Will 2016 Be 1492 Redux?

1492 was a year of extreme reli­gious intol­er­ance among Chris­tians.

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.

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…

From 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.