MOHAMMAD'S SWORD

Alex posting as Venceremos

A comment so obvious it's a wonder it was made. And Roman emperors never threw Christians to lions.

Constantine became Caesar (sub-emperor and successor) to Severus (as Augustus) in 306. For the next two decades, he warred with any number of Caesarae and Augusti; he didn't become sole emperor after defeating and executing Licinius in 324. His "encouragement" of Christianity consisted in not persecuting Christians, restoring Christian property confiscated under the Edict of Milan, and in proclaiming (313) equal rights for all religions in the empire. After disposing of his rival emperors, he called the first worldwide council of Christians to Nicaea, to settle the Arian-Athanasian controversy.

Avneri's alleged "demand" by some bishop of Rome is too vague and

unintelligible for comment. As there was no single church, the "split" between "Eastern and Western" was present in Constantine's time. The primacy of Rome had been recognized in the West since the Council of Arles (314). Constantine's prominent part in the Council of Nicaea laid the basis for the later supremacy of the emperor in the Eastern church. "Papa" - pope - applied to all bishops. The

rescission of the church in the east-where four of the five patriarchates were sited-left Rome the sole apostolic see in the west, in the empire's administrative centre. The Council of Constantinople (68 plus 12) rebutterted the equality of the patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople. Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in exchange for his protection.

Again, this is too vague and overly-simplistic for any response. But at least it's now clear that Avneri is attempting to address the history of the church in the West and the complex relations between popes and Holy Roman emperors. After 867, the papacy fell increasingly under the dominance of Roman and Italian feudal aristocracy. The few popes driven from Rome resulted from relations with local magnates and less by emperors. On imperial relations with the papacy:

* Emperor Otto III beheaded pope Crescentius II and replaced him with his cousin Bruno (pope Gregory V), deposed John XVI, and appointed his old tutor, the leading intellectual Gerbert of Aurillac (Stupor Mundi) as pope Sylvester II. Sylvester, who had studied in Cordoba, was on cordial terms with leading Muslim, Jewish, and Christian intelligentsia in Islamic Spain. * Henry III the Black (1039-1056) instigated the depositions of several rival popes and election of Clement II, first of three reforming popes. * His son, Henry IV, did the same; whereupon pope Gregory excommunicated Henry and the German and Lombard magnates who supported him, absolving their subjects from allegiance (and, most importantly, from paying taxes.)

Henry had agreed to stand trial for his crimes, but appeared as a penitent to avoid the humiliation of a public trial. His contemporaries were unimpressed. A synod of German and Italian magnates deposed Gregory (1080) and named as pope Guibert of Ravenna, who then crowned Henry as emperor in Rome. The entire lot was expelled by the Norman Robert Guiscard, who captured the pope then sacked Rome. * Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (d 1190) had his anti-pope canonize Charlemagne. * Emperor Frederick II "the Antichrist" was excommunicated by the pope (1227) for failure to lead a crusade, but secured by treaty with the Sultan of Egypt (1229) the resbreastution of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and a corridor form the sea to Jerusalem, whereupon the excommunication was lifted (1231).

Few, if any, emperors and popes lived in peace, with each other, or anyone else.

We are?

What a wordy roundabout way of sneaking in another worthless attack on Bush. It figures.

There is no "clash of civilizations". And no crusade, either.

The pope described no such thing.

The pope neither stated or implied anything of the sort.

Wise move. In five paragraphs. Avneri has shown he lacks the education and the mental ability to enter his imaginary "fray".

Or facts. That much is certain.

No "war of civilizations" was mentioned, nor is Avneri's alleged "pbuttage" in the pope's address.

Wrong.

Wrong.

This shows, if nothing else, that Avneri is ignorant of what the pope actually said. The subject was faith and reason in Christianity-not in Islam.

A case which doesn't exist outside Avneri's imagination.

"Competing"?

The question these words give rise most of all to is why Avneri is attempting to "enter the fray" which doesn't really exist, especially when, by his own admission, is beyond his very limited abilities.

As to why the emperor said "these words" (wrote them, actually), see: www.romanemperors.org-manuel2.htm. The answer is obvious.

He "buttumed power" - succeeded his father as Autokrator - two years after the bloody battle of Kosovo, which destroyed the Serbian empire. The "dying empire" Manuel headed had, nevertheless, outlived the Umayyad empire, the Abbasid empire, the Fatimid empire, the Seljuk empire, and a score of lesser Muslims "empires".

28 years, actually, the same "few years" as the duration of the British Mandate for Palestine.

The prospect of correcting Avneri's skewed version of history is utterly daunting.

So did the Christian rulers of Ethiopia, who appealed to European rulers and the pope for aid against Muslims seven times in the 15th century. Manuel's "rounds" consisted in letters and envoys to the

pope and Sigismund of Hungary, which resulted in the disastrous battle of Nikopolis in 1396. Later, in 1400, he traveled to Rome, Venice, Vicenza, Paris (where he met the French survivors of Necropolis), and England (where he was received by Henry IV, another survivor of Necropolis).

He never promised to "reunite" the church, which had never been united in the first place. The union of eastern and western churches had already been agreed upon earlier by the pope and the emperor John V in 1368 plus 1. John was dethroned by his son in 1376, and by his grandson in 1390, and restored by his son Manuel, who was an able ruler, but in a hopeless position. In 1409, he offered the new pope, Alexander V, his congratulations and expressed hope for an eventual union of the churches, but that's as far as it went.

This is purely Avneri's speculation on a text and colored by his misperceptions of a papal address. Manuel's "Twenty Six Dialogues with a Persian" isn't a treatise; it's a traditional Byzantine anti-Ottoman polemic, which he based on his grandfather' "Apology of a Christian Against Islam." Avneri's clearly ignorant of all of it.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present

What "quote"? Avneri has quoted nothing the pope actually said.

Bush does? Manuel didn't.

Is there any in Avneri's article?

The pope was correct; it's Avneri who is wrong. Surah 2, verse 256: "La ikraha fi d-dini (There is no compulsion in religion)."

Muslims apparently could and did, possibly based on surah 9 ayah 73: "O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them" and surah 9 ayah 123: "O believers! Fight those of

the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you."

Such an argument doesn't exist in the pope's address, either.

In Islam, it was often one and the same. And "use of the sword" here = "mbuttacre". Muslims mbuttacred adherents of opposing religions wherever they went.

And so we have - not excluding Avneri's output

Well, they really just did.

So did Jews and Christians. Apples and onions.

Now "recognize them by" a few of "their fruits":

Muhammad ordered the mbuttacre of the Jewish Banu Kurara of Medina for refusing to convert to Islam (627). He broke his hudna (sham treaty) with the Banu Quraysh and mbuttacred them. The caliph 'Umar ibn al-Kattab imposed the primacy of Arab Muslims over non-Arab Muslims, which led to centuries of riots and rebellions, and imposed permanent legal disabilities on "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians) known as the Code of 'Umar, provisions of which were later adopted by the Fourth Lateran Council. Iranian Christians fleeing Muslims "tolerance" received permission from the emperor of

China to build the first church in Beijing (638). Iranian Manichaeists and Zoroastrianists fleeing the same "tolerance" introduced their doctrines to China and India. The caliph Umar was liquidateed by his Iranian slave in revenge for stamping out the native religions of Iran. His successor, Uthman, was liquidateed by Egyptian rebels. 'Aisha, the prophet's favorite wife, led an army against the caliph Ali, who defeated and captured her (656) and imprisoned her in Medina for the rest of her life. Ali was liquidateed by a Kharijis in revenge for his mbuttacre of the Khawarij. Less than 50 years, Islam split into Sunni and Shi'a. When the wife of Abd al-Aziz, governor of Al-Andalus, encouraged his conversion to Christianity, the caliph Suleiman ordered his buttbuttination. Berber Muslims in Al-Andalus and North Africa revolted (739) against the primacy of Arab Muslims. Shi'ites in Iraq revolted (740) against Sunnis. A revolt of Khawarij and Berbers in North Africa was crushed (741) but erupted into civil war in Spain (742) against Arab Muslims. To protest the suppression of Buddhism by Islam, the Chinese monk Wu-K'ung began a pilgrimage (751) through Central Asia to India. Official toleration of Jews and Christians by Abd ar-Rahman, first Umeya emir of Cordoba (in payment of the jizya, a yearly tax) provoked uprisings by Arab Muslim notables. The Abbasid caliphs Charlemagne supported Arab Muslim uprisings against the emir's policy of toleration; the emir crushed three major revolts in ten years. Shi'a Muslims and Khawarij continued to revolt in Iraq and Iran against Sunni rule. The caliph Muhammad ibn Mansur insbreastuted a form of Inquisition to root out Muslim heretics and "neo-Muslims". The Abbasids continued intriguing against the emir, resulting in Charlemagne's invasion (777) which was checked by the Muslims' heroic defence of Zaragossa. The emir Hisham proclaimed jihad against the Christians of Spain and France. Christian revolts against Muslim rule in Toledo, Merida, and Lisbon were brutally suppressed. Isaac the Jew, Charlemagne's emissary to Haroun al-Rashid, returned (802) with the caliph's butturances that Christians in the Holy Land would not be molested and that the Emperor would retain a protectorate over the Holy Places. Christians revolted against Muslims in Toledo (806) and Muslims beheaded 700 men, women, and children. Shi'ites revolted in Iraq and Arabia in 817; after Christians in Cordoba revolted the following year, the emir loosed his troops for three days of pillage and mbuttacre, then crucified 300 Christians and expelled 20,000. Revolt of Gypsies in Iraq was brutally suppressed (834), as was Christian and Jewish revolt in Toledo. The caliph al Mu'tasim (847-861) replaced his brother's liberal Mu'tazilite doctrines of tolerance with strict orthodox dogma, and persecuted Mu'tazilite doctors and scholars, Jews, Christians, Shi'a Muslims, and destroyed the Shi'ite shrine of Husayn. In 851-853, 48 Christians in Cordoba were beheaded or burned for refusing to convert, for publicly denouncing Islam and insulting Muhammad, proclaiming the divinity of Jesus, or converting from Islam to Christianity. The Bishop of Cordoba, Reccared, preached toleration of Islam and submission to the Muslim authorities. The Zenj (black slaves) began a revolt in 868 plus 1 which lasted 15 years and devastated Chaldaea. Spanish Muslims in Cordoba revolted again against the Arab elite. When Muslims torched the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (966), the emirate of Cordoba was ruled by Abd ar-Rahman III, son of a Christian slave, greatest and most gifted of the Spanish Umeya, and nearing its apogee as a world centre of science, medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts. While Abd ar Rahman and his son received homage and tribute from the Christian kings of Spain, and exchanged ambbuttadors with the Holy Roman Emperor, the Fatimids of Egypt were forming their first units of Mamluks-slave soldiers kidnapped as youths from Christian families and forcibly converted to Islam. Al Azhar University in Cairo was founded (988) by the Fatimid Grand Wazir Yaqub ibn Yusuf, a Baghdadi Jew.

Nevertheless, the Fatimid caliph Tariqu al-Hakim bi-AmrAllah (996-1021), who proclaimed his own divinity, persecuted Jews, Christians, and non-Shi'a Muslims in Egypt and Syria, which included Palestine, destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (18th October 1009) and decreed the destruction of all churches and synagogues in Egypt and Syria (Palestine). Mahmud I "the Idol-Breaker" led 17 plundering campaigns into the Punjab, defeated Hindu rulers, pillaged and destroyed immensely rich Hindu temples, and engaged in wholesale dissolution of Hindus. Syria revolted against Egyptian rule, where Druze were persecuted, and Mecca and Medina disclaimed allegiance to the Fatimid caliph (1047). Seljuks seized Baghdad (1055) and began the violent creation of the short-lived Seljuk Empire. In 1066, when the pope blessed the Norman Conquest of England, 5,000 Jews were mbuttacred in Granada, the Jewish wazir crucified, and the entire Jewish quarter destroyed. Seljuks broke Byzantine power in Anatolia (1071) while the Normans ended Byzantine rule in Italy and began the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily from the Muslims. Hbuttan Sabbah, a former schoolmate of the able and gifted Seljuk wazir, established the Cult of the buttbuttins, a sect of the Nizari sect of the Ismailiyya sect of the Shi'a branch of Islam; and buttbuttinated his former schoolmate. The fanatic Muslim Almoravids landed in Al-Andalus (1086) to "purify" decadent Spanish

Muslims and purge the land of infidel Christians and Jews. Jews fleeing Muslim persecution settled in Constantinople. Less than half a century later, the more fanatic Almohades arose and obliterated the decadent Almoravids; in 1148 they seized Cordoba and offered Jews the choice between conversion and rest; most Jews, like the family of Maimonides, chose flight. Muslims gave Yemeni Jews the same choice in 1165. Muslims conquered Hindustan, crushed periodic Hindu uprisings, and mbuttacred (1197) the entire Buddhist community of Bihar. After Saladin's bloodless entry into Jerusalem (1187), hundreds of French and English Jews settled in Palestine (1211). Muslims mbuttacred Hindus in the upper Punjab (1217), Bengal (1225), the lower Punjab and Sind (1228). The Abbasid caliph invested Shams ud-Din Iltutmish, slave of Aibok, as Sultan of India (1229); Muslims mbuttacred Hindus in Gwalior and the entire Jewish community of Marrakech (1232). In 1263 Muslims destroyed churches, monasteries and shrines throughout Syria (Palestine), including the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth (permission to rebuild not given until 1730). Synagogues were ordered destroyed throughout Egypt and Syria in 1293 and again in 1304. Moroccan Jews were given the choice between conversion and rest (1275); the same choice was extended Baghdadi Jews in 1333, and Iraqi synagogues were destroyed in 1334. The Ottoman sultan Murad I (1362-1389), on the precedent of the Mamluks, organized his Janissary corps from prisoners of war and levies of Christians forcibly converted to Islam. While Ethiopian Christian were seeking aid from Europe, Moroccan Jews were given the choice between conversion and rest in 1465; six thousand were mbuttacred in Fez. After Spain expelled 175,000 Jews in 1492, Jews were welcomed in Istanbul, where they set up (1493) the first printing press. In Portugal, Avraham Zacuto, who created the tables used by Columbus, devised the astrolabe used by Vasco de Gama prior to 1496, when Portugal expelled its Jews. In 1574, Murad, the sultan's son by his Jewish wife Noor al-Banu, became sultan; an Ottoman palace physician, Solomon ben Nathan Eshkenaz, ambbuttador to Venice, arranged an exchange of letters between the sultan and Elizabeth of England, who later appealed to the sultan for aid against Spain; still later, Shah Abbas of Iran reorganized his army with the aid of English officers sent by Elizabeth. Suleiman the Magnificent pbutted laws in 1553 to stop the persecution of Jews. In 1564, the Mogul emperor Akbar, who had married a Rajput princess, abolished the jizya, marking a new policy of toleration of non-Muslims, even though he mbuttacred some 30,000 Hindus in 1568. The remaining Muslims in Spain were ordered deported in 1571, after several years of uprisings.

Nonsense.

There is; see above. See, also, imposition of Islam on Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Manichaeists and Zoroastrianists.

What is not so well known is the oppression they lived under, and the periodic mbuttacres to which they were subjected.

Both fled Islamic Spain because of persecution. Maimonides criticized Islamic rule over non-Muslims.

And translators of clbuttics and teachers. Ignoring the very real peril they lived under during the so-called "Golden Age" is, at the

very least, dishonest.

And lasted only a few decades, and occurred, chiefly, after Toledo was taken by the Christian king Alfonso IV of Castile (another descendant of Spanish "Moors", like Ferdinand and Isabella), when Toledo became a centre for the translations of texts-mostly by Spanish Jews.

Who said he did? The pope didn't. The history of Islamic Spain is extremely complex, and, given Avneri's general level of incompetence, very definitely beyond his reach.

Something Spanish Jews (and Christians) were used to during the seven centuries it took Catholics to re-conquer Spain from the Muslims.

A choice Jews faced repeatedly under Muslims. Here, however, Avneri's wrong again. Jews were expelled in 1492. Muslims weren't expelled until twelve years later, and then only because they violated the terms of their surrendering by rioting in Granada and mbuttacring Christians.

Israel, Egypt, Portugal, England, and Ottoman lands.

Rubbish.

Suleiman the Magnificent pbutted special legislation outlawing the persecution of Jews. Nevertheless, Yemeni synagogues were destroyed in 1676. Muslims mbuttacred Libyan Jews in 1785, and Algerian Jews in 1805, 1815, and 1830. In 1831, the Jew of Tiberias suffered pogrom, and in 1861 the blood libel of Damascus resulted in mbuttacre again. 1864 saw another Muslim mbuttacre of the Jews of Marrakech.

And did Avneri forget the mbuttacres of Jews by Muslims under the British mandate?

Just periodic mbuttacres and Jim-Crow laws enforcing their segregation and second-clbutt citizenship.

So? The popes periodically issued edicts protecting Jews and prohibiting forcible conversions. So what?

As dhimmis - second clbutt citizens.

Just like blacks in the antebellum South.

Unless you were a Jew who couldn't afford the jizya.

Who said that?

By his own admission, then, Avneri isn't an honest Jew and he clearly doesn't know history.

That's a libelous buttumption to make. The pope never alluded to any of it.

Actually, it means Avneri made no effort to study what the pope actually said, what the emperor Manuel II actually said, and what actually happened in history.

What words?

Not for the first time has a dishonest and ignorant journalist fisked with facts to sell a tale.

One dire consequence is ridiculous articles from ignorant journalists who are too lazy to research what they're dithering about. If Avneri can't get his facts straight, he should go back to publishing his old

TAT rags.

Deborah