Israel Matzav

The Stockholm Syndrome comes to Gaza

Forced conversions in Islamic history are not exceptional-they have been the norm, across three continents-Asia, Africa, and Europe-for over 13 centuries. Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties-Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi'ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.

Moreover, during jihad-even the jihad campaigns of the 20th century [i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I, the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s, and the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern Sudan from 1983 to 2001], the (dubious) concept of "no compulsion" (Koran 2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during the Fox reporters "confessional"!), has always been meaningless. A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the "Dar al Islam", where Islamic rule (and Law) prevailed.

Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including children, were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased. Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias-practices still evident in the contemporary jihad waged by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists. And Julia Duin reported in early 2002 that murderous jihad terror campaigns-including, prominently, forced conversions to Islam-continued to be waged against the Christians of Indonesia's Moluccan Islands.

Given this enduring (and ignoble) historical legacy, it remains to be seen whether contemporary Muslim religious authorities-particularly those within Palestinian society, and affiliated with Hamas or Fatah-will condemn publicly the forced conversions of the kidnapped Fox reporters. Moreover, will they be joined by a chorus of authoritative voices representing the entire Muslim clerical hierarchy-Sunni and Shi'ite alike-from Mecca and Cairo, Qom and Najaf, to the Muslim advocacy groups in the West (such as CAIR in the United States, and the Muslim Council of Britain in England)-unanimous in their condemnation of this hideous practice, and formalized by a fatwa stating as much? Will such Muslim authorities at least recognize the acute predicament of Centanni and Wiig by issuing a fatwa stating that their "conversion", being under duress, was not bona fide, condemning in advance any Muslim who might now attack these journalists for "apostasy" from Islam?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:51 AM