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Will 2016 Be 1492 Redux?

December 15, 2015 •

1492 was a year of extreme reli­gious intol­er­ance among Chris­tians.

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

Fer­di­nand and Isabella of Spain

1492 was also the year that launched Colum­bus’ first voy­age — and its unin­tended con­se­quences, the “dis­cov­ery” of the Amer­i­cas instead of a faster route to the spice-rich East Indies.

Years from now what will peo­ple say about 2016? Will it be a time of great dis­cov­er­ies, or will we stum­ble blindly into another painfully long war between Chris­tians and Mus­lims? Will we find the wis­dom and the courage to explore other, more sus­tain­able solu­tions?

Can we learn the avoid the mis­takes of the past — and not repeat the infamy of 1492?

Bigots Prevailed in 1492

In 1492 the Span­ish mon­archs Fer­di­nand and Isabella defeated the Mus­lim king­dom of Granada and won the keys to the Alham­bra Palace. This vic­tory was the crown­ing moment of a 10-year war of reli­gious intol­er­ance waged by los Reyes Católi­cos against the Span­ish Moors and other non-Chris­t­ian believ­ers. But la Recon­quista did not end reli­gious intol­er­ance in Spain.

stone-tracery

Stone trac­ery at the Alham­bra Palace

Instead, Emir Boab­dil’s sur­ren­der marked the end of cen­turies’ worth of artis­tic cre­ativ­ity, of sci­en­tific and med­ical inno­va­tions that had flour­ished under the Span­ish Moors. Orig­i­nally from North Africa, the Moors lived in the south­ern regions of the Iber­ian penin­sula and prac­ticed Islam.

The Moors’ cul­tural and sci­en­tific inno­va­tions far sur­passed the later con­tri­bu­tions of the nar­row-minded, poorly edu­cated Catholic con­quer­ers.

Hav­ing secured la Recon­quista and then financed Colum­bus’ voy­age of dis­cov­ery, the Span­ish mon­archs recruited Con­quis­ta­dores under the mis­sion of con­quer­ing the native pop­u­la­tions of the Amer­i­cas. (And forc­ing them to con­vert to Chris­tian­ity.)

These remote con­quests fueled a mas­sive trans­fer of wealth from the Amer­i­cas to Spain over the next 200 years. This whole­sale plun­der­ing of gold, sil­ver and pre­cious gems kept the Span­ish gov­ern­ment afloat (when not siphoned off by French or British pirates).

Believe or Else…

forced-conversionsFrom Cal­i­for­nia to the ends of South Amer­ica, Indi­ans were cap­tured, enslaved or forced to con­vert to Chris­tian­ity, often at the point of a sword or mus­ket. This was the dark side of the power of reli­gious con­vic­tion.

Mean­while Los Reyes Católi­cos expanded the reach of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, ramp­ing up its pun­ish­ing impacts on any­one who did not pro­fess the Catholic faith in Spain. Under los Reyes Católi­cos, there was no sep­a­ra­tion of the pow­ers of church and state. Vio­lence was a rou­tine means of forc­ing con­ver­sions.

Empow­ered to use tor­ture to draw out con­fes­sions or force con­ver­sions, the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion spawned a reign of ter­ror. The Inqui­si­tion was hos­tile to inno­va­tion, sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery, free think­ing, can­dor or any­thing that devi­ated from the nar­row belief sys­tems of ortho­dox Catholi­cism.

The infamy of 1492 includes the expul­sion of tens of thou­sands of Jews and other non-Catholic believ­ers from Spain.

Jews, Mus­lims, Protes­tants, Gyp­sies — any non-Catholics who remained in Spain risked relent­less per­se­cu­tion by the Inqui­si­tion and the monar­chy. Protes­tants, despite being fel­low Chris­tians, were not immune to this per­se­cu­tion.

The Catholic Mon­archs impris­oned, enslaved or sequestered many thou­sands of Gyp­sies and other non­be­liev­ers, forc­ing them to live in unat­trac­tive areas called ghet­tos.

Non­be­liev­ers who remained behind in Spain faced impris­on­ment, tor­ture, per­se­cu­tion, a choice between con­ver­sion or death (auto-da-fé), extor­tion and crush­ing tax­a­tion.

The choice was stark: embrace Catholi­cism, or pre­pare to flee the coun­try.

Who Will Prevail in 2016?

Big­otry and reli­gious intol­er­ance led to geno­ci­dal behav­iors and inhu­mane poli­cies in 1492 and after. In 2016 will our actions as cit­i­zens, vot­ers and gov­ern­ment offi­cials show that we capa­ble of learn­ing from his­tory?

Or have we for­got­ten the found­ing prin­ci­ples of this nation and our Con­sti­tu­tion: includ­ing the free­dom to prac­tice the reli­gion of our choice, the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, the prin­ci­ple of free speech — even when we dis­agree or don’t share the same belief sys­tems?

The pro­posal to ban all Mus­lims from enter­ing Amer­ica, sim­ply because of their espoused beliefs, is a total con­tra­dic­tion to Amer­i­ca’s found­ing prin­ci­ples.

Are we smart or brave enough to stop pay­ing atten­tion to the hatred and fear mon­ger­ing pro­moted by big­ots, dem­a­gogues and amoral politi­cians? Why are we allow­ing our­selves to become blinded by fear and hatred?

I pray that when we Amer­i­cans cast our votes in 2016, we won’t fall prey to the fas­cist play­book — fear-dri­ven reli­gious intol­er­ance, xeno­pho­bia and the other base moti­va­tions sold by Don­ald Trump and his rivals… If so, we’ll only be play­ing into the Mus­lim-alien­at­ing sce­nar­ios that ISIS recruiters sin­cerely hope we will adopt.

We Face More Serious Threats

Despite the fear mon­ger­ing, the true threat of ISIS pales when com­pared to the biggest risks to peo­ple’s lives: gun vio­lence, high­way acci­dents, can­cer, hunger — the things that can kill mil­lions. Each year:

  • Close to 40,000 Amer­i­cans die from traf­fic acci­dents, 2.5 mil­lion are injured or dis­abled;
  • Almost 600,000 Amer­i­cans die from can­cer each year — many deaths that could have been pre­vented by health­ier lifestyles or avoid­ing known risks like smok­ing and obe­sity;
  • 33,000 Amer­i­cans die from gun vio­lence;
  • 21,000 peo­ple die every day of star­va­tion or hunger-related dis­eases around the world.

Ter­ror­ism is scary indeed, but its actual risk to most Amer­i­cans (or even most Euro­peans) is low when mea­sured in absolute num­bers. Even when you fac­tor in the deaths on 9/11 (caused by Al Quaeda rather than ISIS), Amer­i­cans are 10 times more likely to die from domes­tic gun vio­lence than from ter­ror­ism.

Politi­cians and media moguls are cyn­i­cal real­ists: they know they’ll get far more atten­tion by appeal­ing to our fears, rather than inform­ing us about the big­ger pic­ture. As a result Don­ald Trump will get far more air­time than he deserves. And we’ll get dumber and more big­oted by lis­ten­ing to him.

The world deserves more from Amer­i­cans; it needs us to remain true to our found­ing prin­ci­ples, and not fall prey to fas­cism or the evan­ge­lists of fear and hatred.

What about Them?

My hus­band points out that this blog post could be mis­in­ter­preted by peo­ple who don’t read care­fully. Just to be clear: I do not say that account­abil­ity for reli­gious tol­er­ance or open-mind­ed­ness rests solely on Amer­i­cans or Euro­peans with Chris­t­ian back­grounds. Au con­traire!

Every soci­ety, every gov­ern­ing entity, indeed every reli­gious insti­tu­tion should encour­age and pro­mote tol­er­ance for other peo­ple’s reli­gious belief sys­tems. Espe­cially among those who share a com­mon cultural/historical her­itage — the Peo­ple of the Book: Jews, Chris­tians, Mus­lims. Instead the oppo­site is true (a par­tic­u­larly appalling char­ac­ter­is­tic of tribal behav­ior that anthro­pol­o­gists have long doc­u­mented.)

I’m appalled by the cru­elty and suf­fer­ing inflicted, in the name of reli­gion, by one group of believ­ers on oth­ers who believe or prac­tice dif­fer­ently.

For more than a thou­sand years Chris­tians, Jews and Mus­lims alike have had shame­ful track records when it comes to killing, antipa­thy and intol­er­ance towards those they label non-believ­ers, heretics or infi­dels. Let’s not for­get the hun­dreds of years of war­fare and exe­cu­tions across Europe over diverg­ing def­i­n­i­tions of heresy or apos­tasy. This pro­longed vio­lence inflicted by Chris­tians on other Chris­tians was one of the fac­tors that drove the Pil­grims to seek reli­gious free­dom on the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent.)

I have no sym­pa­thy for ISIS, but grieve for their vic­tims. ISIS is not a reli­gion, it’s not a vari­ant of the Mus­lim belief sys­tem; it’s a wanna-be gov­ern­ment, a socio-polit­i­cal force that mas­quer­ades in the name of reli­gion in order to inflict its medieval beliefs and cul­tural prac­tices, like sharia, on those within its sphere of influ­ence.

Just as Chris­tians would be appalled at this faulty logic:

All Chris­tians = right-wing extrem­ists = poten­tial mass-mur­derer with guns

So should we refrain from faulty reduc­tion­ist think­ing, like the notion Trump espouses:

All Mus­lims = ISIS mem­bers = poten­tial ter­ror­ists  —> there­fore keep all of them out of the US

Very few Mus­lims, Chris­tians or Jews are ter­ror­ists, or have the poten­tial to become ter­ror­ists.

Mus­lims should be wel­comed to Amer­i­can shores, just as we wel­come Jews, Bud­dhists, Hin­dus and other non-Chris­t­ian believ­ers.

As long as we’re in a state of war, we should not wel­come ISIS rep­re­sen­ta­tives until they are ready to take a seat at the nego­ti­at­ing table, to pur­sue seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions about peace­ful coex­is­tence and the future of our shared planet.

Going back to my open­ing premise, Islamic edu­ca­tors and soci­eties need to find ways to learn accep­tance, open-mind­ed­ness and tol­er­ance. They need to edu­cate their peo­ples and cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able lives, so that vio­lence towards oth­ers no longer seems an accept­able choice.

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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