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Christian C. Sahner’s Followers (6)
Christian C. Sahner
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More books by Christian C. Sahner…
“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 Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World
― 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 Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World
― 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.”
― Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present
― Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Around the World ...: Syria | 21 | 1132 | Feb 18, 2025 01:39PM | |
| The History Book ...: * SYRIA | 187 | 475 | Mar 08, 2025 11:17AM |
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