The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: part 8

Re: part 8
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Monday, August 27 2007, 21:51:13 (CEST)
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“In Crusader centers outside Jerusalem, such as Antioch and Edessa, where the native Christian population was in the majority, Latin secular leaders were even more aware of their need for friends, no matter how “heretical” the views of those friends in the eyes of the Church.”

Consider the sneaky foreigners; whereas in Christian countries the Middle Eastern Christians would have been tormented as heretics…in the conquered lands of the Muslims they were needed and therefore their heresies overlooked.

“Early during their conquests in the East these leaders had notified Pope Urban II that while they had expelled ‘the Turks and pagans’ from Antioch and Edessa, they could not do the same to the heretics such as ‘Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Jacobites”.

You can’t help but wonder at the impossible situation Christianity left those “heretics” in. Although they well knew that the Muslims accepted what were heresies to the mother Church, which would have persecuted and even killed them for their views, they found themselves willing, perhaps even longing, for some sort of reconciliation. To them the “tolerance” and special treatment extended to them by the invading Christians, even though necessity demanded it, must have been welcome and even hopeful of some sort of lasting accommodation which would allow them to live again under Christian domination but in peace. They should have known better.

What would have happened eventually if the Latins or Byzantines dominated that region? Would they, in time, revert to their old ways and declare the native Christians heretics, no matter how helpful they had been…either forcing them to convert to orthodoxy or, again, persecuting them as before? And if that happened, would the survivors once more leave, or be driven out, to go live among the tolerant Muslims?

It seems Christianity in the Middle East, so long as western Christianity interferes, carries within it a basic flaw, or exists in a flawed situation, which has been leading to its demise…not because of any effort by Islam but because of the nature of the beast, under this particular set of circumstances. These periodic attacks of the East by the West may have made it apparent to many native Christians that the only way to gain some lasting security and trust among their Muslim overlords and neighbors was to convert to Islam, or leave altogether…this move was not “forced” on them by Muslims but by the circumstances they were placed in time and again whenever West attacked East and, at least in their eyes, offered them some “hope”…fleeting and temporary and disastrous though it turned out to be.



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