Keep Calm And Think About Sectarianism

INTRODUCTION.....

  Spanish peoples has been historically very exogamic, and one of the strong points of this was in the middle ages. Spain, being the second most important region in the roman empire, after Italy, was heavily civilized by the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

History:

There was a marked difference in the cultural attitudes of the Christians of medieval Spain, whose centuries of close contact with Islam and Judaism, but also their independence from the hegemonic religious-cultural edifice of the Franks, gave a different perspective from the later “crusading” mentality of the 12th and 13th centuries. This did not prevent Christian Spanish kings from engaging in the so-called Reconquista, but it gave the formative period of medieval Spain a very different tenor from that later expressed in the crusades, which marked a departure from the “naive” and religiously indifferent attitudes of the early middle ages. Court of Alfonso X ‘the Wise’ (r. 1252–84) of Castile-León, known for his extensive patronage of Jewish and Islamic learning; he was the first Spanish ruler to use the vernacular (Castillian-”Spanish”) in his writings, rather than Latin.

Here is an extract from Sharon Kinoshita’s Medieval Boundaries, describing the early expansion of Leon-Castile into middle Spain:

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries… the politically weak ta’ifa kings of Muslim Iberia paid (parias, tribute money) to their Christian neighbors. These payments, which historian Angus McKay has likened to a “protection racket”, attest to the Christian kings’ military power. Originally, “Christian rulers had contracted to supply Muslim princes with specific military support in return for cash. But they were soon to step up their demands and, using the threat of war, they forced treaties on the Muslim rulers which stipulated the surrender of fixed amounts of cash, known as parias, which were to be paid annually and at regular intervals. These parias came to form an essential part of the regular income of Christian rulers who, although short of manpower for reconquest, could use warfare as a lever to induce the Muslim payers of parias to increase the sums involved.” (McKay, Spain in the Middle Ages) The first Christian king to collect parias on a grand scale was Fernando I of León-Castile (1035–65). The Historia Silense recounts one typical exchange between Fernando and the ta’ifa king of Toledo. This king,

“…gathered together an immense amount of gold and silver coin and of precious textiles. Under safe conduct he made his way very humbly to the (Castilian) king’s presence and steadfastly besought his excellency to accept gifts and desist from laying waste his marches. He said furthermore that both he and his kingdom were commended to Fernando’s lordship. Now indeed King Fernando, though he thought that the barbarian king spoke insincerely, and though he himself was entertaining designs of a far different nature, nevertheless for the time being accepted the treasure and called off his campaign against the province of Carthaginensis. Laden with much booty he returned to the Tierra de Campos.” Part of such income Fernando I donated to the monastic order of Cluny, in sums so enormous that they helped finance the construction of Cluny III, the largest building in Latin Christendom. Parias were so central to the king’s power that he included them in his will: to his eldest son, Sancho II, went the kingdom of Castile and the parias of Saragossa; to Garcia, (the kingdom of) Galicia and the parias of Seville and Badajoz; and to Alfonso VI, Fernando’s favorite, (the kingdom of) León and the parias of Toledo. As Alfonso’s power expanded, he imposed tribute payments on Granada as well. As the deposed ta’ifa king ‘Abd-Allāh (of Granada) later recalled in his memoirs,

This did not necessarily sit well with Christians beyond the Pyrenees. In the medieval world, Old French — in a process of expansion that well post-dated even Charlemagne’s empire — spread to become the lingua franca of a culture spread throughout northern France, Germany, Norman England, (though not southern France, whose Provencal-speaking people were identified by Dante as Yspanos, distinct from the Franks) and the Crusader network in Outremer. Marked by much less contact with Islam, the warrior elite of “the Franks” did not necessarily feel the native Christians of Spain, or for that matter the Greeks and Armenians, were part of the “Latin peoples.” Their long distance from cultural contact with Islam made distinguishing the foreigners difficult; this has contributed to the stereotypical image of Christendom and Islam as, two blocs which were fated not to understand each other. The West was agrarian, feudal and monastic; the Muslim world was city-oriented, was dominated by wealthy courts, and was intersected by long lines of trade communication. The Western ideal was celibate, sacerdotal, and hierarchical, whereas the Islamic was in theory egalitarian, non-clerical, and had a certain degree of freedom of speculation.[2] But in truth, the boundaries were far different. Where Christianity was concerned Spain, as well as the then still sprawling Greek and Syriac Churches, generally fell into the latter category.

The 12th century chansons de geste, such as the epic of the Song of Roland, which formed the popular propaganda of the crusades, come from the perspective of an emerging new culture which sought to pull apart the blurriness of old cultural boundaries and replace them with competing monotheisms. The first part of this is the monumental forgetting that lays at the Song of Roland’s core. The original affair described in the Roland was an ambush of Charlemagne’s rearguard by Basques, native Christian brigands. Contemporaries hardly took notice of it. But in the Roland, it is turned into a perfidious assault by Moslems on the forces of Roland, who is portrayed as the “nephew” (bastard) of Charlemagne. The epic’s conclusion is an apocalyptic battle between the “emir of Babylon”, a gloss on the caliph, and the Christian emperor, culminating into the Christianization of Spain at the hands of the Franks. The biggest loss in the narrative are, of course, the Spanish Christians. Rather than the reality of an interconnected patchwork of principalities of both religions spread throughout Spain, whose rulers were bound by bonds of alternating feud, kinship, and alliance — the situation is described as two monolithic empires. One is Frankish and Christian, the other Spanish and Islamic; they are divided by the Pyrenees, turning Spain into a veritable Mordor. The idea of Christian Spaniards, despite their ubiquity and indeed majority in at least the north of Spain, would compromise the narrative of conflict and cast doubt on the “naturalness” of crusade. To return to an extract from Kinoshita, here is how 11th and even 12th century Spanish Christian conquests would have looked like: Late eleventh-century Saragossa was one of the most brilliant successor states to emerge from the dissolution of the caliphate of Cordoba. Like many ta’ifa rulers, its Banu Hūd kings compensated for their lack of real political power with lavish displays of cultural refinement. Ahmad al-Muqtadir (1046–81), a great patron of letters, assembled a vast library and sponsored mājalis — stylized aesthetic gatherings devoted to conversation, poetry, and wine; his son al-Mu’tamin (1081–85) was a scientist who authored a famous mathematical treatise. Saragossa’s court culture was centered in the Aljafería, a jewel-like summer palace situated just west of the city whose fortress-like exterior, reflecting the political turbulence of the age, concealed a wondrous interior exemplifying the refinement of ta’ifa palace architecture… After his conquest, Alfonso made the Aljafería his seat of government, perhaps conducting business in its central patio, graced by an arcade of interlacing, polylobed arches. Far from forcing the city’s Muslims to convert, Alfonso encouraged them to remain: they would be allowed to keep their own officials and move freely within his realm. Those wishing to leave could emigrate with all their possessions. In the late twelfth century, the Muslim historian Ibn al-Kardabus reported that as they vacated the city, Alfonso stopped them and demanded to see their wealth. “If I had not asked you to show me the riches each of you is carrying with him, you would have been able to say, ‘The king didn’t know what we had; otherwise, he would not have permitted us to leave so easily.’ Now you can go wherever you like, in complete safety.” Such negotiated surrenders, meant to ensure a peaceful transition of power, were common practice in medieval Iberia: the Treaty of Saragossa served as the model for later surrenders at Tudela (1119) and Tortosa. Its success in preserving the land’s Muslim population may be measured by the persistance of Arabic speaking Muslim communities in the Ebro valley over the next several centuries.

But this would not fit into the narrative of the crusade. The 12th c. Roland, again from the Frankish perspective, begins by describing the tributary relations within Spain and then execrating them as perfidy — the true Christian ruler would not stay his hand for promise of gold. In the Roland, a very different model of ideal Christian-Frankish behaviour is proposed — from translation “The Emperor (Charles) has taken Saragossa. A thousand Franks (Franceis) have to search the town with care, and the synagogues and the mosques. With iron mallets and hatchets they break down the images and every one of the idols. No trace of sorcery or fraud will they leave in place. The king worships God and desires to serve him; his bishops bless the waters and take the heathen to the baptistery. If there is one there who refuses to obey, Charles bids that he be hung, or burnt, or killed by the sword. More than a hundred thousand were baptized and became true Christians… “The Emperor is confident and joyful: he has taken Cordoba, and broken down the walls; the towers he has demolished with his stonethrowers. His knights have got great booty, both of gold, of silver, and of costly body armour. Not a heathen remained within the city unless he be dead or become a Christian. The heathens protest that Spain is “the inheritance of their fathers”; indeed, there is no notion of a reconquest for the (invisible) native Christians. When the emperor Charles commands the conversion of the heathen to “our most holy law”, the emir protests that he preaches “an evil sermon.” The poem feels no justification is necessary beyond the cry of Roland, the very embodiment of virile chevalerie, that “the heathens are wrong and the Christians are right.” This re-imagining of the religious situation of Spain would have been sung to the grandsons of Frankish knights who had participated in Alfonso’s relatively bloodless conquest of Saragossa. But it was not idle words: in the charged crusading environment of the 12th century, these reformulations of oral memory served to raise popular spirit for expeditions to the Holy Land, to continue the “armed pilgrimage” to Jerusalem. It is no coincidence that, in the short century preceding the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, the Armenians, Hungarians, and Slavs are shown marching behind the “heathen” rather than the Christian army.

What enabled the Muslims, Jews, and Christians to coexist and create this highly intellectual and cultural society in medieval Spain from the 8th to the 15th century?

Sharia law was what enabled peaceful coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, until the Reconquista. Sharia law promotes free trade, peace, and human rights. The only oppositions to Sharia law in Spain were usury or interest, which is prohibited, selling of intoxicants like alcoholic beverage and poison, etc.

When most non–Muslims hear the word 'shari'a', they think promptly of homicidal chaps with long facial hair calling for hands to be cleaved off. That is to be expected, since whenever the theme comes up in the media it is perpetually talked about as something primitive, outsider and a danger to us every one of us. A year ago a survey of more than 10,000 individuals found that almost a third think there are off limits regions in Britain where "sharia law overwhelms and non–Muslims can't enter"

Some non–Muslims will shy away from an article on shari'a. There's consistently a risk with an article on this point that some individuals won't read it appropriately yet will accept that the writer is 'advancing shari'a law' (recall the mania around Dr Rowan Williams' popular talk in 2008, which didn't call for lawful pluralism however investigated how English law may better oblige minority strict standards in explicit conditions)

I think everybody keen on investigating how we live well with individuals not the same as us should know something about this, since this subject can be such a deterrent to great relations among Muslims and non–Muslims. It's additionally integral to how we think about strict opportunity today. On account of shari'a committees, how would we balance the opportunity of strict gatherings to relate and settle their issues utilizing strict standards, with the need to shield weak individuals from hurt?

Christians, should take a specific enthusiasm for this discussion. Taking the fundamental edict to cherish our neighbor genuinely, including our Muslim neighbor, implies attempting to comprehend those pieces of others' carries on with that make us on edge, and attempting to forget our bogus suspicions. It additionally implies dismissing the cases of those Christians around the globe who state they are acting 'Christianly' by empowering disdain against Muslims and the diminishing of their common freedoms.

What is shari’a?

‘Shari’a’ can be understood as God’s will for humankind. ‘Fiqh’ is the body of law produced by scholars trying to understand that will. As fiqh is the result of human interpretation, it is recognised as being fallible.

What are its basic sources?

The basic sources of shari’a are the Qur’an and the Sunnah (the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). There’s a range of other principles which Muslim scholars use to work out how God wants Muslims to live.

Let us now look at a hypothetical example:

When love is all that matters

I would do nothing at all. For some time, I have been calling myself a religious atheist and a spiritual agnostic. I have lost my beliefs in religion and spirituality but of course I am still the same good person I was before. If a woman meets me and falls in love with me for who I am, including my beliefs, then I have no problem in doing the same. As long as she respects my beliefs and I respect hers then there would be no problem at all. Now, she loving me and wanting the best for me, I think the religion discussion in order to get me into religion would be almost unavoidable. I think it all depends on the open-mindedness of both parties in a relationship. I wouldn’t mind at all dating a religious woman. As long as she respects my beliefs and I respect hers then we’re all fine.

Do you think it is possible to forge a relationship as where each religious can find a common identity that transcends their religious differences in our modern times? If so, how will it happen? If not, why not?

Unfortunately religious people don't have a mind of their own, they fear been called heretics or missing the promise for the faithfuls to rationalise beyond the permitted horizon.Only the nominal religionists have mind of their own and religionist don't consider them as faithful.Nothing can transcend religious dictate, such common identity makes you an unbeliever.

What differentiates one religion from the other is who the worshippers or followers of the different religions believe in. A relationship can be forged by establishing a common ground which is worshiping the same God. For instance, Muslims believe Allah is the creator of heaven and earth. Christians believe Yahweh or God is the creator of heaven and earth.

But, how would I know your God is a true God? Which evidential facts can you provide to prove the God you worshipped is the true God? For instance, Muslims believe Jesus is another prophet. Christians believe he is the Son of God.

Buddhism and Hinduism are quite different from the above two. Then we have the Jewish religion which believe on the same God as Christians. But, they believe the Messiah (Saviour) hasn't yet come. They don't believe Jesus is the prophesied Messiah.

It all boils down to which God you believe in. That is where a common ground can be established if we can ascertain the God of your religion is the same as mine. Looking closely, there are remarkable differences on the God the religions worship.

It's absolutely possible in another way that is :Make sure equality , diversity , respect , justice , tolerance . Let go of our ego and take care of the ones in front of us. We would be too busy to fight