Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Levy-Rubin, “Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire”

A very interesting-looking and deeply researched book by historian Milka Levy-Rubin (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (CUP 2011), traces the ways in which conquered religious minorities were and were not accommodated in the Islamic state.  The book is therefore not only of historical interest, but may also illuminate our own struggles with religious accommodation in new and unexpected ways.  The publisher’s description follows.

The Muslim conquest of the East in the seventh century entailed the subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others. Although much has been written about the status of non-Muslims in the Islamic empire, no previous works have examined how the rules applying to minorities were formulated. Milka Levy-Rubin’s remarkable book traces the emergence of these regulations from the first surrender agreements in the immediate aftermath of conquest to the formation of the canonic document called the Pact of ‘Umar, which was formalized under the early ‘Abbasids, in the first half of the ninth century. What the study reveals is that the conquered peoples themselves played a major role in the creation of these policies, and that these were based on long-standing traditions, customs, and institutions from earlier pre-Islamic cultures that originated in the worlds of both the conquerors and the conquered. In its connections to Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian traditions, the book will appeal to historians of Europe as well as Arabia and Persia.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Rodogno on Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire

We are accustomed to think of international human rights campaigns as recent phenomena. In a new book, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815-1914 (Princeton 2011), Davide Rodogno (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) shows that the practice goes back at least two centuries and originated from a desire to protect religious minorities. Rodogno details European intervention on behalf of Christians in late Ottoman Turkey. Then as now, he argues, human rights campaigns had mixed motives: humanitarian, but also political. European powers were selective about which groups merited protection, and how much. The publisher’s description follows.

Against Massacre looks at the rise of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century, from the fall of Napoleon to the First World War. Examining the concept from a historical perspective, Davide Rodogno explores the understudied cases of European interventions and noninterventions in the Ottoman Empire and brings a new view to this international practice for the contemporary era.

While it is commonly believed that humanitarian interventions are a fairly recent development, Rodogno demonstrates that almost two centuries ago an international community, under the aegis of certain European powers, claimed a moral and political right to intervene in other states’ affairs to save strangers from massacre, atrocity, or extermination. On some occasions, these powers acted to protect fellow Christians when allegedly “uncivilized” states, like the Ottoman Empire, violated a “right to life.” Exploring the political, legal, and moral status, as well as European perceptions, of the Ottoman Empire, Rodogno investigates the reasons that were put forward to exclude the Ottomans from the so-called Family of Nations. He considers the claims and mixed motives of intervening states for aiding humanity, the relationship between public outcry and state action or inaction, and the bias and selectiveness of governments and campaigners.

An original account of humanitarian interventions some two centuries ago, Against Massacre investigates the varied consequences of European involvement in the Ottoman Empire and the lessons that can be learned for similar actions today.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Church Reconsecrated in Diyarbakir, Turkey

In September, I posted about Turkey’s plan to begin returning certain properties it had seized from religious minorities over the past century. Now, a follow up.  Last month, the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News reports, Armenian Church hierarchs from around the world reconsecrated the restored St. Giragos Church in the city of Diyarbakir (below) for use as a site of Christian worship. Reportedly the  largest Armenian church in the Middle East, dating to the 16th Century, St. Giragos had been returned to the Armenian community in the 1960s but, like thousands of other churches in the region, had fallen into ruins. Once numerous, the Christian population of Diyarbakir, mostly Armenians and Syriacs, was eliminated during the genocide of 1915-1923; today, the city is mostly Kurdish. Reconstruction, which took years, proceeded with help from donations from Armenians in Turkey and elsewhere, and from local authorities, who wish to encourage tourism in the region. The ceremony was attended by local officials and the American ambassador, as well as representatives of other churches. The following day, St. Giragos hosted a baptism for dozens of Sunni Muslims of Armenian origin, whose ancestors had converted to Islam during the genocide. Hürriyet reports that the baptism was closed to the press and outside visitors “for security reasons.” Although conversion from Islam is legal under Turkish law, it is a capital offense in Islamic law, and converts are often endangered. The Armenian Church in America (Eastern Diocese) has an interesting article with more photos and details about the reconstruction and reconsecration, here. – MLM

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Lund on The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism

Christopher C. Lund (Wayne State University Law School) has posted The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism.  The abstract follows. – ARH

This short piece examines four modern church-state cases which span the First Amendment spectrum. The plaintiffs are religiously diverse — one is a Wiccan, one is a Muslim, one is an evangelical Protestant, and one is an atheist. Unsurprisingly, their claims find support in very different political communities. But the plaintiffs in these cases all have certain things in common. They are all, in their own ways, religious minorities. All of their legal cases were ultimately lost. And most importantly for our purposes, each of their cases connects deeply with the nineteenth century history of anti-Catholicism in this country.

In various ways, Catholics of that century were mistreated by the Protestant majority. The injustices they faced were sanctioned by courts as well as legislatures, and legal rules were created to render their injuries both judicially noncognizable and socially invisible. Our four modern plaintiffs are, in some ways, latter-day Catholics. They suffer some of the same injustices; indeed, they are often inhibited by the some of the very same legal doctrines created to repress the Catholic minority over a century ago. We can think of these four plaintiffs as the new Catholics — or, to put it more accurately, as the new victims of the old anti-Catholicism. As we struggle with our twenty-first century challenges of religious pluralism, it helps to realize how much our struggles have in common with earlier ones. Perhaps, armed with this knowledge, we can do a bit better now than our forefathers did then.