Free The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam by Robert Spencer Page B

Europe
     
    PC spokesmen assert every day that even if the dhimma really did subject Jews and Christians to ongoing and institutionalized discrimination and harassment, it certainly wasn’t as bad as the way Jews were treated in Christian Europe. Historian Paul Johnson explains: “In theory,…the status of the Jewish dhimmi under Moslem rule was worse than under the Christians, since their right to practise their religion, and even their right to live, might be arbitrarily removed at any time. In practice, however, the Arab warriors who conquered half the civilized world so rapidly in the seventh and eighth centuries had no wish to exterminate literate and industrious Jewish communities who provided them with reliable tax incomes and served them in innumerable ways.” 28
    Certainly in terms of legal restrictions, the Muslim laws were much harsher for Jews than those of Christendom. In 1272, Pope Gregory X repeated what Pope Gregory I first affirmed in 598: Jews “ought not to suffer any disadvantage in those [privileges] which have been granted them.” Gregory X also repeated earlier papal decrees forbidding forced conversions (as does Islamic law) and commanding that “no Christian shall presume to seize, imprison, wound, torture, mutilate, kill, or inflict violence on them; furthermore, no one shall presume, except by judicial action of the authorities of the country, to change the good customs in the land where they live for the purpose of taking their money or goods from them or from others.”
     
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Muhammad vs. Jesus

     

     
“And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him; but the people would not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them.”
    Luke 9:52–55
“Narrated Ibn Abbas: When the Verse: ‘And warn your tribe (O Muhammad) of near-kindred (and your chosen group from among them)’ [Qur’an 26:214] was revealed, Allah’s Messenger went out, and when he had ascended As-Safa mountain, he shouted, ‘ Ya Sabahah! ’ 29 The people said, ‘Who is that?’ Then they gathered around him, whereupon he said, ‘Do you see? If I inform you that cavalrymen are proceeding up the side of this mountain, will you believe me?’ They said, ‘We have never heard you telling a lie.’ Then he said, ‘I am a plain warner to you of a coming severe punishment.’ Abu Lahab said, ‘May you perish! You gathered us only for this reason?’ Then Abu Lahab went away. So the Surat Al-Masad : ‘Perish the two hands of Abu Lahab!’ was revealed.” 30 Surat Al-Masad is the Qur’an’s 111th sura: “May the hands of Abu Lahab perish! May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots, shall have a rope of fibre around her neck!”
    Qur’an 111:1–5
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    So far this is similar to the Islamic “protection” of the subject peoples. But then Gregory adds, “In addition, no one shall disturb them in any way during the celebration of their festivals, whether by day or by night, with clubs or stones or anything else.” This is clearly distinct from the Sharia prohibitions of dhimmis celebrating their religious festivals in public. Also, in view of the fact that a Jew’s testimony was not admissible against a Christian, the pope also forbids Christians to testify against Jews—while the Sharia forbids a dhimmi from testifying against a Muslim, but has no problem with a Muslim testifying against a dhimmi. 31
    This is not to say that there weren’t abuses. Protections of the Jews, such as those enunciated by Gregory X, were often honored in the breach. But it was no accident that by the dawn of the modern age, the great majority of Jews lived in the West, not within the confines of Islam.