Christian C. Sahner > Quotes

“If anything, the earliest Muslims were rather ambivalent about winning converts at all. Their hesitation owed to several factors, some ideological, others practical. For one, many early Muslims saw their religion as a special monotheism for the Arab people, and therefore, as we have seen, converts had to both embrace the Muslim faith and become clients of an Arab tribe. Naturally, tribal leaders looked warily upon non-Arabs who embraced the new religion.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World

“Far from marking a rupture with the past, the first two centuries of Islamic history have come to be seen as an extension of late antiquity—if not its triumphant denouement. This is especially true if we regard Muḥammad and the early caliphs as heirs to the Constantinian revolution—especially that distinctive marriage of empire and monotheism that Constantine brought about through his conversion in the fourth century. A by-product of this revolution was the use of state power to promote right belief and purge wrong belief.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World

“Whether this arrangement reflected the ecumenism, magnanimity, or pragmatism of the conquerors is tough to say. What is easy to imagine is how the arrangement eventually unravelled, having became a source of embarrassment for the Umayyads. The Muslims of Damascus—which, by the turn of the eighth century, had become the capital of the greatest empire in the world at the time—were squatting in “rented space,” and what is more, “rented space” belonging to their religious rivals. This had to change. Thus it was that the caliph al-Walid I (r. 705–15) razed the church.12 In its place, he built the most magnificent mosque ever seen, abruptly purging Christianity from the city center and establishing Islam as the main show in town. It remains so today.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present

“a twelfthcentury Syriac church canon ascribed to John of Marde outlines a baptism for Muslim children that was meant to fall short of full-on conversion. This was called the “Baptism of John,” since John the Baptist was believed to have baptized without the full presence of the Holy Spirit.175 Unlike a proper baptism, the “Baptism of John” conferred a blessing on Muslim children, a practice that is documented throughout the Ottoman period, too.176 Whether it is the parallel chrismation of Bacchus, the parallel Eucharist of George, or the parallel baptism of John of Marde, it is easy to see how medieval churches developed strategies for incorporating certain Muslims into their ritual life. One suspects that these rituals targeted recent converts to Islam, who still had a toehold in their former Christian communities, or, as in the case of the martyrs, they targeted the children of Muslim fathers and Christian mothers. It is also possible that they catered to Muslims from entirely Muslim backgrounds who nonetheless wished to obtain the apotropaic powers of the Christian sacraments.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World

“The use of capital punishment against Christians was an important feature of early Islamic history, but it was limited in its scope and aimed at two specific goals. The first was to establish the primacy of Islam and the Islamic character of the state at a moment when Muslims were dramatically outnumbered by their non-Muslim subjects. In this world, public executions had a performative function and were designed to instill obedience in the massive and potentially recalcitrant non-Muslim population. The second was to forge boundaries between groups at a time of unprecedented social and religious mixing. Indeed, Muslims and Christians interacted with each other in the most intimate of settings, from workshops and markets to city blocks and even marital beds. Not surprisingly, these interactions gave rise to overlapping practices, including behaviors that blurred the line between Christianity and Islam. To ensure that conversion and assimilation went exclusively in the direction of Islam, Muslim officials executed the most flagrant boundary-crossers, and Christians, in turn, revered some of these as saints.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World

“For the first seventy years, Muslims worshipped alongside Christians in the existing Byzantine basilica. According to historical reconstructions, Muslims prayed in the southeastern end of the complex, in a special space known as a masalla, outfitted with a mihrab that pointed the faithful toward Mecca. Meanwhile, Christians continued to conduct their liturgy at the western end of the church, around the existing altar and apse. Scholars believe that the blocked doorway mentioned above served as an entrance for both groups, with Christians turning left and Muslims right into their respective sections of the complex. This arrangement was not so unusual: we know about similar arrangements at other sites from the early Islamic period, where the first generation of Muslims prayed in spaces borrowed from their Christian subjects.”
― Christian C. Sahner, Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present