The First Muslims in England

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35843991

by DanBC • 10 years ago

75 56 10 years ago

bbc.co.uk

DanBC• 10 years ago

BBC Radio Four has some interesting programmes about the history of the UK. This magazine article ties in with the new "Book of the Week" - This Orient Isle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074w30m

That title feels like a hat tip to This Sceptred Isle, an excellent programme. Sadly, only four episodes are available on the website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qh19l

Another history series people might be interested in is "Voices from the Old Bailey". http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012stwb

Shop lifting http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fc80v

and smuggling http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d4sbs

are particularly interesting.

ilaksh• 10 years ago

Islam versus Christianity has been used to motivate war for centuries. People do need to be aware of propaganda and research real history.

jkot• 10 years ago

Before Elizabeth's reign, England - like the rest of Christendom - understood a garbled version of Islam mainly through the bloody and polarised experiences of the Crusades.
No Christian even knew the words "Islam" or "Muslim",
Christians simply could not accept that Islam was a coherent religious belief. Instead they dismissed it as a pagan polytheism or a heretical deformation of Christianity.

That is just not true. Christians knew Islam for almost millennium before 16th century and centuries before crusades. There were christian communities all over Muslim world.

vetinari• 10 years ago

In 16th century there was already Habsburg-Ottoman war. Europeans were pretty much aware already, what Islam and Muslim are.

At this time, it was just English who were slowly finding out, how to manipulate Ottomans and Berbers against other Europeans.

dogma11383• 10 years ago

In the 8th century Spain was conquered by Muslims so they probably knew about them before the 16th centure ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania

Snargorf• 10 years ago

Indeed. In fact, basically all Muslim country north or west of Saudi Arabia were Christian for centuries before being conquered by Muslim invasions. Syria, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Balkans, Turkey - all Christian before the armies of Islam came in 632-1683.

It's an interesting piece of history that not a lot of people realize.

That's why all these places have/had Christian communities. They're the leftover conquered people who were too stubborn to convert of leave under the abuse of their Muslim rulers. It's not like a bunch of Christians have ever immigrated into any Muslim country - lol!

zyngaro2• 10 years ago

Yes. They did. At least one example I know of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Tunisians - lol

mkaziz• 10 years ago

And they were Jewish or Pagan before the Christians forced their way in. Check out this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence#Ch...

Those old warrior popes sound a lot like the Mullahs of today. I particular enjoyed this line: "In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "'The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently; for he serves Christ when he strikes, and saves himself when he falls.... When he inflicts death, it is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is his own gain.'""

zyngaro2• 10 years ago

"Indeed. In fact, basically all Muslim country north or west of Saudi Arabia were Christian for centuries before being conquered by Muslim invasions. Syria, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Balkans, Turkey - all Christian before the armies of Islam came in 632-1683." We could say the same thing for America, Australia, Africa and even some East European countries none of these populations were Christians before the their lands where conquered by european Christians . Oh and there was no Israel at that time the whole region was referred to as the Levant.

agumonkey• 10 years ago

It's very telling about how "history" is taught. I believe the nationalistic / isolated view on it is the cause and is very detrimental.

IkmoIkmo2• 10 years ago

It's an interesting piece of history that not a lot of people realize.

I think it's pretty commonly known the Byzantine empire was Christian and did rule in many of the lands you referenced.

all Christian before the armies of Islam came in 632-1683.

But to call these countries (to the extent they're even comparable geographical areas) as 'all Christian' is nonsense. For example, Berbers in Morocco in 500 weren't 'all Christian', not even close. Some surely were, and they'd surely been influenced by it like many religions before, but they weren't all Christian anywhere to the same extent they're virtually all Muslim today.

That's why all these places have/had Christian communities. They're the leftover conquered people who were too stubborn to convert of leave under the abuse of their Muslim rulers. It's not like a bunch of Christians have ever immigrated into any Muslim country - lol!

Again, take Morocco. A lot of the Christian communities that exist today aren't remnants of settlements that are 1500 years old. Take Volubilis, a place where once Christians lived in Morocco, it's been abandoned for almost 1.000 years. Rather, many of today's Christian communities are remnants of much more recent migration, a few hundred years ago, in a colonial context. e.g. about 100 years ago a quarter million Spaniards lived in Morocco, most of them Christian, and - lol! - they did migrate to a Muslim country. Countless other examples exist, millions of Christians migrated to muslim countries during the colonial era, and indeed they also left their mark, and not all of them left.

empath752• 10 years ago

Have you never heard of the crusader states?

tim3332• 10 years ago

I guess there was a similar effect in most of those countries with the Arab Spring democracy demonstrations turning to "Arab Winter or Islamist Winter, is the term for the wide-scale violence and instability, evolving in the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in Arab World countries." (Wikipedia)

eveningcoffee• 10 years ago

It hard to understand why people who should know better (Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London) distribute this garbage.

hartpuff• 10 years ago

I think it means they literally didn't know the words Islam or Muslim, it being previously known as Muhammadism or Mahometry and/or other words.

empath752• 10 years ago

Catholics had written detailed arguments against Muslims for hundreds of years prior to Elizabeth. Here's Thomas Aquinas making some arguments against Muslim criticisms of Christianity in the 13th century: http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/islam/ration...

nl• 10 years ago

Right. But this is more about the centralization of knowledge and the slow distribution of that knowledge.

Note that this story is in the context of England ("England - like the rest of Christendom - understood a garbled version of Islam mainly through the bloody and polarised experiences of the Crusades.")

There may have been people in England (and the rest of Europe) at that time that used the words "Islam" and "Muslim" to describe that religion. However, they weren't people who wrote a lot, and those terms certainly weren't wide-spread.

Look at it in Google's NGram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Islam&case_ins...

The author isn't arguing that they didn't know of the religion at all, just that they were ignorant of much of what it believed.

TenOhms• 10 years ago

I find this hard to believe because Islam often takes issue with Christianity due to the concept of the Trinity being equated to polytheism.

dogma11383• 10 years ago

Considering that there was an "Islamic" nation (in one form or another) in Europe for about 800 years starting around 700AD, when the Umayyads conquered 2/3rd of Spain just a stone throw away from then England (even tho England didn't really exist yet) it is quite unclear who the hell fact checked this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

maaku3• 10 years ago

williamjennings you are shadow banned.

kiliancs• 10 years ago

Another prominent and earlier example of Christians studying Arabic and Islam and engaging in peaceful theological discussions with Muslims through logic was Ramon Llull, one of the first to be born after Jaume I conquered Majorca. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull

ps4fanboy4• 10 years ago

When the world moves away from oil as means of energy production there will be plenty more Muslims in England and Europe as a whole, it will trigger the largest mass immigration the world has ever seen.

coldtea5• 10 years ago

Actually that might be the opposite: when their lands get more viable to live and prosper, without foreign intervention, wars, corrupt governments, etc to destabilize them and get their oil resources cheaply.

After all they have been staying there for centuries before oil became a thing.

ps4fanboy4• 10 years ago

Oil money has enabled their populations to increase dramatically, they need the oil money to import food among other things. They have hardly been selling their oil cheaply the arab oil belt has profited greatly.

IkmoIkmo2• 10 years ago

Further, look into the concept of the resource curse. It's quite interesting, although it's by no means a conclusive theory.

danieltillett• 10 years ago

Lets hope this is all it triggers.

InclinedPlane• 10 years ago

The vast majority of Muslims do not live in the middle East.

fiatmoney• 10 years ago

This is a shit article, impossible to read as anything other than propaganda ("look guys, they've always been here! It definitely wasn't deliberate policy of a contemporary government" ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456... )).

Christian-Muslim contact was widespread, starting with the jihad that established Islam to begin with (the Byzantine Empire, large swathes of the Mideast, and most of North Africa was Christian), and continuing up to the Franco-Ottoman alliance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Ottoman_alliance ) which the English were definitely familiar with (see the Ottoman rug in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_%28Holbein%29 ).

Mariners would have been by necessity extremely familiar with the Muslim piracy and slave trades (see eg John Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_%28explorer%29 ).

tim3332• 10 years ago

I thought it was quite good. It starts with muslims and christians killing each other in the Crusades so it's not trying to pretend it's all peace and love. I'm not sure where you get "look guys, they've always been here! It definitely wasn't deliberate policy of a contemporary government."

zhemao3• 10 years ago

Yeah, and I doubt anyone would believe that Britain's current Muslim community has any continuity with that of the Elizabethan age.

known• 10 years ago

The Arabic countries led by the Muslims were the most advanced scientists/engineers in the world, until they let the religious crazies take over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_science_and_engine...

welanes• 10 years ago

Yes, the lost potential is heartbreaking when you think of it.

A good piece from the Economist here - http://www.economist.com/node/1213392

in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year.

I do hope we see a return to more terrestrial matters from that part of the world.

The First Muslims in England

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