Cafe of Broken Dreams by John scientific terrorist in action

Myths about Tolerant Islamic Spain (al-Andalus)

Spain was a Jihadist country par-excellence (mass public execution for blasphemy, pogroms of Jews, intolerant laws, expulsion of Christians, … ).

In 851 took place a mass execution of 48 Christian monks who refused to accept Mohammed or publicly announced their Christian faith.

In 1066 took place the first big pogrom against Jews in Spain, more than 4 000 people – kids, women were killed in one day (That is more than the state of Israel has killed between 1998 – 2008 in combat operations). Yes Antisemitism was practiced with Islam. In Islamic Spain was common that the Jewish population had to wear clothes which clearly separated them from a Muslim population - well knowns marking practice from Nazi Germany.

The Caliph Hisham I of Córdoba started in 792 an offensive Jihad against France, plundering Bordeaux and killing thousands.

The Caliph Al-Hakam I after a revolt of native Christian population in Cordoba expelled more than 20 000 families out of their native home.

Thanks to Ibn Rushd, a famous master of Islamic law, who lived in Islamic Spain we know this was according to Islamic law completely legal.

Scholars agree that all polytheists should be fought. This is founded on [K 8:39]: "Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is entirely Allah's." ...

The Moslems are agreed that the aim of warfare against the People of the Book, with the exception of those belonging to the Quraysh-tribe and Arab Christians, is twofold: either conversion to Islam, or payment of poll-tax (djizyah).

Damage inflicted upon the enemy may consist in damage to his property, injury to his person or violation of his personal liberty, i.e., that he is made a slave and is appropriated. This may be done, according to the Consensus (idjma) to all polytheists: men, women, young and old, important and unimportant. ^[1]

Maimonides who lived in Islamic Spain (also in Morocco and Egypt) wrote about the common life with Muslims.

Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they did, although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put up with their fabrications. Similarly our sages instructed us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence. We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation. All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment which well nigh curses us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition. ^[2]

Darío Fernández-Morera, an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and of Comparative Literature at Northwestern University has written about myth of tolerant Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

By any objective standards, then, and in spite of its undeniable artistic, literary, and scientific accomplishments, and of modern wishful “let-us-all-get-along” thinking that tries to gloss over evidence to the contrary, Islamic Spain was not a model of multicultural harmony. Andalusia was beset by religious, political, and racial conflicts controlled in the best of times only by the application of tyrannical force. Its achievements are inseparable from its turmoil. ^[3]

Bernard Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, probably one of the most known western orientalist has written about Islamic Spain.

“The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.” ^[4]

An interesting point is also that Spain entered into its richest and the most prosperous epoch just after the final defeat of Muslims in Spain and liberation their own country. For more than 500 years Spanish villages has celebrated this moment in a festival called “Moros y Cristianos” by burning of effigies of the prophet Muhammad – the so-called “la Mahoma” – are mocked, thrown out of windows, and burned.

After another Islamic attack in Spain in the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 192 people, the village of Bocairent decided to discontinue the century old tradition. Bocairent did not want to risk becoming the target of suicide bombers. – that is for tolerance.

1. ↑Jihad in mediaeval and modern Islam – The Chapter on Jihad from Averroes’ Legal Handbook al-Bidayah, translated by prof.dr.mr. Ruud Peters, a chariman of Arabic studies on the University of Amsterdam
2. ↑ B.Z. Dinur, “Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, Israel in the Diaspora B, Jerusalem, 1968, p. 365
3. ↑ The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise - Darío Fernández-Morera
4. ↑ Bernard Lewis, “The Pro-Islamic Jews,” Judaism (Fall 1968), 401.