Iraqi Shias protest against US troops

[GeoffP]

redundant message

 

[GeoffP]

As for the conquest of Spain, I'm not certain why the Moors went there, if I find out more I will add to it. I don't believe in wars of aggression either, but if people ask for help (like the Jews under Hitler), is it right to turn away?

No, but neither is it right to stay and conquer the locals. As I understand it, you're against that sort of thing. And the Jewish population had no easy time under islam either.

e.g. the genocide in Sudan today, if the people ask for help, should the UN turn away?

The people have done, and the UN is sending peacekeepers.

 

[S.A.M.]

No, but neither is it right to stay and conquer the locals. As I understand it, you're against that sort of thing. And the Jewish population had no easy time under islam either.

They weren't complaining.

After 589, the Christian Visigoths of Hispania persecuted the Jews severely, so naturally the Jews welcomed the Muslim conquerors in the 8th century. The conquered cities of Córdoba, Málaga, Granada, Seville, and Toledo were briefly placed in charge of the Jewish inhabitants, who had been armed by the Moorish invaders. The victors removed the restrictions which had oppressed the Jews so heavily, and granted them full religious liberty, requiring them only to pay the tribute of one golden dinar per capita.

A period of tolerance dawned for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, whose number had been considerably augmented by those who had followed the Arab and mainly Berber conquerors. Starting especially after 912, with the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II the Jews prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Jewish economic expansion was unparalleled. In Toledo, Jews were involved in translating Arabic texts to the romance languages, as well as translating Greek and Hebrew texts into Arabic. Jews also contributed to botany, geography, medicine, mathematics, poetry and philosophy. [1]

'Abd al-Rahman's court physician and minister was Hasdai ben Isaac ibn Shaprut, the patron of Menahem ben Saruq, Dunash ben Labrat, and other Jewish scholars and poets. Many famous Jewish figures lived during the Golden Age and contributed to making this a flourishing period for Jewish thought. These included Samuel Ha-Nagid, Moses ibn Ezra, Solomon ibn Gabirol Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides.[2] During his term of power, the scholar Moses ben Enoch was appointed rabbi of Córdoba, and as a consequence al-Andalus became the center of Talmudic study, and Córdoba the meeting-place of Jewish savants.

 

[GeoffP]

Until later. If I were a suspicious, critical person I'd wonder if the "liberation" of the Spanish Jews were a ruse to keep the ethnic communities at each other's throats, like some people have opined about elements of the situation in another country under occupation by a foreign power.

 

[S.A.M.]

Until later. If I were a suspicious, critical person I'd wonder if the "liberation" of the Spanish Jews were a ruse to keep the ethnic communities at each other's throats, like some people have opined about elements of the situation in another country under occupation by a foreign power.

From 711 to 976? Thats deep.

 

[GeoffP]

Historical dialectic, you know.

 

[S.A.M.]

Historical dialectic, you know.

More like verbal diarrhoea.

They must have really welcomed the Inquisition that freed them from the backward Muslims.

 

[Michael]

You're twisting my words, I never said the conquest of Persia was necessary for the Islamic Golden Age. I said Islam ushered in the Golden Age for the Arabs and the Persians contributed substantially to it.

I never said you said such. You said: "It was necessary for them to gain their independence from the Persians and maintain it." And I said show me where Persia or Egypt of Syria or anywhere else the Arabs attacked had ever conquored and controlled the Arabian penisilla. They never had in the 7000 years of history. Why? Because the deserts and their nomads and their camels and dust with their few pitifully small villiages (mecca and medina) were not worth the investimnet.

Ask yourself: Did the Chinese warrant their conquest by the Mongolians? Oh, how about the Muslims?" Did they deserve the be conquered by the Mongolians?

By your rational, yes they did.


I'm sure somewhere someone in the Indian defense department is using likewise rational as they dream of nuking Pakistan back to the stone... Oh wait .. never mind you get the point.

The Arabs had no right to invade and conquer Persia, Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Spain, Iberia, etc... You are simply too blinded by your romance with Islam that you easily dismiss the countless that perished, that were raped, that were murdered, that were slaughtered for not converting, that were sold into slavery, that died of hunger, that committed suicide because their families were roasted alive, that lost everything ....


Sorry Sam, war of aggression is wrong. And the Arabs had no right to invade Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Syria, etc....

Right? YES or NO

The Europeans had no right to invade the Americas, Africa, India, the Pacific, China, the ME, the far East, AU, NZ, etc...

Right? YES or NO

If some of the people of Iraq ask for help - should the USA conquer them and make themselves the new rulers?

YES or NO


Are you suggesting that the UN conquer Sadan and rule it for five or six centuries? To maintain their opulence and to promote conversion perhaps they could impose a tax on anyone who isn't Atheist? Make the official language English. Murder all of the high ranking Imams... I'm positive rather than starve to death, as well as get a plumb job many will happily convert... just as the Muslims in Spain became Catholic and ate pork and the Zoroastrians in Persia became Muslim and venerated Mohammad.



The question you should ask is if Islam is so wonderful and tolerant and promoted equality then why was it that the overwhelming majority of people living in Spain would rather live under a dictatorship of a Catholic King than the benevolence and equality of an Islamic Caliph?
Six centuries of Islam and the indigenous people, who never wanted Islam in the first place, hated Islam so much so that they went to war to remove it from Spain. Doesn't that seem very odd to you? I mean, with the Qur'an being the actual words of the God-head the Perfect Book that one could live their life under happily - one would think they'd of all loved Islam? The perfect system with equality for ALL (well all Muslims anyway). Yet, that wasn't the case. It wasn't the case for Sicily either. Nor was it the case for Greece. Funny that? Why? And why did the Persians convert? Now imagine the amount of suffering it took to make Muslims in Spain eat pork and worship the Pope and think how much more it took for Persians to not eat pork and worship an Arab.

Yeah, think about that a little.

You say you are against war of aggression: ARE YOU???? REALLY?

Was the Muslim conquest of Byzantine capitol Constantinople JUST or EVIL? Should it be returned to Greece? Yes or No


So?
Michael

 

[S.A.M.]

You seem to be able to ignore history to reach your own fantastic conclusions. I suggest you actually read through the thread and links.

The earliest known Persian Empire was around 550 BC so 7000 years is a bit off by any estimate.

And it was not the Arabs that contributed to their decline, they were already on the way.

The Sassanid Empire, unlike Parthia, was a highly centralized state. The people were rigidly organized into a caste system: Priests, Soldiers, Scribes, and Commoners. Zoroastrianism was finally made the official state religion, and spread outside Persia proper and out into the provinces. There was sporadic persecution of other religions. The Eastern Orthodox Church was particularly persecuted, but this was in part due to its ties to the Roman Empire. The Nestorian Christian church was tolerated and sometimes even favored by the Sassanids.

The wars and religious control that had fueled The Sassanid empire's early successes eventually contributed to its decline. The eastern regions were conquered by the White Huns in the late 5th century. Adherents of a radical religious sect, the Mazdakites, revolted around the same time. Khosrau I was able to recover his empire and expand into the Christian countries of Antioch and Yemen. Between 605 and 629, Sassanids successfully annexed Levant and Roman Egypt and pushed into Anatolia.

However, a subsequent war with the Romans utterly destroyed the empire. In the course of the protracted conflict, Sassinid armies reached Constantinople, but could not defeat the Byzantines there. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had successfully outflanked the Persian armies in Asia Minor and attacked the empire from the rear while the main Iranian army along with its top Eran Spahbods were far from battlefields. This resulted in a crushing defeat for Sassanids in Northern Mesopotamia. The Sassanids had to give up all their conquered lands and retreat. This defeat was mentioned in Qur'an as a "victory for believers," referring to the Romans, who were monotheists, in contrast to the pagan Sassinids. (Note: The official religion of the Sassanid empire was Zoroastrianism. It is not an Abrahamic/Semitic religion like Christianity or Islam, so it would be classified as "Pagan" by the followers of those religions even though it was monotheistic).

Following the advent of Islam and collapse of Sassanid Empire, Persians came under the subjection of Arab rulers for almost two centuries before native Persian dynasties could gradually drive them out. In this period a number of small and numerically inferior Arab tribes migrated to inland Iran. [1]

And after two centuries, they came into their own again.

PS the Lakhmids and the Qahtanites were Arabs who were conquered by the Persians.

The Qahtanites were also conquered by the Romans and the kingdom of Aksum.

 

[Michael]

*Rant Alert*

You are very good at either missing the huge bold faced questions I posted, which by your answering may actually move this thread forward so that we can then see where you stand on a topic OR ... you simply started a thread in which you do not want to respond to the questions of those who cared to read YOUR thread in the first place? Why is anyone guess? Did you start this thread to do what? Bitch about the USA?

Fine, then just respond to each post as thus: I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care .. naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa naa ... the USA is bad. It would save a hell of a lot of time.

I type these questions into YOUR debate thread because I want to know what YOU think. Why else would I ask the God damn question? If you do not know or do not want to answer then just say so. Don't come at me with this Michael you're an ignoramus - just because you don't like the question.

Just ask me: Why do you say 7000 years?
Then I will answer you as I have done for every single question you have ever posted. I have tried to answer them all.

I included EGYPT which is where the 7000 years old came from. Assuming people were alive 7000 years ago? Maybe you believe in the young earth theory?

Secondly, show me where Persians or the Egyptians or the Syrians or the North Africans or the Spanish or the Iberian or the Sicilian conquered the Arabian peninsula or concede the point. You keep saying the Arabs had a right to aggressive war with their neighbors because they were subjugated. PROVE IT. I maintain that the Byzantine and the Persians NEVER conquered the Arabian peninsula.

Why this red hearing of a war between Byzantine and Persia? So what is your point? What? - The Persian empire was ripe for the picking and therefor Arabs had a right to pick it?






You seem to understand what happens to people in War because I have read your many posts about the atrocities that have happened to the Iraqis and the Palestinians. What? You don't think that the same, if not much worse, happened in times of war 2000 years ago?!?!?!

You seem to understand what it took to make Muslims in Spain eat pork and worship the Pope but you do not want to face the fact that the exact thing happened to the Persians in order to get them to not eat pork and to worship an Arab. As well as the people in Egypt and the people in Syria and the people in Babylon and Sicily and Spain and N. Africa etc...


What? You think people in Persia happily gave up their culture, religion and language? No they did not. They were killed, raped, burned, starved, roasted, sold, beaten, humiliated, tortured and every other thing that happens when one people want another people want to crush them.

Did the Persians deserve this? Did the Syrians? The Egyptians? The Spanish? The Iberians? The Sicilians?


The answer seems to be a big fat resounding YES.
Yes they did and they did because they were weak and easy for the pickings. They did because they fought one another and so they deserved it.
They did because Muslims are following the only "true" Prophet.
The did because Islam was good for them.
The did because "fill in the f*cking blank".


It just burns me.

Yes, to the point of your original thread: It was wrong that the Americans attacked and conquered Iraq and it is wrong that they don't leave.


I seems to me you have romanticized the Arabian wars to the point where you seem no different than a Republic bible belt redneck talking about the WMD Saddam had hidden and the freedom the Iraqi now enjoy.

Silly huh?

So in final analysis it appears the Iraqis deserve to be humiliated, murdered, raped and conquered because they were weak and the wonderful Golden Age they are now enjoying.


Michael

 

[Michael]

PS the Lakhmids and the Qahtanites were Arabs who were conquered by the Persians.

The Qahtanites were also conquered by the Romans and the kingdom of Aksum.

This I am happy with.

I would like to see some source so that I can read about it an eduukate me self!

 

[S.A.M.]

Its a good thing you gave the rant alert. Can you tell me how many people were killed in the Arab conquest of Persia? How many were raped beaten etc?

Your Iranian friends can help.

You did read the part where for several centuries conversion was neither desired nor allowed by the Arabs?

 

[GeoffP]

Its a good thing you gave the rant alert. Can you tell me how many people were killed in the Arab conquest of Persia? How many were raped beaten etc?

Your Iranian friends can help.

Are you now belittling conquest and occupation?

You did read the part where for several centuries conversion was neither desired nor allowed by the Arabs?

Two words: tax base.

 

[S.A.M.]

This I am happy with.

I would like to see some source so that I can read about it an eduukate me self!

Persia had conquered all Middle East except some part of present day Saudi Arabia (probably because it was all desert). Most of the Arab speaking world of the time was under the Persians. The Qahtanites were in Yemen, you can look up the location. Cyrus did not manage to get to Egypt (he died before he could, I think) but one of his descendants did.

The Ghassanids (sp?) were also Arabs and were conquered by the Byzantines.

PS I would answer your questions if they reflected any knowledge of history, since they are rants I will consider them as trolling/flaming and ignore them.

It is said that the Arabs welcomed Mohammed because they were already familiar with the Jewish faith (the Jews were pretty much assimilated with the Arabs esp in present day Iraq, where they were sent by the Romans, I think, and were in fact a majority of the population in Yemen and are reported to have persecuted the Nestorian Arab Christians there, but I've only read that from one source, so I cannot vouch for its veracity).

 

[S.A.M.]

Two words: tax base.

I think it was probably culture shock, they also did not marry non-Arabs or read their literature or learn about their culture.

The Persians must have seemed very grand to the nomadic Arabs. Perhaps they were even awed by them. They continued to live in garrisons on the outskirts of Persia and the number of Arabs who moved into Persia were very small (as they are even today). This was why the Persians after a period of recouping, were able to throw them off and come back into their own. Unfortunately Persia was too much of a hot spot at the time and the Turks and the Mongols were too powerful for them. I think its a testimony to the strength of the Iranian culture that they still speak Farsi and have maintained their Iranian-ness where the Turks and the Mongols have assimilated theirs.

 

[Michael]

Persia had conquered all Middle East except some part of present day Saudi Arabia (probably because it was all desert).

Here is the largest existent of the Persian Empire. It doesn’t include any of the Arabian peninsula.

The Year was 500 BCE

Most of the Arab speaking world of the time was under the Persians.

Here is the Persian Empire just before being conquered by the Muslim Arabs. It touches even LESS of the Arabian Peninsula!

Just what part of the World are you speaking about? The Arabian Peninsula as a whole has never been a part of the Persian Empire and even 1000 years earlier, at the largest extant of the Persian Empire the Arabian Peninsula was still free to go about their Bedouin ways.

So why exactly did the Persians deserve to be slaughtered?
Or is it time for a little game of Historical Revision???

[sarcasm]
Why Michael, everyone knows the Muslims were welcomed with open arms by the Persians. Why them Persians were so happy to pay an extra tax to Arabs and to worship an Arab God and venerate an Arab named Mohammad – Gee, they didn’t know what to do with themselves they were so happy. They even quit speaking Farsi and started speaking Arabic. Just like them Happy Pappy Native Americans who needs Algonquian when you’ve got English!
[/sarcasm]

The Qahtanites were in Yemen, you can look up the location.

Yeah… and???? Yemen was never a part of the Persian Empire.

The Ghassanids (sp?) were also Arabs and were conquered by the Byzantines

From wiki:
The Ghassanids were Arab Christians and allies of the Byzantine Empire.



So? Why is it exactly you still maintain that the Muslims had the moral authority to lead a war of aggression against the Persians? The Egyptians? The Syrians? The Spanish? The Iberians? The Sicilians? etc.. etc.. etc…? Why is it that the Persians deserved to be slaughtered, raped, terrified, starved, beaten and everything else that goes along with a War of Agression?


Why again? I seemed to miss it completely... Oh, yes, because they were Muslims and God said it's OK for Muslims to loot, pillage and rape. Its different when they do it. :bugeye:


Michael

 

[Michael]

RE: How many Persians can one count on the head of a pin ....


We don't even know how many people were murdered at Auschwitz!!!


Again, you are trying to justify War of Aggression by suggesting it wasn't all that bad for the Persians and making that suggesting because no one was there to count the corpses. Hey Michael, no one knows exactly how many Persians were murdered so maybe none were! While we're rewriting history: Maybe, just maybe, the 100s of millions of native Americans that disappeared did so in a spaceship! And the same happened to the Muslims - just at the exact time the Mongolians were coming over to visit and bring them cookies! One big f*cking spaceship!

Ahhhhh!
MII

 

[Michael]

I noticed some parts were "edited" out....

Occupation

Under Umar and his immediate successors, the Arab conquerors attempted to maintain their political and cultural cohesion despite the attractions of the civilizations they had conquered. The Arabs were to settle in the garrison towns rather than on scattered estates. They were not to marry non-Arabs, or learn their language, or read their literature. The new non-Muslim subjects, or dhimmi, were to pay a special tax, the jizya or poll tax, which was calculated per individual at varying rates for men, women and children as determined by Muslim rules but paid collectively by the whole community. In addition, the so-called protected People-of-the-Book were subject to various restrictions of occupation, worship, and dress (Bashear 1997, p. 117).

Mass conversions were neither desired nor allowed, at least in the first few centuries of Arab rule[4][5]. Later such restrictions disappeared.

Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, had made it clear that the "People of the Book", Jews and Christians, were to be tolerated so long as they submitted to Muslim rule. It was at first unclear as to whether or not the Sassanid state religion, Zoroastrianism, was entitled to the same tolerance. Many Arab commanders destroyed Zoroastrian shrines and prohibited Zoroastrian worship. Many of the Zoroastrians were massacred and many fled to India to avoid persecution.

According to Tarikh-i Bukhara "The residents of Bukhara became Muslims. But they renounced [Islam] each time the Arabs turned back. Qutayba b. Muslim made them Muslim three times, [but] they renounced [Islam] again and became nonbelievers. The fourth time, Qutayba waged war, seized the city, and established Islam after considerable strife....They espoused Islam overtly but practiced idolatry in secret."

During the reign of the Ummayad dynasty, the Arab conquerors imposed Arabic as the primary language of the subject peoples throughout their empire, displacing their indigenous languages. However, Middle Persian proved to be much more enduring. Most of the structure and vocabulary survived, evolving into the modern Persian language. However, Persian did incorporate a certain amount of Arabic vocabulary, specially as pertains to religion, as well as switching from the Pahlavi Aramaic alphabet to one based on a modified version of Arabic characters.[6]



Is this the equality you were talking about? :bugeye:


Michael

 

[S.A.M.]

I noticed some parts were "edited" out....

Occupation

Probably because they were posted two pages back.

Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, had made it clear that the "People of the Book", Jews and Christians, were to be tolerated so long as they submitted to Muslim rule. It was at first unclear as to whether or not the Sassanid state religion, Zoroastrianism, was entitled to the same tolerance. Many Arab commanders destroyed Zoroastrian shrines and prohibited Zoroastrian worship. Many of the Zoroastrians were massacred and many fled to India to avoid persecution.

That was later rulers.

In the 7th century, the Sassanid dynasty was overthrown by the Arabs. Although some of the later rulers had Zoroastrian shrines destroyed, generally Zoroastrians were included as People of the Book and allowed to practice their religion. Mass conversions to Islam were not desired or imposed, in accordance with Islamic law. However, there was a slow but steady movement[citation needed] of the population of Persia toward Islam. The nobility and city-dwellers were the first to convert. Islam spread more slowly among the peasantry and the dihqans, or landed gentry. Later, the jiyza, a poll tax imposed on non-Muslims, probably accelerated the process.

Many Zoroastrians fled, among them several groups who eventually migrated to the western shores of the Indian subcontinent, where they finally settled. According to the Qissa-i Sanjan "Story of Sanjan", the only existing account of the early years of Zoroastrian refugees in India, the immigrants originated from (greater) Khorasan. The descendants of those and other settlers, who are today known as the Parsis, founded the Indian cities of Sanjan and Navsari, which are said to have been named after the cities of their origin: Sanjan (near Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan) and the eponymous Sari (in modern Mazandaran, Iran). (Kotwal, 2004)

In the centuries following the fall of the Sassanid Empire, Zoroastrianism began to gradually return to the form it had had under the Achaemenids, and no evidence of what is today called the "Zurvan Heresy" exists beyond the 10th century CE. (Boyce, 2002) Ironically, it was Zurvanism and Zurvan-influenced texts that first reached the west, leading to the supposition that Zoroastrianism was a religion with two deities: Zurvan and Ahura Mazda (the latter being opposed by Angra Mainyu

According to Tarikh-i Bukhara "The residents of Bukhara became Muslims. But they renounced [Islam] each time the Arabs turned back. Qutayba b. Muslim made them Muslim three times, [but] they renounced [Islam] again and became nonbelievers. The fourth time, Qutayba waged war, seized the city, and established Islam after considerable strife....They espoused Islam overtly but practiced idolatry in secret."

During the reign of the Ummayad dynasty, the Arab conquerors imposed Arabic as the primary language of the subject peoples throughout their empire, displacing their indigenous languages. However, Middle Persian proved to be much more enduring. Most of the structure and vocabulary survived, evolving into the modern Persian language. However, Persian did incorporate a certain amount of Arabic vocabulary, specially as pertains to religion, as well as switching from the Pahlavi Aramaic alphabet to one based on a modified version of Arabic
characters.[6]

The Ummayads were conquerers, they moved the capital to Damascus and used mass conversions to control the people. And this was a 100 years after the Arabs came to Persia, so apparently they did learn something from the Sassanids, who ironically did the very same thing with Zoroastrianism.

According to one common view, the Umayyads transformed the caliphate from a religious institution (during the rashidun) to a dynastic one.
During the period of the Umayyads, Arabic became the administrative language. State documents and currency was issued in the language. Mass conversions brought a large influx of Muslims to the caliphate. The Umayyads also constructed famous buildings such as the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, and the Umayyad Mosque at Damascus.[7]

The Umayyads have met with a largely negative reception from later Islamic historians, who have accused them of promoting a kingship (mulk, a term with connotations of tyranny) instead of a true caliphate (khilafa). In this respect it is notable that the Umayyad caliphs referred to themselves, not as khalifat rasul Allah ("successor of the messenger of God," the title preferred by the tradition), but rather as khalifat Allah ("deputy of God"). The distinction seems to indicate that the Umayyads "regarded themselves as God's representatives at the head of the community and saw no need to share their religious power with, or delegate it to, the emergent class of religious scholars."[8]

In fact, it was precisely this class of scholars, based largely in Iraq, that was responsible for collecting and recording the traditions that form the primary source material for the history of the Umayyad period. In reconstructing this history, therefore, it is necessary to rely mainly on sources, such as the histories of Tabari and Baladhuri, that were written in the Abbasid court at Baghdad.

[edit]

Is this the equality you were talking about? :bugeye:

You're prejudiced.

On Zoroastrian immigration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qissa-i_Sanjan

Sanjan Stambh, a pillar at Sanjan that commemorates the arrival of the Zoroastrians, states the date of settlement at 936 CE. This date is based on interpretation of the Qissa, which though extremely precise with respect to some elapsed periods, is vague or contradictory with respect to others. Consequently, another date, 716 CE, has been proposed as the year of landing. This disagreement has been the cause of "many an intense battle [...] amongst Parsis". [4] The sacking of Sanjan referred to in the fourth chapter probably occurred in 1465 (see Delhi Sultanate), which would put 716 CE c. 750 years before the Islamic invasion and 936 CE c. 530 years before that event. Both periods (seven centuries and five centuries) are mentioned in the Qissa.

No doubt some Zoroastrians left because of persecution, but many had already left. I also find it interesting that the Persians had a caste system similar to that of Hindus.

 

[leopold]

sam
do you like what the US is trying to accomplish in iraq?