A Great Deal of Nonsense

Islamic Multi-culturalism

A great deal of nonsense has been written about Muslim tolerance--that, in contrast to Christian brutality against Jews and heretics, Islam showed remarkable tolerance for conquered people, treated them with respect, and allowed them to pursue their faiths without interference. This claim probably began with Voltaire, Gibbon and other eighteenth-century writers who used it to cast the Catholic Church in the worst possible light. The truth about life under Muslim rule is quite different.

It is true that the Qur'an forbids forced conversions. however, that recedes to an empty legalism given that many subject peoples were "free to choose" conversion as an alternative to death or enslavement. That was the usual choice presented to pagans, and often Jews and Christians also were faced with that option or with one only somewhat less extreme. In principle as "People of the Book", Jews and Christians were supposed to be tolerated and permitted to follow their faiths. But only under quite repressive conditions: death was (and remains) the fate of anyone who converted to either faith. Nor could any new churches or synagogues be built. Jews and Christians also were prohibited from praying or reading their scriptures aloud--not even in their homes or in churches or synagogues--lest Muslims accidentally hear them. And, as the remarkable historian of Islam Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1922-1968) has pointed out, from very early times Muslim authoritities often went to great lengths to humiliate and punish dhimmis--Jews and Christians who refused to convert to Islam. It was official policy that dhimmis would "feel inferior and . . . know 'their place' . . . [imposing laws such as] that Christians and Jews should not ride horses, for instance, but at most mules, or even that they should wear marks of their religion on their costume when among Muslims." In some places non-Muslims were prohibited from wearing clothing similar to that of Muslims, nor could they be armed. In addition, non-Muslims were invariably severely taxed compared with Muslims.

These were the normal circumstances of Jewish and Christian subjects of Muslim states, but conditions often were far worse. . . . This is not to say that Muslims were more brutal or less tolerant than were Christians or Jews, for it was a brutal and intolerant age. It is to say that efforts to portray Muslims as enlightened supporters of multiculturalism are at best ignorant.

Rodney Stark, God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (New York: HarperOne, 2009), p. 28f.