Through Force or Faith? — Page 177
Chapter 3 — Holy Prophet and Wars 177 Jesus Christ abolished these commandments and the Christians do not subscribe to them but how can one reconcile with the fact that there has been no other nation equal to Christians in cruelty and in barbaric treatment of its vanquished adversaries. Whenever Christians have had the opportunity to conquer a land, they have always shown this real characteristic of theirs. Here, a comparison of conducts of the vicegerents of Muhammad s as and Jesus Christ from the Islamic and Christian history seems quite relevant. The Holy War that a predecessor of the Pope, Pope Urban the Second, started against the Muslims in the name of the God of Christianity in which, according to their records, when Jerusalem was conquered, one Christian Historian describes his own eyewitness account of its carnage: Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was neces- sary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbe- lievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.