4 ms·

> The rulers of el-Andalus were no angels either, but their abuses were nothing compared to the censorship-protected horrors of the Inquisition. That's not tr

by samuel 7y ago

> The rulers of el-Andalus were no angels either, but their abuses were nothing compared to the censorship-protected horrors of the Inquisition. That's not true. The Almohads, unlike the almoravids, forced christian and jews to convert, under threat of death.

kragen 7y ago
The Spanish Inquisition did all that and much worse. How much Moorish blood remains in the people of Spain today? How many conversos did the Inquisitors burn at the stake, generations after their ancestors converted, on the strength of rumormongering by jealous neighbors? The Christian and Jewish traditions — clerics, holy books, writing systems, and all — survived centuries of Muslim rule. What today survives of the records of the Inka? Where are the Maya codices today? And the Inka and the Maya fared much better than the Caribs and the Quilmes. Bartolomé de las Casas relates stories of cruelty beyond belief, inhuman monstrosities beyond imagining, atrocities whose publication he delayed for more than thirty years, finally publishing pseudonymously. How many such true accounts have been forgotten because they were denied the Inquisitor's imprimatur? But the Aztecs' human sacrifices to the sun god, used to justify the bringing of "civilization" to the "savages", remain notorious today.
- samuel 7y ago
  > How much Moorish blood remains in the people of Spain today? There wasn't much to start with, since the moorish conquest didn't displace the people but "incentivized"(ahem...) people to convert. > How many conversos did the Inquisitors burn at the stake, generations after their ancestors converted, on the strength of rumormongering by jealous neighbors? It's hard to know, but I've seen stimates around 3k-5k. Germanic wytchhunts probably had a much higher number of victims. The Inquisition was a pretty bureacratic institution, and it had proper trials with defence lawyers, questioning of witnesses, etc... Inquisitor [Alonso de Salazar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Salazar_Fr%C3%ADas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Salazar_Fr%C3%ADas) for example, saved probably thousands of people by setting high standards in Inquisition trials. Yes, it was VERY BAD and TERRIBLE, I'm not condoning it, but it wasn't the worse that humanity has seen. By far.
  - kragen 7y ago
    The Inquisition certainly wasn't the worst thing the humans have done, no. I didn't mean to suggest it was. Its infamous crimes need no exaggeration to earn their prominent place in the pathetic catalog of human vileness, though at times that has been no obstacle to those motivated more by hate for Catholicism than by wisdom, compassion, or personal integrity. But the bare truth is heinous enough. I brought it up because the centuries-long intellectual blight that resulted from it is a salient example of the corrupt fruits of the poisoned tree of state censorship, a tree whose root in European history is that very Inquisition. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397905 for a slightly longer disquisition on that theme.
- TurboHaskal 7y ago
  The Moorish blood remains in Spain today are the same as with the times of Al Andalus: not much. It was mostly a cultural conquest. You can keep spreading propaganda, but anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Spanish inquisition was one of the tamest in Europe. In fact, one of the main drivers behind the creation of it was the protection of true converts from popular mobs. The expulsion happened after other countries did so already (like England), and just to offer some context, Spain was making its first baby steps as a newly founded empire and had not interest of conflicting power structures within it such as the Jewish ghettos. The genocidal claims you make don't hold when half of expelled Jews returned back to Spain.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Anyone that checks out historical records will discover that there was no Inquisition in most of Europe. Also, they will discover that, after generations of increasingly vicious oppression — including conversion to Christianity at the point of a sword, kidnapping of the Moors' children, (the same genocidal practice used in the Indian School system in the US) — hundreds of thousands of Moors and Jews fled or were expelled, and that only tens of thousands returned. Anyone that checks out historical records will also discover that the Moors and Jews represented a significant percentage of the population of Iberia before the expulsions, around half a million people out of a total of less than 9 million. Furthermore, anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Jewish ghettos were in fact established by Isabel and Ferdinand, the monarchs who also established the Inquisition and, a few years later, expelled the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and Moors from their lands. One of the few true statements in your comment is that many empires, not only the Spanish Empire, have been founded on genocide. Among the other abuses of human rights the Spanish Empire also practiced, an abuse which facilitated that genocide, was state censorship. We should practice neither of these abuses. Do you disagree?
    - TurboHaskal 7y ago
      > Anyone that checks out historical records will discover that there was no Inquisition in most of Europe. I don't know what the protestant countries had, or how they called it, but they were definitely doing something wrong because the casualties in Spain pale in comparison to those in Germany. It seems that the inquisition saved lifes, after all. > hundreds of thousands of Moors and Jews fled or were expelled, and that only tens of thousands returned. What you say is true, but you have to give the numbers: From 200k Jews living there, 100k were expelled and from those 50k returned. The conversion terms offered by the Catholic Kings allowed for quite a comfortable life in the peninsula, and you had to be a really fanatic believer not to take it. It seems, by the way, that you are talking in terms of race and not religion, which I find quite amusing. > anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Jewish ghettos were in fact established by Isabel and Ferdinand, the monarchs who also established the Inquisition and, a few years later, expelled the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and Moors from their lands. No, the Jewish ghettos were stablished by the Jewish population itself. Spinoza (whose parents were expelled) wrote about that; they were building an empire within an empire, which caused social friction and translated into popular killings or pogroms. One of the earliest tasks of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova was the protection of such converts from the mobs. The stablishment of the inquisition attempted to solve the problem institutionally. > One of the few true statements in your comment is that many empires, not only the Spanish Empire, have been founded on genocide. I didn't say nor imply that. To say that the Spanish empire is rooted in genocide, at least to the extent of the English and Belgian empire, or nazi Germany is laughable. You speak with such harshness about the past, but you do it from the eyes of a pathologist, grounded from today's vision (which owes, by the way, a lot to the School of Salamanca and its contributions to natural law and the so called human rights) and so you have no autority, not only to judge it, but to use it as any sort of argument against the current secesionist situation.

by samuel 7y ago

kragen 7y ago

The Spanish Inquisition did all that and much worse. How much Moorish blood remains in the people of Spain today? How many conversos did the Inquisitors burn at the stake, generations after their ancestors converted, on the strength of rumormongering by jealous neighbors? The Christian and Jewish traditions — clerics, holy books, writing systems, and all — survived centuries of Muslim rule. What today survives of the records of the Inka? Where are the Maya codices today? And the Inka and the Maya fared much better than the Caribs and the Quilmes. Bartolomé de las Casas relates stories of cruelty beyond belief, inhuman monstrosities beyond imagining, atrocities whose publication he delayed for more than thirty years, finally publishing pseudonymously. How many such true accounts have been forgotten because they were denied the Inquisitor's imprimatur? But the Aztecs' human sacrifices to the sun god, used to justify the bringing of "civilization" to the "savages", remain notorious today.

samuel 7y ago
> How much Moorish blood remains in the people of Spain today? There wasn't much to start with, since the moorish conquest didn't displace the people but "incentivized"(ahem...) people to convert. > How many conversos did the Inquisitors burn at the stake, generations after their ancestors converted, on the strength of rumormongering by jealous neighbors? It's hard to know, but I've seen stimates around 3k-5k. Germanic wytchhunts probably had a much higher number of victims. The Inquisition was a pretty bureacratic institution, and it had proper trials with defence lawyers, questioning of witnesses, etc... Inquisitor [Alonso de Salazar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Salazar_Fr%C3%ADas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Salazar_Fr%C3%ADas) for example, saved probably thousands of people by setting high standards in Inquisition trials. Yes, it was VERY BAD and TERRIBLE, I'm not condoning it, but it wasn't the worse that humanity has seen. By far.
- kragen 7y ago
  The Inquisition certainly wasn't the worst thing the humans have done, no. I didn't mean to suggest it was. Its infamous crimes need no exaggeration to earn their prominent place in the pathetic catalog of human vileness, though at times that has been no obstacle to those motivated more by hate for Catholicism than by wisdom, compassion, or personal integrity. But the bare truth is heinous enough. I brought it up because the centuries-long intellectual blight that resulted from it is a salient example of the corrupt fruits of the poisoned tree of state censorship, a tree whose root in European history is that very Inquisition. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397905 for a slightly longer disquisition on that theme.
TurboHaskal 7y ago
The Moorish blood remains in Spain today are the same as with the times of Al Andalus: not much. It was mostly a cultural conquest. You can keep spreading propaganda, but anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Spanish inquisition was one of the tamest in Europe. In fact, one of the main drivers behind the creation of it was the protection of true converts from popular mobs. The expulsion happened after other countries did so already (like England), and just to offer some context, Spain was making its first baby steps as a newly founded empire and had not interest of conflicting power structures within it such as the Jewish ghettos. The genocidal claims you make don't hold when half of expelled Jews returned back to Spain.
- kragen 7y ago
  Anyone that checks out historical records will discover that there was no Inquisition in most of Europe. Also, they will discover that, after generations of increasingly vicious oppression — including conversion to Christianity at the point of a sword, kidnapping of the Moors' children, (the same genocidal practice used in the Indian School system in the US) — hundreds of thousands of Moors and Jews fled or were expelled, and that only tens of thousands returned. Anyone that checks out historical records will also discover that the Moors and Jews represented a significant percentage of the population of Iberia before the expulsions, around half a million people out of a total of less than 9 million. Furthermore, anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Jewish ghettos were in fact established by Isabel and Ferdinand, the monarchs who also established the Inquisition and, a few years later, expelled the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and Moors from their lands. One of the few true statements in your comment is that many empires, not only the Spanish Empire, have been founded on genocide. Among the other abuses of human rights the Spanish Empire also practiced, an abuse which facilitated that genocide, was state censorship. We should practice neither of these abuses. Do you disagree?
  - TurboHaskal 7y ago
    > Anyone that checks out historical records will discover that there was no Inquisition in most of Europe. I don't know what the protestant countries had, or how they called it, but they were definitely doing something wrong because the casualties in Spain pale in comparison to those in Germany. It seems that the inquisition saved lifes, after all. > hundreds of thousands of Moors and Jews fled or were expelled, and that only tens of thousands returned. What you say is true, but you have to give the numbers: From 200k Jews living there, 100k were expelled and from those 50k returned. The conversion terms offered by the Catholic Kings allowed for quite a comfortable life in the peninsula, and you had to be a really fanatic believer not to take it. It seems, by the way, that you are talking in terms of race and not religion, which I find quite amusing. > anyone that checks out historical records will discover that the Jewish ghettos were in fact established by Isabel and Ferdinand, the monarchs who also established the Inquisition and, a few years later, expelled the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and Moors from their lands. No, the Jewish ghettos were stablished by the Jewish population itself. Spinoza (whose parents were expelled) wrote about that; they were building an empire within an empire, which caused social friction and translated into popular killings or pogroms. One of the earliest tasks of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova was the protection of such converts from the mobs. The stablishment of the inquisition attempted to solve the problem institutionally. > One of the few true statements in your comment is that many empires, not only the Spanish Empire, have been founded on genocide. I didn't say nor imply that. To say that the Spanish empire is rooted in genocide, at least to the extent of the English and Belgian empire, or nazi Germany is laughable. You speak with such harshness about the past, but you do it from the eyes of a pathologist, grounded from today's vision (which owes, by the way, a lot to the School of Salamanca and its contributions to natural law and the so called human rights) and so you have no autority, not only to judge it, but to use it as any sort of argument against the current secesionist situation.