The once and future Al-Andalus?

Wikipedia has a good, concise history of Muslim Spain and of the gradual Christian Reconquista. The below passage about what happened to the Christians under Muslim rule is particularly instructive:

Spanish society under Muslim rule became increasingly complex, partly because Islamic conquest did not involve the systematic conversion of the conquered population to Islam. At the same time, Christians and Jews were recognized under Islam as “peoples of the book,” and so given dhimmi status. Christianity and Judaism shared with Islam the tradition of the Old Testament, and Islam considered Jesus Christ a major prophet. Most importantly, the Islamic Berber and Arab invaders were a small minority, ruling over a few million Christians. Thus, Christians and Jews were free to practice their religion, but they had to pay a prescribed poll tax. They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues, and clothing conventions were used to mark them out. Conversion to Islam proceeded slowly but steadily as it offered social and economic advantages to converts. After several centuries of conversion, Muslims began to outnumber Christians in Al-Andalus.

The majority Christians are not forcibly converted to the rulers’ religion, but are subject to humiliating second-class status and crushing taxes, so that, over generations, the Christians tend to convert to the ruling religion, until a majority of the population becomes Muslim. And so a Christian country is changed into a Muslim country. This will be, not just the past of Spain, but the future of much of Europe, unless the Europeans find the same faith, or its equivalent, that inspired the Spanish Christians to win back what they had lost and drive the Musulman out of Europe.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2006 12:25 AM | Send