Abubakar

A society that treats poverty as evidence of stupidity is a society that has lost its moral compass, lacks self-awareness and quietly legitimises crime and reckless haste. It teaches people to pursue wealth at any cost, because the shame of being poor has become greater than the shame of acquiring wealth dishonestly. And when wealth becomes the measure of intelligence, we inevitably begin to mistake privilege for brilliance, restraint for incompetence, and dishonesty for ingenuity.

Ah that’s a very convenient argument. When Muslims conquer a territory, its subsequent religious transformation becomes evidence against Islam. When Christians conquer the same territory, it becomes “regaining control,” and the demographic consequences suddenly cease to matter. You’ve cheekily changed the question from whether conquest contributed to religious transformation to whether you consider the conquest legitimate. Thankfully your approval of an event has no bearing on its historical consequences. Consider what happened to the Muslims who remained in Spain. Compulsory conversion was imposed in Castile in 1502 and extended to the Crown of Aragon in 1526. Between 1609 and 1614, roughly 300,000 Moriscos were expelled. These are documented historical events. How exactly does the fact that Christianity had spread through preaching in an earlier period invalidate the coercion that followed centuries later? You’re using one historical period to excuse another, while applying precisely the opposite standard to Islam. And your argument about Spain’s earlier Christian identity creates another problem. Anatolia was home to pagan religious traditions before its widespread Christianisation. If an earlier religious identity determines which subsequent transformations count, why should its Christian period be privileged over its pagan past? More importantly, why are you comfortable treating medieval Anatolia as part of the history of modern Turkey while excluding Muslim Spain from the historical account of Spain? Either historical geography and demographic change matter consistently, or your comparison has no coherent basis. None of this establishes that Muslim conquests did not happen, but It establishes that conquest, conversion, migration, persecution, and demographic transformation must be examined under the same historical standards, regardless of the religion involved. Read L. P. Harvey’s Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 and Brian A. Catlos’s Kingdoms of Faith. Both examine the history your argument CONVENIENTLY skips. You cannot make conquest the explanatory variable when discussing Islam, then replace it with historical entitlement when discussing Christianity, and still pretend you’re making an objective historical comparison.

This means so much, man. Do you understand the strength of conviction and consistency of identity it takes to be unapologetically Muslim in a country where Islamophobia remains a reality, while contesting for the US Senate? Granted, Michigan has a significant Muslim population, but Muslims are still a minority there. There is a lesson here for Muslims. You do not have to dilute your identity, conceal your faith or compromise your convictions to pursue opportunities, excel or work alongside non-Muslims. You can engage the world on its own terms without surrendering who you are or what you believe.