism when in 1096 he wanted to raise armies for a crusade to free the Holy land.  It quickly spread to other languages, too, so after the Muslims had translated Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, helping European culture survive, they were rewarded by being vilified in literature.  After The Song of Roland came Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which Mohammad is relegated to the eighth circle of hell for “sowers of scandal and schisms.” 

A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass.
- Dante's Inferno, Canto 28 verses 30-31

            This injustice, continuing today in Western nations, makes me think of two quotes.  One is from Woody Allan’s Hannah and Her Sisters,  when a character comments,” If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.”

            Another is from  Gandhi, who was asked what he thought of Western Civilization and replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

            But giving the Christian West credit where it’s due, I want to praise the Reconciliation Walk, a walk Christians take to the countries where Jews and Muslims were slaughtered by Christians so that they can express their regret for wrong acts committed in the name of Christianity:

            But when have Christians demonstrated (Christian)  love to Muslims or Jews? We have     gone to them with swords and guns. We have gone to them with racism and hatred. We          have gone to them with feelings of cultural superiority and economic domination. We    have gone to them with colonialism and exploitation. We have even gone to them with          the Gospel cloaked in arguments of superiority. Only a few have ever gone with the             message of Calvary...We must do more than carry the message, we must be the message.   Reconciliation Walk

            According to the website http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_cru1.htm  about 2,000 Christians from 27 countries have participated in the Reconciliation Walk.  They have been received with applause and warm expressions of gratitude from the Muslim and Jews who have heard their message.  http://www.reconciliationwalk.org/crusades.htm 

            I think that’s a walk I would like to take.