Muslims and Christians in the Middle East

Introduction

Along with their shared theologies and religious convictions, historical context also had an impact on how Muslims and Christians interacted. (Ziolkowski 122). Therefore, it is essential to consider the two religions’ turbulent past, which dates back to the Middle Ages, as we work to comprehend the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity. In their efforts to spread their belief, the two groups of religions have run into ongoing disputes. Despite their competition, the two groups share more traits than they do distinctions. To understand their similarities and differences, a look at how Syria and Anatolia were similar or different as frontier regions between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages is imperative.

Similarities in the Concept of the Holy War

One of the notable similarities between the Islam and Christianity during the middle ages is the concept of the holy war. The religious war is a concept in which people related to a particular religion are willing to kill or get killed for the sake of their faith. The idea of the holy war was very vivid during the Middle Ages as was evidenced by the Islamic Jihad and the Christian crusades. Crusading and Jihad have been significant contributors towards the deterioration of the relations between the Muslims and Christians during the Middle Ages by creating the image of an enemy of the rival groups. Such phenomena of terrorism justified by religious faith were profoundly embedded in some notable historical events such as Byzantine wars. During this period, a number of the Turkish Muslim converts were in support of the Islam expansion into the areas that were predominantly Christian. They sought to conquer land for Islam through violence with disregard to the humanity instincts (Kafadar 36). The expansionism led to the creation of a geographical and political entity known as the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Muslim Ottoman Turks.

Fears of Islamic Expansion among European Christians

Despite the fact that the Ottoman Empire was not part of the European Union, the Islamic expansion and the subsequent formation of a Muslim empire caused fears among Christian adherents of a possible spread and root formation of Islam in the Christian dominated European and a subsequent downfall of Christendom. The European Christians could not overlook such a threat. The European Christians, in response, mounted crusades against the Ottomans (Ziolkowski 101). What followed was a series of conflicts including the Christian-Islam dispute over the control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land and the Islamic fight back to gain back part of the Middle East from the crusaders.

Negative Images and Superiority Complex

Such religious conflicts were mainly fueled by the firm stands that were taken by the different religions as both Christians and Muslims viewed their beliefs as superior over the rest. The negative pictures that the two groups created of each other dispossessed them of their humanity as they treated each other insensitively. The Muslims referred to Christians as ’infidels’ who deserved no humane treatment (Kafadar 77). To them, Muslims were good people while Christians were not. Through their Gazi traditions, they confronted their rivals with a choice between converting to Islam or face the sword. The Crusaders, Christians, on the other hand, justified the crusades as a just warfare. They argued that, at times, combat was necessary and a lesser evil, especially when applied as a defensive mechanism (Usāmah 132). The crusade participants, therefore, believed that the wars were utterly unavoidable and were just before God. In their understanding, such a war on their opponents was a necessary action on a threat to Christianity and was pleasing to God.

Social Pressure and Non-Religious Learning

Another similarity between the Muslims and Christians in the medieval period is their venerability to social pressure. Most of the sources of social influence were not anchored on their religious books but the weight of societies’ traditions and their stereotypical assumptions. Later in the sixteenth century, many of the Islam adherents realized that some of the ways of the earlier Ottoman Muslims were in contradiction with the Islamic teachings as they were not exactly in conformity with the norms of orthodox Islam (Kafadar 63). Most of their teachings were based on the societal traditions of the pre-Islamic communities. Such traditions can be seen mythic narratives of the Turkic people and their pre-Islamic practices. One of the most famous collections of Turkish narratives is the ’Book of Dede Korkut’. The Story of Kan Turali, Son of Kanli Koja is one of the narrations in the ’Book of Dede Korkut’. The book narrates how some communities used to refer to their rival communities as ’Infidels’ and inferior. Such traditions with no Quran backing found a way into the Islamic practices and were widely used to refer to individuals who were not Muslims (Dede 94). Individuals were expected to conform to the societal expectations rather than the Islamic teachings.

Exchange of Traditions in Frontier Regions

The frontiers cultural lives were deeply entrenched by oral traditions that comprised of historical recounts of the societal ideals as well as achievements. Other learnings were in the form of teaching in medicine as well as the study of the universe in purely Persian Literally classics. Such traditions, as well as non-religious learning, were copied in the Turkish in century 14. The two regions, therefore, were a complement of each other through the transfer of traditions as well as other forms of non-religion learning as this will create some sort of unity through having similar cultural and religious practices (Kafdar 73). The history and gets of some of the warriors of Arab origin, for instances, are continuously enjoyed by the Anatolian Muslims way through the predominance of the Turkish speakers pointing towards an epic of the struggle between the two conflicting religions in the frontier regions.

Integration of Non-Biblical Traditions in Christianity

Among Christianity, some of the non-biblical traditions were made part of the Christian teachings. Some of these traditions were vivid in the effort to justify the crusades. Most of the leaders who were perceived to be Christian leaning made their directions divine (Yener 81). They argued that their authority was God granted and, thereby, making their power to invoke war legitimate. Their subjects, therefore, assumed that their directives were holy and pleasing to God despite the fact that the Bible expressly abhors violence towards fellow human beings (Kafadar 70). The leaders of the Muslim in that way managed to spread propaganda to their followers about their rival groups.

Difference in the Concept of Holy War

However, despite the many similarities between the antagonist religious groups, there was one notable difference between them. Unlike the Muslims, the Christians did not have a well-defined concept of a holy war before the middle ages (Usāmah & Cobb 23). The early followers of Christ and Christ himself had no armies at their disposal. Questions were asked about whether it was necessary for a Christian leader to wage a just war or for the Christian adherents to engage in the battles of religious conversion through violence on those they considered pagans. When the Christian leadership came into direct contact with warfare, the questions of war or peace became of prominent debate. Some argued that although the war was a necessary evil forced upon them by their aggressors, the Muslims, it was not a church standing. The concept of a holy war was, however, an established ideology through Jihadist (Ziolkowski 43). The Muslims did not, therefore, hesitate to act on aggressions from Christians.

Tolerance and Conflict

In other occurrences, the traditions of the ’beyond inclusivism,’ applied by the Ottoman Turks required a relative tendency to tolerate the ideals of a divergent religious divide. Osman of the Ottoman Turks was a Muslim empire leader but enjoyed a brotherly relationship with Christians living in the neighborhood until the Christian’s lord plotted against him with the later leader treating Osman with a plate full of arrogance (Kafadar 67). If the customs according to the Gazi authorized an indiscriminate warfare towards the infidels, then the arrogance could have been met by the full force it deserves and attacks the Byzantine Christian neighbors. Osman was thus pushed to the wall to act, and any surrender or silence would have been translated by the subjects as cowardice making his rule to attract severe reproach and even replenish power. In addition, his hostilities were not directed on the Christian infidels but to the ’Tatars’ (Kafadar 62).

Refugees and Cultural Differences

Another striking difference, especially in the periods towards the World War 2, is the influx of refugees, both Christian and Islam, into Syria to escape the social and political turmoil in Anatolia as well as other war-stricken areas. Christians were running away from religious persecution in Anatolia, Assyrians fleeing from Iraq suggesting that Syria was a no man’s land but a land playing host to refugees. Through the influx of refugees in the region culminated into further conflicts as they were divided along religion line. Anatolia, on the contrary, was already an established Ottoman empire. The immigration of the Turkic tribes in the mainland of Anatolia intensified the spread of the Islamic and Turkish influence in the Beyliks. The Anatolian emirates, for instance, adopted Turkish culture as well as spoken Turkish together with literary language making it easier to form allies that could assist in case of an invasion. The presence of the religious epithets like the ’Champion of the Faith’ as well as ’Glory of the Faith’ in the Turkish Dialect points to the existence of Islamic nomenclature in the Ottomans that was compatible to other Muslim society in the Anatolian region (Kafadar 41).

Works Cited

Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Dede, Korkut, and Orhan S. Gökyay. Dede Korkut Hikâyeleri. İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevı, 2006.

Usāmah, ibn M, and Paul M. Cobb. The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades. London: Penguin, 2008.

Yener, K A. Across the Border: Late Bronze-Iron Age Relations between Syria and Anatolia: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the Research Center of Anatolian Studies, Koç University, Istanbul, May 31 - June 1, 2010. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. Print.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. Dante, and Islam. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.