-Ottomans
-Good treatment of christians
Just fucking lol. Find me one majority muslim country under the power of any european colonial power that had more opressive laws in context. I have a hard time remembering which colonial power had a program of enslaving foreign children specifically to raise them as brainwashed slave warriors.
The fantasy that muslim law was more "tolerant" was born entirely out of very, very early Islamic history, when the territories they conquered and colonized were part of the remnants of the Roman empire (Byzantines). At that time the recent history of the area was one of endless religious schisms and violent rebellions, entire areas and ethnic groups divided along these lines, the fruits of hundreds of years of retarded theological disputes on the nature of Jesus and God, monophysites and miaphysites and trinitarians and etc. The muslims just saw all of these disparate groups as "christians" and treated them accordingly, as subvervient second class thralls, which yes, was more tolerant than being treated as an apostate heretic by the Orthodox church. Somehow they always neglect to mention the dozens, no hundreds of subsequent rebellions by christians over hundreds of years in this occupied territory that were put down and obliterated with typical imperialistic savagery. After all, they flaunted the natural order of things by daring to fight against muslims in muslim lands, and in tolerant muslim law this reaction was perfectly justified.
edit: Talking about the specific contents of Holy Books I find irrelevant. Christianity was through it's existence just as much a political ideology as Islam is today. As soon as it became the official religion of the Roman empire and it's descendents it was inevitable. None of the "moral" passages (according to modern western sensibilities) ever prevented wars of conquest, slavery, imperialism, or any of the other things that can be laid at the feet of the political organizations that held the Cross up as a form of identity.
The only thing that matters is factual history, the actions themselves. Words don't shape history, history shapes words. Christianity is no longer a political religion, having been pushed away from the sphere of material power by factors much more important and influential than random passages in it's holy book. Islam is the same it's always been and has not experienced any sort of reform since the 13th century or so.
Wahhabism and Salafism, the two main extremist sects of Islam, were reformist groups that appeared very recently in history compared to others, having created after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Yes the Ottomans have captured Christians and made them Jannisary soldiers. No this does not mean that they were unjust to nonMuslims.
Jews in the Ottoman Empire
For centuries, the Ottoman Empire was the refuge of the
Jews of Europe, who did not have the freedom of religion in Europe that the citizens of the Ottoman Empire did. Jews expelled from
Spain in 1492 found refuge in the Balkans and elsewhere in Ottoman territory, where the sultan decreed they should be welcomed. Famously, Sultan Abdulmecid rejected the Christian “blood libel” against the Jews. Jews and Christians held significant posts such as ambassadors and court physicians. Christians and Jews could become viziers as several did at various times.
Lewis (1984) cites a fifteenth-century Jew writing to Jews in Europe and urging them to migrate to Turkey: “Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than Christians? Here every man may dwell at peace under his own vine and fig tree. Here you are allowed to wear the most precious garments. In Christendom, on the contrary, you dare not even venture to clothe your children red or blue—without exposing them to the insult of being beaten black and blue…[in Germany Jews] are pursued even unto death” (135-6). Lewis comments that Jewish reports on Turkish behavior and attitudes “are almost uniformly favorable.” On the other hand, Ivan Vozov's classic novel,
Under the Yoke (188
, about the struggle for
Bulgarian independence depicts centuries of rape and pillage against “the defenseless Bulgarians” (453).
Christians in the Ottoman Empire
In the late seventeenth century, some Greek Christians who had served in diplomatic posts were rewarded with the designation
hospodar (prince) and governed the provinces of
Moldavia and
Walachia on behalf of the sultan.
Millet is an Ottoman Turkish term for a legally protected religious minority. It comes from the Arabic word
milla for confessional community. The Arabic term is a very general one; the Jewish neighborhoods in
Morocco and
Tunisiawere named
mellah.
The millet was an alternative to autonomous territories that had long been the European norm for dealing with minority groups. The millet system has a long history in the Middle East, and is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non-Muslim minorities. The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government.
The main millets were the Jewish, Greek, and Armenian ones (which included gypsies, Georgian Orthodox, and several other communities). By the nineteenth century there were 14 millets. A wide array of other groups such as
Catholics (Catholics and Protestants were under a
wakil or representative who was not officially head of a millet), Karaites, and Samaritans were also represented, but not the non-Sunni Muslim communities (Shi'as, Druzes, Alawis, Alevis, Yezidis, etc.) which had no official existence in this
Sunni MuslimCaliphate even if the Druzes of the Djebel Druze and Mount Lebanon enjoyed a rather feudal-type autonomy, like the (Christian) Assyrian villages under Mar Shimun in the Hakkiari mountains. These groups were spread across the empire with significant minorities in most of the major cities. Autonomy for these groups was thus impossible to base on a territorial region. Millets were therefore dealt with as dispersed communities. Often, there was relatively little contact between different millets. However, according to Courbage and Farques (199
, Christianity and
Judaism were “revived and flourished under” the Ottomans. Technically, the
jizya tax (the tax paid by non-Christians in return for the protection of the state and the right to practice their religion) remained in force but the main tax was on capital and all taxes were collected by non-Muslim intermediaries (xi).
Each millet was under the supervision of a leader, most often a religious patriarch, who reported directly to the Ottoman Sultan. The millets had a great deal of power—they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was insisted was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another the law of the damaged person applied. The Muslim majority was seen as paramount and any dispute involving a Muslim fell under their law. Under the Tanzimat reforms, the
jizya was abolished but it was actually replaced by a very similar military exemption tax.
Culture
During the medieval age, the Ottoman Turks had a high tolerance of alien cultures and religions, especially compared to the Christian West. Early on, the Turks drove the
Byzantines from
Anatolia and later pursued them into Europe. But as the Ottomans moved further west, the Turkish leaders themselves absorbed some of the culture of the conquered people. The alien culture was gradually added to the Turks' own, creating the characteristic Ottoman culture. After the capture of Constantinople (later dubbed
Istanbul) in 1453, most churches were left intact; however, the Hagia Sophia was turned into a
mosque. The Ottoman court life in many aspects resembled ancient traditions of the Persian Shahs, but had many Byzantine and European influences. It was under the regime of the Young Turks (1908-191
when the sultan had been sidelined that treatment of non-Muslims (and of non-Turks) deteriorated, resulting in atrocities.
Although Western writers have typically depicted the Ottoman Empire as decadent and corrupt, life for many people in the vast empire was secure and peaceful. Over-taxation was not common and, as noted earlier, law was uniformly and fairly administered. People could move freely throughout the empire. Ethnicity and race were not barriers to progress. The compulsory recruitment of non-Christian boys into the military, though, was problematic for the families concerned. On the other hand, many such children rose to prominence.
The
Sufi form of Islam, renowned for its tolerance, flourished in Ottoman Turkey, where
Rumi (1207-1273) founded his order of “whirling dervishes” and taught the unity of all beings, goodness, charity, and love.
Additionally, read my previous posts and you'll understand my reasoning.
