A Clash of Civilisations: Christianity & Islam Part 2

The death of Muhammed did not see an end to expansion by warfare but rather an acceleration of it.  Despite civil wars and the splitting of the Muslim community into two camps (Sunni and Shia) over the legitimate succession to Muhammed, within little more than a century the Islamic empire extended from the borders of India, across the middle east and north Africa and the whole of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain). The Persian forces were annihilated in two great battles in 636 and 642, leading to the complete collapse of the Persian empire and the subjection of all those lands to Islam.  The Byzantine empire lost lands, provinces and great cities such as Damascus and Jerusalem by 640 but held the line in the Anatolian mountains – a demarcation that was to hold good for three centuries.  Looking westward the conquest of Egypt was swift, the Roman forces there were few and cut-off from reinforcement.  All of north Africa was conquered by the early 700s and in 711 – 721 the Visigothic kingdom of Spain was overrun.  Muslim armies launched raids and probes over the Pyrenees and it was only defeat at the Battle of Tours in 732 by Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne) that halted Muslim ambitions for further northward expansion at this time. By the mid eight century the initial rush of Islamic military expansion had come to a halt but the principle of expansion by conquest was confirmed and would find expression many times in the subsequent centuries.

The battles between Muslim and European Christian armies were to continue for a millennia with successive waves of wars, here are a few of the major battles of that era:

718 – 1492: the Reconquista (Reconquest) of Spain.  A series of battles and wars waged by Christian kingdoms which eventually drove out the forces of the Islamic states that had conquered and settled the land from 711 onwards.

1071: Battle of Manzikert.  The destruction of Byzantine army and capture of Emperor Romanos Diogenes by the Muslim Seljuk Turks.  The turning point in the empire’s fortunes leading to its long term decline.

1096 -  1271: The Crusades, a series of armed expeditions from western Christian nations, under Papal mandate, to recover the Holy Land and Jerusalem from Muslim rule, to support the Byzantine empire and protect pilgrimage rights.  Initial successes led to the establishment of short lived ‘Crusader kingdoms’.  The last of these kingdoms, based at Acre, fell in 1291.

1453: Fall of Constantinople to Ottoman Turks.  Mehmet II, the Turkish Sultan acclaimed as Caliph of all Muslims for having fulfilled the prophecy of Muhammed.

1529: Siege of Vienna: two week siege ending in Ottoman defeat.

1565: Great Siege of Malta, May to September.  The Christian Knights Hospitaller defeat the invasion force of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and turn the tide of this phase of Ottoman expansion.

1571: Battle of Lepanto.  The Christian Holy League, led by Spain and Venice crush the Ottoman fleet and put an end to Ottoman westward expansion in the Mediterranean.

1683: two month siege of Vienna concluded by The Battle of the Bald Mountain.  Holy Roman Empire and Polish troops under the command of Polish King John III Sobieski, decisively defeat the Ottoman Turks and end forever their expansionist aims in eastern and central Europe.

 After the defeat of 1683, though the Ottoman Empire remained a potent force and fought many wars with the expanding Russian empire, it never threatened central and western Europe again.  As the European empires gained ascendancy during the eighteenth and nineteenth century the Ottomans grew progressively weaker in comparison. It made a fatal mistake by allying itself to the Germans in World War One against their common Russian foe.  The Ottoman empire collapsed with the defeat of Germany, leaving the Muslim world reeling and divided with no major political power for the first time in its history.  The impotence and poverty of Muslim dominated countries, in the face of the power and wealth of Christian dominated European and American nations has led to a profound crisis of confidence among them, leading in  turn to a resurgence of fundamentalist expressions of the faith.  The re-establishment of a State of Israel in 1947 and the loss of control of Jerusalem compounded this crisis and has acted as a new causus belli for radical, violent Islam to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century.

 In contrast to the life if Muhammed and the rise of Islam through conquest, the life of Jesus Christ and the success of the early Christian church stands in stark relief.  The ministry of Jesus of Nazareth lasted a bare three and a half years, during which time he established a reputation as a powerful healer, exorcist, miracle worker and prophet and proclaimed himself Messiah and Son of God. He left no written works but entrusted his message to a small community of followers led by eleven men - a twelfth disciple having been the one to betray him.  The public ministry of Jesus was ended by a shameful execution upon a Cross by the Roman authorities on the insistence of the Jewish religious authorities.  The continuing public proclamation by the small Christian community that Jesus Christ had not only risen from the dead but was appointed by God as Lord of all – and therefore superior to the Roman Emperor – brought down continuing waves of persecution upon the believers for three centuries.  For three hundred years converting to Christianity was more likely to be a death sentence than a pathway to success, until eventually the Roman empire succumbed to conquest from within and the new faith was proclaimed the official religion.

 Jesus Christ had actively rejected violence as a method of advancing his cause during his life time.  He rejected an attempt to make him king and also stopped an attempt to resist his arrest.  The continuing rejection of violence by his followers in the subsequent centuries revealed the faith to be of a very different constitution that that which was to be proclaimed by Muhammed.  For the Christian the pathway to the Kingdom of God was one that led through suffering, just as Christ had suffered on the Cross.  An obvious dilemma came into being once the Church achieved political power through the Roman emperor, the successor kings and States and the Papacy; how to wield the sword in a Christian manner.  Over time theologies of ‘Just War’ and self-defence sought to bring answers to this problem, modern day expressions of this desire to limit violence and warfare being found in international treaties such as the Geneva Convention and trials for war-crimes and genocide at the International Court of Human Rights. Christianity has of course expanded greatly under the aegis of empires, the Portugese, Spanish and the British in particular, but military conquest is not the definition of success for the Christian faith – violence is anathema to its founder and inspiration.   The conversion of the heart and the transformation of the mind are the aims of the Christian religion, not submission to laws and customs as is the case with Islam.

 The two religions, both of which lay claim to a future in which the whole globe is under their sway, may seem to have superficial similarities but are radically different in nature under their skins. The varying definitions of martyrdom between the two exemplify the differences, for the Muslim a martyr is one who dies fighting for the cause, like the Viking warrior being taken to Valhalla, the fallen Muslim warrior is taken straight to Paradise.  For the Christian a martyr is someone who suffers and dies bearing witness to Jesus as Lord. Within Islam violence and warfare can be legitimised as true expressions of the faith and the founder’s example, within Christianity violence and warfare are always a falling short of the teachings and example of Jesus.  It is a conceit of secularist thinking that the two religions can live comfortably alongside each other within the umbrella of a secular state, that these two civilisations can co-exist without clashing. The all-encompassing visions of both religions are exclusive, if true to themselves neither can tolerate secularism or accept the validity of the claims of the other; the conflict is always there, sometimes hot sometimes cold. The societies built on these two religions have a long history of conflict and have developed in radically different ways, having been through a hiatus of peace due to the weakness of Islamic societies it is perhaps inevitable that the centuries old war has risen its head again.

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