Mehmed the Conqueror and Gennadius II

[Yoder777]

Lots of talk on another religion in this forum.

It's a fact that Muslims and Christians have a shared history, especially in Eastern Orthodox lands. The only way we can heal from past hurts and resentments is if we discuss them in as far a manner as possible.

 

[Yoder777]

About that Gallup poll, it perhaps left the most important questions unanswered:

It … turns out that Muslims apparently want a different kind of “democracy,” one which avoids moral and other kinds of risks. For example, although they would like freedom of speech, they would not like it to be unlimited, such that it might permit speech offensive to religious sensibilities. In other words, blasphemy laws should limit it.
As for other “freedoms,” the authors provide no information. In particular, we do not know whether Muslims accept “freedom of religion.” This is a most peculiar omission since it is essential to a clear understanding of contemporary Muslim views of democracy.
But perhaps all of this is to be understood in light of the finding that Muslims — women as well as men — want to ground their “democracy” partly or entirely in Sharia or Islamic law. The authors hasten to assure the readers that this does not mean that “Muslim democracy” would actually be a “theocracy,” since their respondents largely reject the prospective rule of Muslim jurists.
But this leaves the matter totally confused. If Sharia is to be the partial or entire base of future “democratic” governments, who is constituted to decide what Sharia prescribes, other than the jurists to whom its interpretation has always been and is still entrusted? We are left totally in doubt as to whether the poll asked this kind of question. We are also left in doubt about a whole set of issues, including and especially whether or not “Muslim democracy” would permit religious freedom of the sort characteristic of American and other liberal democracies. Would the status of non-Muslims — especially Christians — be governed by traditional Sharia prescriptions for non-Muslim or dhimmi minorities, which involve various legal disabilities and inequities? Or would they be fully equal? Would non-Muslims be permitted to run for and hold public office?
- See more at: Who speaks for Islam? Good question
It thus turns out that Muslims apparently want a different kind of “democracy,” one which avoids moral and other kinds of risks. For example, although they would like freedom of speech, they would not like it to be unlimited, such that it might permit speech offensive to religious sensibilities. In other words, blasphemy laws should limit it.
As for other “freedoms,” the authors provide no information. In particular, we do not know whether Muslims accept “freedom of religion.” This is a most peculiar omission since it is essential to a clear understanding of contemporary Muslim views of democracy.
But perhaps all of this is to be understood in light of the finding that Muslims—women as well as men—want to ground their “democracy” partly or entirely in Sharia or Islamic law. The authors hasten to assure the readers that this does not mean that “Muslim democracy” would actually be a “theocracy,” since their respondents largely reject the prospective rule of Muslim jurists.
But this leaves the matter totally confused. If Sharia is to be the partial or entire base of future “democratic” governments, who is constituted to decide what Sharia prescribes, other than the jurists to whom its interpretation has always been and is still entrusted? We are left totally in doubt as to whether the poll asked this kind of question. We are also left in doubt about a whole set of issues, including and especially whether or not “Muslim democracy” would permit religious freedom of the sort characteristic of American and other liberal democracies. Would the status of non-Muslims—especially Christians—be governed by traditional Sharia prescriptions for non-Muslim or dhimmi minorities, which involve various legal disabilities and inequities? Or would they be fully equal? Would non-Muslims be permitted to run for and hold public office?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/04/who_does_speak_for_islam/

 

[Yoder777]

While we shouldn't have inflated memories of Islamic tolerance, it's true that perhaps Christians under the dhimi system had more rights than Muslims and Jews had in the same era under Western Christian governments.

The dhimmi communities had their own chiefs and judges, with their own family, personal and religious laws,[49] and "generally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century".[50] "Muslims guaranteed freedom of worship and livelihood, provided that they remained loyal to the Muslim state and paid a poll tax".[51] "Muslim governments appointed Christian and Jewish professionals to their bureaucracies",[51] and thus, Christians and Jews "contributed to the making of the Islamic civilization".[51]

The Arab conquerors included Christian as well as Muslim tribes. The Christian Arabs were regarded as fellow Arabs rather than dhimmis.
Local Christians in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt were non-Chalcedonians and many may have felt better off under early Muslim rule than under that of the orthodox Greeks of Constantinople.[59]
Dhimmi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[The Unorthodox Orthodox]

What about the reputation of Islamic Baghdad and Spain being a place of learning and tolerance? Is the "golden age of Islam" a Western myth?

No, no, no... It's true.
I said the Arabs were both well educated and decent and from what I hear they allowed Christians their right to worship and even allowed them access to positions of power.
I was talking about the Ottomans not Muslims in general.
And even then, I admit that there should be a lot of Ottomans (perhaps even the majority) who were both cultured, tolerant and civilized.
But the fact remains that during the fall of Constantinople, they didn't really act as such.
Nor is the Ottoman Period of Greece considered an illuminated time. In fact it took us way back.

PS; You have read my entire post right?

 

[Yoder777]

No, no, no... i said the Arabs were both well educated and decent.
I was talking about the Ottomans not Muslims in general.

Are you saying that the actions of the Ottomans were more of a racial and cultural issue than the fault of Islam as a religion? It seems that with almost every case of Islamic extremism, Western Islamophiles are quick to say that it's due to internal cultural issues, not the religion itself. I'd be interested in learning of this is in fact true. This gets me wondering about the likelihood of a Muslim cultural reformation happening any time soon.

 

[The Unorthodox Orthodox]

Are you saying that the actions of the Ottomans were more of a racial and cultural issue than the fault of Islam as a religion?

Who knows ? Perhaps it was because of their heritage as a nomadic people. Perhaps it was because at the time they were a rising power that did not yet had any knowledge of the western way of things. That would explain why they had the Orthodox Church being responsible for their Christian subjects (even if that backfired in the end).
Perhaps it was their focus on the war and their internal problems that kept them form taking care of it's subjects. I really don't know.

The original question was the position of Christians during Ottoman occupation, and the effect of that occupation in general. I am just trying to to put on the table all that I personally know, so that we may see why Orthodox Christians (in fact countries of the Eastern Europe in general) and Muslims dislike each other so much, from a historical perspective.

PS; I am not an Islamophobe, nor an Islamophile. I just don't like to condemn things and people without putting a lot of thought into it. That would make me look like these 16 year old atheists that blame religion as the root of all evil.

 

[Yoder777]

PS; I am not an Islamophobe, nor an Islamophile. I just don't like to condemn things and people without putting a lot of thought into it. That would make me look like these 16 year old atheists that blame religion as the root of all evil.

I am not saying that you are either. In a Western context, there aren't many people like you or me who can have a fair and rational conversation about Islam. It usually devolves into a hate fest between Islamohobes and Islamophiles.

 

[Yoder777]

Though I am trying not to be an Islamophile, I must say that I enjoy Sufi songs and Sufi poems. There are even passages of the Koran that I've found awe inspiring. While there are some very violent verses in the Koran, there are actually more violent verses in the Bible. At the same time, there is no way that I'd ever want to convert to Islam. Everything I like about Islam and more is in Orthodox Christianity, and Orthodox Christianity has much less of the things I dislike about Islam. I am appreciative of our shared history, similar approaches to theology, liturgy, piety, etc. but there's no way I'd ever become a Muslim.

I've requested this book from interlibrary loan:

Two traditions, one space; Orthodox Christians and Muslims in dialogue.

Ed. by George C. Papademetriou.
Somerset Hall Press, ©2011 339 p. $34.95 BP172
978-1-935244-06-6
Scholars of Orthodox Christianity and of Islam explore the hundreds of years of encounters and dialogues between the two religions in the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and currently in the Middle East and Turkey. Their topics include Jesus as a prophet of Islam, Islamic Aristotelian philosophy, Byzantine and contemporary Greek Orthodox approaches to Islam, the Jesus prayer and Dhikr as a potential contribution to Christian-Muslim dialogue, and how an Orthodox Christian monk saved the life of a Muslim king. (Annotation ©2012 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
http://booknews.com/ref_issues/ref_feb2012/somhall1.html

Arab-speaking Christians praise Allah in the liturgy and read of Him in their Bibles, since it is nothing more than the Arabic word for God.

http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2009/11/word-allah.html

 

[Yoder777]

Does Greek culture have more in common with Middle Eastern civilization than it does with Western European civilization, especially due to its close proximity to the Middle East?

 

[E.C.]

What about the reputation of Islamic Baghdad and Spain being a place of learning and tolerance? Is the "golden age of Islam" a Western myth?

Yes, it is, in my honest opinion, a myth.

It's a fact that Muslims and Christians have a shared history, especially in Eastern Orthodox lands. The only way we can heal from past hurts and resentments is if we discuss them in as far a manner as possible.

The only areas of the Arab world where there were large numbers of Christians for a long time, until the early 20th century, were Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.

Historically, Levantine Arabs have been able to get along fine whether they were Muslims, Christians or Jews. Arabs in the peninsula have been particularly fanatical about Islam, West African Arabs... not too bad, Egyptian Arabs used to be okay until recent decades, and Iraqi Arabs have historically been as xenophobic as a KKK leader in Africa.


As much as I agree that dialogue and moving on is a good thing the reality is this: every religion has its waves of what the present prevailing "mood" is. Right now in Islam the fanatics are in charge. That is the reality.

Does Greek culture have more in common with Middle Eastern civilization than it does with Western European civilization, especially due to its close proximity to the Middle East?

I think that the opposite is truer mostly because the Greeks had a large network of trade in the Mediterranean during the Ottoman times.

In terms of food and mannerisms: yes, Greeks and Middle Easterners have more in common.

 

[The Unorthodox Orthodox]

Does Greek culture have more in common with Middle Eastern civilization than it does with Western European civilization, especially due to its close proximity to the Middle East?

Hmmmm... that is difficult to answer. A lot of things I believed us to have inherited from the Muslims, I found out the Muslims iherited from us.

I would say that any Middle Eastern influences that we have are due to;
a) Our constant wars with the Persian Sassanid Empire; Most of what you consider Islamic now is of Persian origin. After the Muslim conquered the then pagan Persia, all the Persian achievements were absorved by the new Islamic polity.

b) The Ottoman Period of Greece; 400 years of living us their subjects left us some Middle Eastern habits (most of them bad)

But in general, our Christian faith and our admiration for the Ancient Greek and Roman spirit prevented us from inheriting any major Middle Easter habits or traits that would drastically change our culture.
Most influences had to do with culinary, music and other minor things.

So if you ask me, I would say that the Byzantine/modern Greek civilization, is
shaped by our Ancient Greek/Roman heritage, the Orthodox Christian faith and a few Persian/Islamic influences.

 

[Yoder777]

But in general, our Christian faith and our admiration for the Ancient Greek and Roman spirit prevented us from inheriting any major Middle Easter habits or traits that would drastically change our culture.

I guess what I am asking is not whether Greeks were influenced by Middle Eastern culture but whether they are a Middle Eastern culture, like the Armenians or Assyrians are a non-Arab Middle Eastern culture. In terms of cultural characteristics, are you saying that Greeks have more in common with Western Europeans than with Middle Easterners? In terms of skin color, ways of thinking, music, art, religion, etc. Greece seems to have more in common with the Middle East than with Westerm Europe, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[Yoder777]

Yes, it is, in my honest opinion, a myth.

Would you please provide a source for this?

 

[The Unorthodox Orthodox]

In terms of skin color, ways of thinking, music, art, religion, etc. Greece seems to have more in common with the Middle East than with Westerm Europe, which isn't a bad thing.

I am not saying it is a bad thing, but honestly, I do not know if it's true or false.

The problem with defining whether Greece is a Western or an Eastern country is that so many different people have left their mark on it; Franks, Slavs, Arabs, Turks... Many of them settled down and were absorved by the population. A good example is the Albanians; During the revolution of 1821, a lot of Christian Orthodox Albanians fough side by side with the Greeks. When the country finally gained it's independence, those Albanians (Arvanites is what we called them) chose to live in Greece than returning to an Albania were most had converted to Islam and that was still under Ottoman control. Today these people have merged with the Greek population and consider themselves pure Greeks.
Judging by the fact that me and my mother have hair of a lightly reddish hue*, we are probably some of them (That, or we are descendants of the members of the Varangian Guard which is a pretty cool thought too )

Personally I've never been in any Middle Eastern country, and I know little of the Western European way of thinking, so I can't give you a fulfilling answer. I would say we are closer to being an Eastern European country, like Russia, Bulgaria etc, but only because I have been taught that.

* Most of the people I see here in Greece are of light skin tone (when you compare them to people from Middle East) and brown hair and eyes (of various tones). There are a few "Saracen looking guys" of dark skin tone and hair and even some blond peope (pressumably descendants of Franks and Slavs), but both of these cases are rare.

PS; Wow it is pretty tough to decide what kind of culture the Greek one is.
We are a mediterranean people like the Spanish and the Italians but we are not Catholics.
We have an Eastern culture but not a Middle Eastern one like the Muslims have.
We are an Eastern European people but not Slavs.
What a headache! Perhaps we are a totally different category all be ourselves!

 

[Yoder777]

In music especially, I notice similarities between Greek music and Arab music, Jewish music, even east Indian music. The cultural exchange of the centuries is quite interesting.

 

[buzuxi02]

It is true that including Greece within the western European sphere is quite new. The area of the Balkans tended to be called the near east. Near East is still used by archaeologists for the Greek region.

The west also disliked associating the Greeks with the roman empire. Charlemagne called the eastern half of the roman empire as the kingdom of the Greeks and 250 or so years ago the term Byzantine empire was invented for it.

During the enlightenment there began a romanticizing of the ancient Greeks and slowly it began drifting towards the west.

 

[Yoder777]

In order to learn more about historical relations between Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam, I have requested this book through interlibrary loan:

Two traditions, one space; Orthodox Christians and Muslims in dialogue.

Ed. by George C. Papademetriou.
Somerset Hall Press, ©2011 339 p. $34.95 BP172
978-1-935244-06-6
Scholars of Orthodox Christianity and of Islam explore the hundreds of years of encounters and dialogues between the two religions in the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and currently in the Middle East and Turkey. Their topics include Jesus as a prophet of Islam, Islamic Aristotelian philosophy, Byzantine and contemporary Greek Orthodox approaches to Islam, the Jesus prayer and Dhikr as a potential contribution to Christian-Muslim dialogue, and how an Orthodox Christian monk saved the life of a Muslim king. (Annotation ©2012 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Reference & Research Book News, February 2012: Somerset Hall Press

 

[astein]

I wonder if this means that a majority of Muslims support the rights of Christians in Islamic lands.

Being around many muslims, I have found that many muslims actually consider Christian music a way of bringing them closer to God. The muslims I have met consider Christianity friends.

 

[astein]

Something that many Westeners don't realize is that a major reason why there are extremist, despotic governments in the Middle East is either because they were created by Western colonialism or were formed in reaction against Western colonialism. An obvious example is how Iran's government was formed as a revolution against the American-installed Shah.

Many countires have recorded events of radicals of the locals that inhabit them. The destroyer, the theif and the killer is to blame. Mankind is simply that, mankind. A God that shows a way to avoid the destruction of the destoryer, that is a God worth investigating.

 

[astein]

The Ethiopian and I believe Coptic Orthodox Churches' folks remove their shoes as well. It has to do with entering holy ground as God said to Moses on the Mt.

Well that makes sense to me and I can understand that. If God commands, it is perfectly logical. I walk around my own house barefoot most of the time.