Sunday, January 31, 2010

All Muslims, peaceable or savage...

"As many as 80,000 Muslims — men, women and children — were deported deep into the Christian heartland. Yet this provided no solution. Some contemporary writers had contrasted the “peaceable” Moors of Aragon and Castile with the “savage” Moors of Granada, but this distinction soon became irrelevant. All Muslims, peaceable or savage, were increasingly regarded by their Christian neighbors as malign and dangerous. What was a Morisco in their eyes? A murderer, highwayman or bandit. All Moriscos became pollutants of Roman Catholic Spain, with their secret Islamic rituals and contempt for the values of the majority. And like the Jews in 1492 they were impure, their blood self-evidently corrupting; their very presence in Spain was an abomination. Over the next four decades, Spanish officials planned the purgation of the Muslim threat. Every remote possibility was canvassed — drowning, castration, exposure on the icy shores of Newfoundland. As time passed, the government’s resolution hardened: it was no longer a matter of if but of when and how. Finally, from 1609 to 1614, an estimated 300,000 Muslims were marched to the coasts and put on ships for North Africa. Carr, the author of “A History of Terrorism,” charts this steady breakdown, though without demonizing either Christian or Muslim."