 Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, today we're going to react to when Christians first met Muslims by Professor Michael Penn on the channel Emmer Stein Center. You guys recommended this video to me and you promised that this is a historically accurate, rational video. As I said plenty of times before, I love rational videos, factual videos. I really don't like those emotional videos. You already know that. With no further ado, let's have a look. If history matters, then getting right, the history of the first encounters of the modern world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam, really matters. Problem is, we likely have that history wrong. I would say we likely have 99% of history wrong. Of Christian-Muslim interactions is a story of unrelenting military conflict, beginning with Islamic expansion shortly after the birth of the new religion in 7th century Arabia and ending with the siege of Constantinople, with a few crusades rown in the middle for good measure. Now there's nothing factually inaccurate about this narrative. The problem is simply, that's only a small part of a much larger story. Let me explain. Early Christianity is primarily seen as a religion of the Mediterranean basin that spread with the Roman Empire and was recorded in Greek and Latin. Sure. I said before, here on this channel, especially in my Koran video, Christianity, Christian orthodoxy, is a local phenomena. For me it was patriotism even to be identified with the national religion within the Bulgarian Empire. Before that, within the Byzantine Empire, it was Christian orthodoxy that united the Slavs of the Balkan. And then hundreds of years later, those Christian Slavs defeated the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Large number of early Christians lived in what would be modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and eastern Turkey, while generally writing in a dialect of Aramaic called Syriac. Yes. Due to a series of 5th century theological controversies, most Western Christians considered these Syriac Christians heretics and essentially wrote them out of history. My own research focuses on how the history of Christianity changes. If we no longer ignore that for centuries, the geographic center of Christianity was not Rome, or even Constantinople, but rather Baghdad. Absolutely. Yet again, I have to repeat myself. On the Balkans, the Muslim faith was considered the Turkish faith. We even have sayings that we will never submit to the Turkish faith. For the longest time, this is no joke. I know it's embarrassing. I thought that Islam stems from Turkey. And this is why to this very day, white nationalists identify with Christianity as a European religion, not realizing that both religions Islam and Christianity stem from the same area. Hovering of this essentially lost history of Christianity profoundly affects our understanding of early Christian-Muslim relations. Again, let me explain. The Prophet Muhammad was born around the year 570 in the city of Mecca. According to Islamic tradition, his prophecy began in 610 when he first received divine revelation. In 622, he fled to the city of Medina to escape persecution. There, he and his growing followers thrived. And eight years later, he triumphantly led a Median army into Mecca. He died around 632. His first successor oversaw a dramatic expansion, often known as the Islamic Conquest. Muslim forces experienced unbelievable success in the following decades. In just a few years, they took over the entire Persian Empire, two-thirds of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. They soon controlled all of North Africa, Spain, and were only repelled in France. In the Eastern Mediterranean military conflict between the Islamic and Byzantine empires continued for over eight centuries, resolved only in 1453 when Islamic forces finally took the city of Constantinople, what is modern-day Istanbul. However, this well-accepted narrative is overly simplified because there are only a handful of modern scholars who can read writings in Syriac from the majority of early Christians who lived under Muslim rule. The problem is, if you stick to Greek and Latin sources, you're building your history of Christian reactions to Islam solely on the writings of Christians who were primarily in military conflict with Muslims. But up to half. Yeah, on top of that, you would base it on Christians that were heavily influenced by the Roman Empire. Teaching Christians lived in the Middle East and had a very different experience with Muslims than did most Greek and Latin Christians, with any military encounters over in just a few years. By the 640s, they were firmly within the Islamic Empire. How, then, would the history of Christian-Muslim relations change if, instead of reading Christians often at odds with Muslims, we focus on Syriac Christians who had daily interactions with Muslims, and thus a much more direct knowledge of Islam? I wrote two books exploring how in the Islamic Empire these Christians held key governmental positions, attended the Caliph's Court in Baghdad, collaborated with Muslim scholars to translate Greek knowledge into Arabic, accompanied Muslim leaders on their campaigns against the Byzantines, and helped fund monasteries through donations from Muslims including money from the Caliph himself. Middle Eastern Christians. It's absolutely beautiful to hear and this is how I would imagine Islam after I read the Quran, because my experience with Muslims not only historically but in my everyday life in Germany was that of violence. I saw a lot of drug use, a lot of criminality, prostitution even, and all kinds of degenerate behavior. This is why I had such a bad image of Islam. Pair that, as I said, with the history that the Ottoman Empire took over our lands, and then finally in roughly 2005 the Albanian conflict in Macedonia and Kosovo, where Albanians burned down churches. Based on that I of course expected the worst of Islam, but as I said in the Quran I couldn't find it. Therefore this is so refreshing to see that there were good relations between Muslims and Christians. Eat with Muslims, marry Muslims, bequeath to states to Muslim heirs, taught Muslim children, and were soldiers in Muslim armies. Writings from these ancient Middle Eastern Christians even depict a particularly amorphous nature of what we call Islam. Suggesting that in the first centuries after Muhammad's death there was much greater overlap between the categories Christian and Muslim than commonly acknowledged. This does not mean that the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims were always harmonious or kumbaya. The incredible diversity of Syriac discussions of Muslims, ranging from overtly antagonistic to downright friendly, makes any simplistic narrative extremely difficult, but it also refutes any depiction of a monolithic Christian reaction to Islam. Now for historians of inter-religious encounters such results should not be surprising. Nevertheless the increasing dominance of a conflict model of Christian-Muslim relations has effectively drowned out most other voices. It is here where these previously lost sources are so valuable. By expanding our perspective these early Christian writings show that rather than existing as firmly bound independent entities, much less inevitably clashing civilizations. For centuries, Christians and Muslims constantly exhibited points of permeability, interdependence, and convergence. I am Michael Penn for the Meir Stein Center. And this is why we see that Muslims and Christians clash with each other instead of agreeing that they have so much in common, especially when it comes down to moral and ethic. Yes, I know the theological core is very different, especially if you are a Trinitarian and you claim that Jesus is God, then of course Islam becomes this big, big heresy. But ultimately if you look into it, if you look into the moral conduct, you look into family structure, then you will see how much we have in common. Ultimately we should work together rather than against each other. Where will that lead us to? You don't understand that you're being played. The right wing is absolutely frustrated about the Muslim immigration within their countries. Not understanding who is steering that immigration. Not understanding who is benefiting when those immigrants and the locals start fighting. Not understanding that this destabilization benefits the third party. All right, guys, but this is it for today's video. I hope you liked it. If so, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel, all the links are in the description box. Let me know as well within the comment section if you want me to continue with this work. And if so, which videos I should react to. All right, but this is it. As always, may God bless you all, Muslims, Christians and everybody else. Much love and peace.