Persecution of non-Muslims in Muslim countries

From WikiIslam

According to Islamic laws, non-Muslims in Islamic Lands should be subdued and be treated like Dhimmis, or second class citizens. They should be coerced and intimidated to convert to Islam, through special humiliating taxes like Jizya imposed on them. This has been happening in the Islamic World since the last 1400 years. While Muslims demand equal rights in non-Muslim countries, non-Muslims are systematically persecuted, terrorized and ethnically cleansed from Islamic Lands.

This is a page containing news about historic and modern day persecution of non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

[edit] Historical Persecution of Non-Muslims

Persecution of non-muslims in muslim lands dates back to 7th Century. Persecution of non-muslims is part and parcel of Islam and its Law. After Mohammed's migration to Medina, He gained political power and army. He started to terrorise, loot, kill the nearby Arab and Jewish tribes and loot their caravans. As Mohammed grew in power and wealth, his intolerence towards other religions also grew.

Mohammed's last words at his deathbed were "Turn the pagans (non-Muslims) out of the Arabian Peninsula."

Sahih Bukhari 5:59:716

One of the last Surah he produced was AL-TAWBA in which he commanded muslims to fight against Non-muslims and subjugate and coerce them to convert to Islam.

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Qur'an 9:29

[edit] Persecution of Christians in Middle East

Islamic Scholar Robert Spencer Says about the Persecution of Christians in Middle East,

After the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 632, Muslim armies swept out of Arabia and, under the banner of jihad, conquered the lands that now form the heart of the Islamic world. In the Holy Land, the conquest of Jerusalem in 638 stood at the beginning of centuries of Muslim aggression; Christians in the Holy Land faced an escalating spiral of persecution. A few examples: early in the eighth century sixty Christian pilgrims from Amorium were crucified; around the same time the Muslim governor of Caesaria seized a group of pilgrims from Iconium and had them all executed as spies - except for a small number who converted to Islam. Muslims demanded money from pilgrims, threatening to ransack the Church of the Resurrection if they didn’t pay. Later in the eighth century, a Muslim ruler banned displays of the cross in Jerusalem. He also increased the special poll tax (jizya) that Christians had to pay (Muslims were exempt) as ordained by Qur’an 9:29, and forbade Christians to engage in religious instruction of their own children and fellow-believers.

Brutal subordination and violence became the rule of the day for Christians in the Holy Land. In 772, the caliph al-Mansur ordered Christians and Jews in Jerusalem to be stamped on their hands with a distinctive symbol. Conversions to Christianity were dealt with particularly harshly. In 789, Muslims beheaded a monk who had converted from Islam and plundered the Bethlehem monastery of St. Theodosius, killing many more monks. Other monasteries in the region suffered the same fate. Early in the ninth century the persecutions grew so severe that large numbers of Christians fled for Constantinople and other Christian cities. Fresh persecutions in 923 saw more churches destroyed, and in 937, Muslims went on a rampage in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.

After a period of Byzantine resurgence, in 1004, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021) turned violently against the faith of his Christian mother and uncles (two of whom were Patriarchs) and ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over the next ten years thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives. In 1009, al-Hakim gave his most spectacular anti-Christian order: he commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed, along with several other churches (including the Church of the Resurrection). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rebuilt by the Byzantines in the seventh century after the Persians burned an earlier version, marks the traditional site of Christ’s burial. Bizarrely, the church had served as the model for the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Caliph al-Hakim commanded that the tomb inside be cut down to the bedrock. He ordered Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks (and Jews heavy blocks of wood in the shape of a calf). He piled on other humiliating decrees, culminating in the order that they accept Islam or leave his dominions.

The erratic caliph ultimately relaxed his persecution and even returned much of the property he had seized from the Church. Some of al-Hakim’s changed attitude probably came from his increasingly tenuous connection to Islamic orthodoxy. In 1021, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances; some of his followers proclaimed him divine and founded a sect based on this mystery and other esoteric teachings of a Muslim cleric, Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Darazi (after whom the Druze sect is named). Thanks to al-Hakim’s change of policy, which continued after his death, in 1027 the Byzantines were allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Nevertheless, Christians were in a precarious position and pilgrims remained under threat. In 1056, the Muslims expelled three hundred Christians from Jerusalem and forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the fierce and fanatical Seljuk Turks swept down from Central Asia, they enforced a new Islamic rigor making life increasingly difficult for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). After they crushed the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 and took the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes prisoner, all of Asia Minor was open to them - and their advance was virtually unstoppable. In 1076, they conquered Syria; in 1077, Jerusalem. The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people. The same year the Seljuks established the sultanate of Rum (Rome, referring to the New Rome, Constantinople) in Nicaea, perilously close to Constantinople itself; from here they continued to threaten the Byzantines and harass the Christians all over their new domains.

The Christian Empire of Byzantium, which before Islam’s wars of conquest had ruled over a vast expanse including southern Italy, North Africa, the Middle East, and Arabia, was reduced to little more than Greece. It looked as if its death at the hands of the Seljuks was imminent. The Church of Constantinople considered the pope a schismatic and had squabbled with him for centuries, but the new Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118), swallowed his pride and appealed for help. And that is how the First Crusade came about: it was a response to the Byzantine Emperor’s call for help. The Crusaders were responding to the emperor dialing 911.

[edit] Persecution of Hindus in India

Western Historian Francois Gautier once commented

“The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis;" source

The American historian Will Durant summed it up like this:

“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within".source

Hindu Kush means Hindu Slaughter

Destruction Of Hindu Temples By Muslims - Part I

Destruction Of Hindu Temples By Muslims - Part II

Destruction Of Hindu Temples By Muslims - Part III

Destruction Of Hindu Temples By Muslims - Part IV (The Epigraphic Evidence)

The 1947 Mulsim League Attacks on Hindus and Sikhs

[edit] Persecution and Dhimmitude of Christians and Jews in Spain

Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years. In Muslim Spain, Jews and Christians were tolerated if they:

acknowledged Islamic superiority
accepted Islamic power
paid tribute (i.e. paid an additional tax) to the Muslim rulers and sometimes paid higher rates of other taxes
avoided blasphemy
did not try to convert Muslims
complied with the rules laid down by the authorities. These included:
restrictions on clothing and the need to wear a special badge
restrictions on building synagogues and churches
not allowed to carry weapons
could not receive an inheritance from a Muslim
could not bequeath anything to a Muslim
could not own a Muslim slave
a dhimmi man could not marry a Muslim woman (but the reverse was acceptable)
a dhimmi could not give evidence in an Islamic court
dhimmis would get lower compensation than Muslims for the same injury

If this is level of tolerence and respect, Muslims meted out to so-called People of book(Jews and Christians), Not all the Muslim rulers of Spain were tolerant even this much.

Almanzor looted churches and imposed strict restrictions.

The position of non-Muslims in Spain deteriorated substantially from the middle of the 11th century as the rulers became more strict and Islam came under greater pressure from outside.

Christians were not allowed taller houses than Muslims, could not employ Muslim servants, and had to give way to Muslims on the street.

Christians could not display any sign of their faith outside, not even carrying a Bible. There were persecutions and executions.

One notorious event was a pogrom in Granada in 1066, and this was followed by further violence and discrimination as the Islamic empire itself came under pressure.BBC