Dhimmitude: History: Debate on HistoryDebate on HistoryFor over a millennium relations between the Muslim world and Christendom were shaped by wars, hostility and contempt. The Arab invasion of the Christian Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Sicily and Armenia, followed by the Ottoman conquest and occupation of the Balkans and Hungary, were fought back by European armies. In the 20th century, secular Kemalism in Turkey, western education and modernization in European Arab colonies, facilitated travelling, favoring contacts between different peoples and creeds. Muslim intellectuals were receptive to secularism and historical criticism. Many fought for the modernization of Islamic political and religious institutions. This section will give different and contradictory opinions on jihad and dhimmitude between Muslims, but also with non-Muslims, since these latter were the target of jihad. Moreover the 19th and 20th centuries witnessed massacres of Christian dhimmis during their national liberation wars against the Ottoman, the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, followed by a mass emigration of Christians from Muslim modern states. From the 1970's, after the Arab oil embargo and in the frame of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, European governments and interfaith bodies, have censured the history of jihad and dhimmitude, for the sake of peace between peoples and religions. Now the dhimmi diaspora rejects this historical negation that destroys the only past left to them: their memory. This debate then concerns the nature of jihad. Is jihad a war against infidels or a peaceful meritorious personal effort? Did jihad even existed? Many Muslims theologians and intellectuals teach that it has never been waged. Muslim armies had taken all those countries, because the people wanted it and asked to be conquered. Is jihad a just war or a cruel, aggressive war? Is dhimmitude a tolerant system build on just laws, an interfaith Golden Age contrasting with backward fanatical Europe? Muslims praise the tolerance of their domination, while Jews and Christians challenge the very idea of protection, considering that each human being enjoys inalienable rights and do not need to be tolerated to merely exist. The inter-religious debate touches sensitive points. Were the Biblical figures including Jesus and the apostles, Muslim prophets who preached Islam? These sections will echo some of these debates: Theology
History
Modern
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