Here’s a bit on Fes that I picked off the Internet. It is an anti-Mason, anti-Shriner piece, but it also defames Muslims and Islam. If one knows anything about the history of Fes and Morocco, one knows that it is a fabrication.
Fes was founded in the 8th century and populated with Andalusian emigrants and local Berbers in the 9th. Given the sizes of cities at the time, it is unlikely that the population was very large. Not much is known about the early history of Fes, but there is no mention of any significant Christian population, let alone 50,000! Perhaps there is no historical mention of Christians at all!
Moreover, throughout Moroccan history there have never been any huge slaughters of Christians. Jews have suffered over the centuries, but usually in localized events, when the sultan did not have the power to protect them.
It is extremely unlikely that a Muslim ruler would slaughter mass numbers of “People of the Book” since one’s subjects are the wealth and strength behind a ruler.
Talaa seghira, just inside Bab BoujloudIn any case, the following episode, found on the Internet, is a manufactured, falsehood.
Now, if one wishes documentation about the Christian slaughter of innocent people, history is rift with them. No invention or imagination is required, nor need one go all the way to distant and ancient parts of the world.
Christians should remember that one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
The Disgusting Blood Red Shriner (Mason) Fez And Oath To The Pagan Allah:
The Masonic Shriners wear a red hat known as a Fez named after a town in Morocco, where in 980 AD, 50,000 Christians, including women and children, were brutally murdered by the Muslims. As the streets ran red with the Christians’ blood from the massacre, the Muslims dipped their hats in that blood as a testimony to Allah. The red Fez symbolizes the slaughter of Christians in that town. The Masons still wear the red Fez adorned with the Islamic crescent symbol. Among the oaths of the Masonic Shriner organization is one that says, “…and may Allah the God of Arab, Muslim, and Mohammedan, the God of our fathers support me to the entire fulfillment of the same. Amen, Amen, Amen.”
The fez derives its name from the place where it first was manufactured commercially, the city of Fez, in Morocco. Some say, the red color is to memorialize the color of blood, and the Muslim victories over Christians. The City of Fez formerly had a monopoly on the manufacture of the fez headdress because it controlled the juice of the berry used to color the fezzes. The color red may represent the blood of innocent victims, like Christians and Jews who Islam plans on subjugation.
I haven’t annotated this quote, but anyone can find it easily. If one wants a good book on the real history of Fes, try Roger LeTourneau’s Fes in the Age of the Merinides. The University of Oklahoma Press used to sell an excellent translation of the French language original.
Blood does run in the streets of Moroccan cities once a year. On Aid el-Kbir, every family that can afford it will slaughter a sheep to celebrate the sacrifice of Abraham.
Aid el Kebir, Sefrou. 1970
Morocco That Was 
Prove it ISN’T true.
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Truth Matters wants me to prove that something that never happened isn’t true. I thought that my post made it clear that there is no historical evidence whatsoever.
Disproving an assertion that something happened, when it didn’t, can be difficult if not impossible. In this case, I will try, because promoting misinformation does everyone a disservice.
Evidence: there is no credible evidence of the event in the historical record. As far as that goes, there are few historical records at all from that period of Moroccan history. They would be in Arabic, Hebrew, or Latin for the area in question. Where are they? I’d like to see Truth Matters’s documentation.
Evidence: there is no likelihood that Fes had anywhere near a population of 50,000 people total, let alone 50,000 Christians, in the time period mentioned. Fes had just been founded in the ninth century. Its population ironically grew substantially with the expulsion of Jews and Moors from Spain by the Ferdinand and Isabella.
Evidence: In general, Muslims in early Islam didn’t slaughter Christians or Jews because they were “the People of the Book,” people who had partial access to the truth revealed by God, and, also, for a practical reason: Muslims couldn’t be taxed under early Islamic law, so Muslim rulers needing the tax money they collected from dhimmi, the Arabic name for the people of the book, sometimes didn’t even try hard to convert them.
Evidence: that was a time of slavery, and people were considered goods and were valuable. Killing them would be illogical. Remember your own heritage. Slavery existed in Europe right into medieval times. Leon the African, a Muslim, was sold by Christian pirates to a Medici and became a Vatican official. I just read a French news article, based on medieval court documents, detailing how hard European slave owners tried to get their escaped slaves back. Often, a slave’s best chance was to flee to a free city where the claims were difficult to litigate. Most of those slaves were from Eastern Europe or the Middle East, not Africa. Slavery in Europe is a less savory part of “Western Civilization” and was practiced by the same people who gave the world “democracy” and “law,” the Greeks and the Romans.
None of the assertions makes the least bit of sense. Ironically, few Moroccans wear or have worn fezzes, which by the way, are called tarbouches in Moroccan Arabic. The hat was worn mostly by urban merchants and upper class people when I lived in Morocco. The king was sometimes pictured on stamps wearing a tarbouch.
Now, in defending Muslims, I would never state that at no time in history have there been massacres of Christians or Jews or other groups of Muslims, because there are many recorded incidences. The worse is probably the Turkish massacre of Armenians, which was a genocide of the same magnitude as the Holocaust.
On the other hand, Christian history is very well documented with massacres of people of all religions, too, including other Christians. Allow me to recall a few. Note the variety, as well as the numbers.
In the first Albigensian crusade, the northern French wiped out the entire city of Beziers, France, populated by Christians, Jews, and heretics, about 10,000 people. The Catholic bishop accompanying the crusaders is supposed to have said, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.” The remark is probably apocryphal, but even today southern Frenchmen like to quote it.
In 1099, the First Crusade captured the city of Jerusalem, killing everyone, a mixture of faiths, some 40,000 people. The crusaders waded knee deep in blood according to the chroniclers.
In Renaissance France, people gathered in Paris for the marriage of the King Henry IV. On St. Barthomew’s Day, Catholics killed 10,000 Protestants, setting off religious wars in France for a hundred years.
More recently, many Christians turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, and some actively participated in it. Six million Jews died as well as many Christians.
Still more recently, at Srebinica, the Christian Serbian army massacred 8,000 Muslim men, many just teenage boys.
And, of course, let’s not forget the massacre of the indigenous peoples of North America, as Christian settlers pushed into the west and took their lands.
But you want me to give you evidence that something that never happened, that in fact was unlikely to have ever happened?
If the truth really matters to you and you want me to acknowledge it, it is very simple: send me some documents from the period showing that it happened. They would have to be in Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic, since those were the only written languages used in western North Africa in the time period mentioned. Document the sources, and include them. And I will print a blog post correcting the Defamation article.
Truth does matter, especially in an age full of lies.
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You use as a undeniable proof that Christians killed Christians. Biblically it seems Jews killed Jews. Today we can see Islam killing Muslims stemming from a different family branch.
These proofs are no proofs at all. They are smoke and mirrors to the real truth which is that through division and lies, men subjugate themselves to false hope in false leaders. Jew, Muslim, and Christian of true faith are killed by those “who take the kingdom of heaven by force”.
So mr truth. What is common in all of those killers? Back to schooled for you.
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Dear Richard, my name is David and not “mr. truth” and you have conflated my observation and commentary with argument. The fact that most religions are prone to sectarian violence is undeniable, but not intrinsically relavant to what I wrote and perhaps I should edit it out.
The proof of my argument is in the fact that there is no credible historical evidence for the massacre that supposedly took place in Fes. Please furnish some if you have it. May I note here that you have not?
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I can’t really say to much about the specific “massacre” in fez but to say that the Muslims wouldn’t sacrifice the Christians due to money I would have to say is a large falsehood in itself, did they not kill every christian man in multiple cities in Spain when the Jewish people of the city opened the gates during Christian holidays as they were coming out of the churches and carried away the women as sex slaves with the children to be sold as slaves as well? Your a librarian open up some of your books about the berbers raids on Europe and enslaving whole cities. The assassin’s group were all Muslims right? I’m not saying Christians especially the Catholics haven’t killed people of other faiths. Morocco just supposedly gave up slavery and it’s only Muslim countries that are left that slavery is still practiced and legal I’m not saying all Islam and Muslim countries but what Christian countries is slavery practiced? The Islam extremists don’t target the blonde hair and blue eyed girls and use their penny’s as weapons rape the white Christian blood right out of them or more importantly their decedent’s? Did not the Islam general say that you can’t rape what you hold in your right hand. We can all tell fanciful tales and leave out all the negative stuff. Conquest is never pretty and outrageous acts happen on both sides. We like to paint whatever side we are on as the innocent side, I personally try not to paint any people with a broad brush their are good true people of faith in all religions I’m sure.
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First of all, Siverboy1982, thank you for taking the time to join this conversation. We seem to agree on a major point: there are good people of all faiths. This has been my own experience in life. A belief in God and the moral precepts of religion make most people better, and, even people with little or no faith can be upstanding and righteous. Whether a person has religion or lacks it is not how I judge him. To repeat Pope Francis, “Who am I to judge?” As to salvation, and what it may take to get it, that, of course, is another, different issue altogether.
As I write this reply, a brutal war is being waged in Eastern Europe between two traditionally Christian nations. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is fully supporting the Russian government in its efforts to conquer Ukraine. We watch the destruction nightly on TV, and the immorality of what is happening is almost incomprehensible: rape, murder, and targeting of innocents. When I see Vladimir Putin make the sign of the cross, I am sickened. Could any true believer in Christianity wage a war in such an ugly and shameful manner?
A week or so ago, a bomb blew up in Bagdad. Sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims goes on daily on a less dramatic level. Ukraine has replaced Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen on the front pages of our newspapers, but those wars all continue, pitting Muslims against Muslims. In Burma and Sri Lanka, Muslims minorities are persecuted. In India, the democratically elected Hindu Party stokes the fires that have brought Hindus and Muslims into conflict for centuries.
When I look at all the religious conflict in the world, there seems to be a common factor between fundamentalists and atheists: it is easy and cheap to use religion for political purposes. Some do it cynically, some do it because they justify it by tortured interpretations of their religion’s belief and an absolutist view of their movement. Looking at history, we can easily see that this is nothing new. The unscrupulous politician has always used religion for his own profit. Isn’t that happening right here in the United States today?
As to your comments, here is what I think based on some knowledge of North Africa and Spain. I want to add at this point that I have read several histories of Spain, and do know something about the Muslim period and what followed as well as something about modern Spain.
“Ii can’t really say to much about the specific “massacre” in fez…”
Of course you can’t. No one can. There wasn’t one. This is pure bunk. My blog post has been read thousands of times. No one has produced a shred of evidence that this happened. It is a lie, and many people seem happy to propagate it.
“…but to say that the Muslims wouldn’t sacrifice the Christians due to money I would have to say is a large falsehood in itself…”
Conversion of other faiths and taxation of the “people of the Book” was an issue in early Islam. Pick virtually any book by an authoritative scholar about early Islam and you can read about it. Muslims could not be taxed. Only non-Muslims paid taxes.
“…did they not kill every christian man in multiple cities in Spain when the Jewish people of the city opened the gates during Christian holidays as they were coming out of the churches and carried away the women as sex slaves with the children to be sold as slaves as well?”
No, they did not, and this defames the Jews and strikes me as antisemitic. Please cite your sources for this. The Muslims ruled all or part of Spain for 700 years or so. Where and when and did this happen? I think that you should go to your local library and read a few histories of Spain.
“Your a librarian open up some of your books about the berbers raids on Europe and enslaving whole cities.”
Berbers from Morocco invaded Spain several times, notably under the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties. These were not raids. These were invasions. Their motivation was ostensibly religious, but resulted in pure political conquest. The fundamentalist beliefs of these groups often resulted in persecution of other Muslim sects, as well as Christians Jews.
When you talk about the “enslavement of whole cities,” you are disingenuous. What do you think warfare and politics are about? Conquest and rule by kings was the way the world worked, but to characterize it the way you have gives an inaccurate picture of the time and place. Remember, the Middle Ages were a time when slavery was legal, and Christians were enslaved by other Christians. After the Norman Conquest of England, William the Conqueror commissioned a census of people and property to determine exactly what he ruled. That census is called the Domesday Book, and rare copies still exist. Along with the lands and forests and chickens and pigs are slaves—Christian slaves held by other Christians. Where in the Gospels does Jesus ever promote slavery?
“The assassin’s group were all Muslims right?”
The Assassins were a small, fanatical sect of Islam in the medieval period of the Middle East, who mostly killed other Muslims. You seem to focus on tiny, unrepresentative groups and tar the entire Islamic faith. Or vague ahistorical references.
“I’m not saying Christians especially the Catholics haven’t killed people of other faiths”
Nor should you, but they did. Not just other faiths, but other sects of Christianity, including heretical ones such as the Cathars in southern France. On the other hand, once Protestants got control of countries, they often showed the same predilections. Look at Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and persecution of Catholics.
“Morocco just supposedly gave up slavery and it’s only Muslim countries that are left that slavery is still practiced and legal”
Morocco ended slavery in the early twentieth century, about fifty years after the United States. There is no slavery in Morocco today.
“I’m not saying all Islam and Muslim countries but what Christian countries is slavery practiced?”
Slavery is not practiced legally anywhere. Maybe it goes on surreptitiously or is practiced by fundamentalist extremists when they can seize power somewhere, but no country officially permits slavery.
“The Islam extremists don’t target the blonde hair and blue eyed girls and use their penny’s as weapons rape the white Christian blood right out of them or more importantly their decedent’s?”
I have no idea what you mean, but this comment strikes me as purely racist. Is Russian rape in Ukraine okay because they do it to blond people? Are they doing it to dilute Ukrainian blood?
Bad people do bad things. I think you are unfair to the average Muslim to equate what a handful of extremists do with the way most Muslims think and behave. Are all Russians rapists and murders? Is it because they are Christians? One shouldn’t blame a nation or a religion for what minority does.
“Did not the Islam general say that you can’t rape what you hold in your right hand.”
Who are you talking about? How about a source?
“We can all tell fanciful tales and leave out all the negative stuff. Conquest is never pretty and outrageous acts happen on both sides. We like to paint whatever side we are on as the innocent side, I personally try not to paint any people with a broad brush their are good true people of faith in all religions I’m sure.”
I’d like to believe you. Your arguments suggest otherwise, but if this is what you sincerely believe, I suggest that you adopt a more ecumenical attitude. Socrates suggested that wisdom comes from self examination. Ask yourself why you promoting anti-Muslim propaganda and defaming the Muslim faith?
Finally, as librarian, I suggest that you go to a public library, take out some books written by authorities, and learn a bit more about religion, history, and politics. You have a lot of faith, but you are short on facts.
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The fez can be traced very easily back to the moors. Moors is Spain before exile were Sephardic Jews and Muslim moors.
There is more digging here we have to do. The information is in books. If anyone wants to know the books I’m reading, please let me know
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Thank you for your comment, Gideon. I am always happy to have a chance to put down false history, which, to my mind, is a lot like getting rid of false gods.
I agree totally that more digging is needed. Here’s what I suggest.
First, find an actual contemporaneous account, one that was written at the time the so-called massacre occurred or soon thereafter. As I indicated earlier, such a document would likely be in the commonly written languages of the western Mediterranean at that time: Arabic or Latin or possibly Hebrew, though most Jews wrote in Arabic. No reader has yet furnished one.
Second, look into the urban history of Fes. Fes was not conquered by the Arabs, it was founded by the Arabs, mostly from Al-Andalous or Ifriqia (today Tunisia) in the eight or ninth century. There is no mention of any Christians in Fes, then or in subsequent times. Jews were the only other non-Muslim group with a substantial Fes population, and they do not appear numerous until Merinid times, long after the so-called massacre. Nor would it be at all likely that 50,000 Christians lived there as the population of the entire city of Fes was probably less than 50,000 people at the time of the supposed massacre. Remember the city was only founded in the eighth or ninth century, and existed in pretty much in a backwater. Al-Andalous, Muslim Spain, was the center of things in those days. Read about Cordoba.
You might want to ask yourself where all those poor Christians came from, too. There isn’t much evidence of Christians in Morocco at the time. And, since most literate Christians wrote in Latin, you might want to try to find a letter, or any other document, about any subject under the sun, that was written by a Christian in Fes.
Third, get some good information on the hat itself, which, incidentally, was, and still is, called a tarboosh. In Morocco it is worn by some urban merchants and sometimes the King, but most Moroccans wear turbans, which are more practical. Most associations of the hat are with the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The origin of the fez seems to be unknown, but if you seek the truth, you might try to find out when the hat first appears in history. You assert that the hat can very easily be traced back to the Moors. I don’t believe you can support that. I have seen no mentions of the fez at the time of the so-called massacre or any drawings or paintings or descriptions from that period either. The fact that the massacre is supposed to have happened before the fes even appears in any written documents should give pause to anyone who wants to believe the story.
It’s going to be up to you to learn Arabic or Latin so you can really dig. In the meantime, I suggest that you check out the two Wikipedia articles on Fes and its eponymous hat. Or maybe the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Keep a good timeline in your head, and the spirit of Christ in your heart, and please let me and my readers know the results of your research.
Bearing false witness still is a Christian sin, the last time I checked the Ten Commandments. Until you convince me with original sources, I continue to maintain that there is no history to back what I consider a made-up story of the massacre and its continued circulation is disrespectful to both Christian and Muslims.
Truth matters very much to me, and, if it really matters to Truth Matters, either produce real evidence to back up your contention or stop spreading rubbish. I’ll be happy to publish anything that involves true historical evidence. Just writing something doesn’t make it true.
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This author has lost touch with reality!, Muslims are murdering Christians all over the world even to the present day! Armenia Genocide, ISIS in Siria, Boco Hiram in Africa! Pull your head out of the sand!!
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The world is rife with sectarian violence. Few people would deny this. I don’t.
But the issue at hand isn’t who is killing whom today. The issues are whether 50,000 Christians were massacred in Fes 1,000 years ago and where the Shriners red hats come from. You can’t offer any more proof that the event in Morocco truly happened than the others who have commented on this site. Repeating these lies doesn’t make them true. I’m not sure where your head is, but you might want to use it to do some research.
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well written piece and rebuttal.
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Thank you.
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Why do sheiners were it then? It’s defamation of Christianity to claim that only Christianity is full of bloodshed of the innocent. Dave you are another whitwasher of ISLAM and self hating loser, who never read Islamic history. You are just adding up to self destruction and of your country.
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I’m not very familiar with the Shriners, but here’s an answer from the Shriners themselves as to your question about why Shriners wear fezzes. You will note that it doesn’t reference any Christian blood.
“Why do Shriners wear the fez? The red fez with the black tassel is one of the fraternity’s most distinctive symbols. Derived from the city of Fez, Morocco, the fez was chosen as the official headgear of the fraternity to complement the organization’s pomp and pageantry, theme, ceremonies and events.”
Our History | Shriners Internationalhttps://www.shrinersinternational.org
If you want legitimate information on the origin, history, and significance of the fez, take a look at the interesting Wikipedia article on this hat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez_(hat)?wprov=sfti1
In my post, I never claimed that Christians were the only religious group to shed innocent blood. I pointed out that almost all religions have zealots who have little compunction about spilling the blood of other faiths or even the blood of different sects of their own faith. Hindus and Muslims, Sunnis and Shias, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Christians, Buddhists and Muslims, fanaticism and political motives go hand in hand with religious radicalism.
Perhaps I should not have mentioned Christian massacres in my original post since the topic was only tangential to its main point: there is no evidence to support the contention that 50,000 Christians were murdered by Muslims in Fes. Incidentally, despite the fact that Defamation seems to be the most popular post on my blog and has had almost 7,000 readers, no one has yet come forth with any evidence that the so-called massacre ever took place. Sadly, the Internet is a place where misinformation and lies flourish.
No, I am not a historian, but contrary to your baseless assertion, I have read quite a lot about the history of the Middle East and North Africa in both French and English.
I am not, nor ever will be, an apologist for Islam or any other religion. I am touched that you seem to have an interest in my salvation, but saddened that you have called me unpatriotic and a loser. The last time I checked, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” was still a commandment of the God of Judaism and Christianity.
I don’t want polemics on this blog, Andrew, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts,” as Detective Sergeant Joe Friday used to say.
Dave
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Dave..I suggest you read “Sword and the Scimitar”, by Raymond Ibrahim.
Another good source would be Robert Spencer’s “The Critical Quran”
You are ignorant of some very basic facts about both Christianity and Islam.
A true Christian who is faithful to the teachings of Jesus, would never murder anyone for any reason.
On the other hand, the “prophet” Mohammed taught his followers to kill Jews and Christians under many circumstances..or fine them harshly.
You would be doing yourself a favor if you could discern the difference between those so called “chrisians” who would kill their fellow man (such as those who fought in the crusades, or catholics,
and those Christians who will not take up the sword against their fellow man.
In Islam it is honorable to lie when you don’t yet have political power.
Once Islam has the upper hand in a country or region, their true colors fly. Terror reigns, women are murdered and raped with little to no repercussions, mass murders occur throughout the year, every year, in the name of Allah and Mohammed, by Muslim groups such as fullani herdsman, Boko Harem, ISIS, etc, etc.
And they are not extremists or radicals…they are simply fundamentalists, following the teachings of Mohammed. They are simply being faithful to their “religion”
And…yes, slavery is still practiced today in Islamic majority nations.
The atrocities done by so called “christians” are not done by those of us who have been born from above and possess the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The atrocities done by Muslims, since it’s inception have been done by those Muslims who have been faithful to what Mohammed taught them.
There are many people who claim to be “Christian ” but are not.
You’ve heard of RINO’s?
There are also CINO’s.
And there also MINO’s, but because Islam teaches that you must practice Jihad; if a “moderate” Muslim is forced into a situation where he/she has to tell where a Christian may be hiding (or whatver…this kind of thing has happened many times in history) then there moderation will turn in to self preservation and they will tell simply because they are in fear for their life…
I can’t begin to recount to you the stories from women who have escaped from a Muslim country..or forced marriage.. that speak of the threats to their lives, the torture, the neglect, the beatings they have endured..because Islam allows this wicked behavior.
Stop being ignorant and turn from your sin of unbelief and recieve Christ as your Lord and Saviour.
Much love to you in Christ!
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t introduce you to a man named David Wood who has a channel on Youtube called Acts17 apologetics. He has led thousands of muslims to Christ, and out of the hell hole of Islam!
I highly recommend you watch his videos and subscribe to his channel if you want to know more facts about Islam.
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Excuse me, but you are the ignorant here. Dave can back up his truth.
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Your comment, Robert, seems a bit one sided, and your argument ends in an ad hominem fashion. You talk as if fundamentalism and extremism are the same thing. Sorry, but my opinion is that most Muslims are as appalled by the groups you list as “Muslim” as most Christians are appalled by the Christian gunmen who have entered churches, temples, and, most lately, supermarkets, in America, and gunned down innocent people. Of course, you will say the latter are not true Christians.
Characterizing people as “true” this or that is disingenuous. People have always found justification in their religions for violent acts and the Bible is full of violence in the name of God. Jesus preached non-violence, but the Christian Bible contains far more books than the four Gospels. Mark Twain had a lot of fun with this his book. Letters from the Earth.
People find what they want in their holy books and governments often use religious authority to justify unspeakable acts. You have only to look at the Russian Orthodox Church’s approval for Putin’s brutal invasion of the Ukraine.
Religions don’t kill people, only people kill people, sometimes in the name of religion, and not alway with pure motives.
The two books which you have proposed that I read are anti-Muslim polemics. One is written by a Copt and the other by a Greek, individuals with axes to grind for obvious reasons, and I would not recommend either to one who truly wants to understand Islam. Furthermore, neither author addresses the issue that started this conversation.
Let’s get back to that issue: what are the historical sources of the so-called massacre of 50,000 Christians in ninth and tenth century Fes, a city that today is in the modern state of Morocco? Why do some Christians continue to assert than it happened without giving any facts to back it up? My blog post has had big readership, none of those readers has produced any evidence for the “Fes massacre.” You don’t even mention it.
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Hi Dave. Your first paragraph says, “most Christians are appalled by the Christian gunmen . . . . are not true Christians.” So you are saying that it’s a Christian that does these mass killings as you stated? Sounds like you are not as objective when little known facts of Islam are pointed out.
I’m just a ole greasy taxi driver and you answered my question about the red color of the fez. I am pleased with that, but Dave must have found an opening in your armor.
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Hi George,
I don’t judge people by profession anymore than I do by religion. I’m not sure why you label yourself “just an ole greasy taxi driver.” I would much rather take a taxi than an Uber ride. My maternal grandfather was just a self-proclaimed shoemaker. So who cares? Your opinion is welcome whatever you do.
That said, I’m not sure what you are getting at. You edited my comment pretty severely, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t understand the gist of what I was saying.
All that I think that I was saying was that just as most Christians are appalled by mass killings perpetrated by Christians, so, too, are most Muslims appalled by terrorism committed in the name of Islam. Individuals can find in their holy books justifications for just about anything, but most of humanity probably lives by the golden rule.
When you accuse me of lack of objectivity, I really am at a loss. There are no more “little known facts of Islam” than there are “little known facts of Christianity” in my opinion. I think that I’m far more familiar with Islam than most Americans, and I know what I am talking about when I write about history.
I don’t know what armor you are talking about, either. A couple of months back, an armed gunman, a white teenager, entered a supermarket on the east side of Buffalo, NY, about 20 miles from my home, and killed 10 African-Americans. There isn’t any doubt in my mind that it was a hate crime. One of the dead was a retired policeman. He attempted to stop the killing, but the gunman shot him dead. The gunman was wearing body armor, you see, and the retired policeman was not. I find it strange that I live in a country where anyone can buy guns and armor so easily.
Like the poor policeman, I don’t wear armor, either. Either I am right or I am wrong. I don’t have an ax to grind. My armor is the truth. The original post was written in response to a false accusation based on a fictitious incident.
In my responses to comments, I have probably muddied the waters by pointing out a few of the nasty things Christians have done on the name of their religion, also mine by the way. And as to whom is a true Christian, I think it best to say that there are a lot of versions of Christianity and each has its own idea about who is good and who is bad, and just leave it at that. I think the song lyrics of a famous French song writer and poet would describe me, except that unlike him, I do have faith:
Je n’ai jamais tué, jamais violé non plus
Y a déjà quelque temps que je ne vole plus
Si l’Eternel existe, en fin de compte, il voit
Qu’je m’conduis guèr’ plus mal que si j’avais la foi.
I’m happy to leave the judging to God.
Dave
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It is true, George. As a Christian who’s read the Bible over 13 times, I can say many people I know who are “Christians” can’t even find the books in the Bible. Some don’t know the difference between the Old & New Testament. Some “Christian” men & women I know, are so racist it is disgusting. We are all supposed to love each other as Jesus loved us. That isn’t happening. We are gone astray, as the Bible says. Supposed Christians have killed Jews in their Temple in the last 2 years. The young man who went into a Christian Church in about 2 yrs ago, talked about the Bible for an hour or so, then shot many dead.
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Thanks, Rebecca. You have said some of the things that I have been thinking myself as incidents of religious intolerance are on the rise in these United States and violence in the Middle East spins out of control.
When I originally commented on this baloney about a massacre in Fes, I probably should have limited my comments to the utter lack of any evidence about a massacre in Fes and the color of Shriners hats.
Bringing up the issue of sectarian violence exposed me to ad hominem arguments about being an apologist for Islam. This is certainly not the case. History should tell anyone, if they are open to reviewing the facts, that no organized religion has a monopoly on violence, and all have engaged in it over the centuries, usually for political reasons.
Politics and religion are terrible bedfellows.
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Hi, I’m just chiming in, because I am glad to have come upon this article. In trying to learn a little about the Shriners, I found a rabbit hole of re-re-re-posted claims about this massacre of Christians by Muslims that happened in Fez, the streets running red with blood, the red dyed fez’s. What’s throwing me off has been, all of the information I could find about this event seemed to be reposts or rewordings of the same quote, with no definite sources, and I could not find any other kind of historical verification for this happening. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s picked up on that there really isn’t much evidence for this story. I am open to evidence but there has to be something for me to give it any weight. Gotta be so careful about internet mis/disinformation these days.
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Hi Trevor,
The definitive history of Fes is that of the late Roger Le Tourneau. He was a French scholar who wrote several books on medieval times in what is today Morocco. Some of his books have been translated. If you are curious about Fes, the University of Oklahoma Press at Norman published a classic, Fes in the Age of the Merinids, short and easy to read. While the book deals with a later time period than the alleged massacre, Le Tourneau would have mentioned it if he had seen any evidence. He has also written more generally about earlier periods of Moroccan history and fundamentalist movements.
It’s not difficult to believe something if you want to believe it, but for a major historical event, even in medieval Morocco, there would be some mention somewhere. I think someone just made up the story to defame the Shriners. As you suggest, just being out there on the Internet gives it credence, but no one has provided any source which is suspicious. The fact that Fes was a newly founded city and not very big at the time also makes it improbable that there could have been 50,000 Muslims there, let alone Christians.
Thanks for your comment.
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I work with a woman from Egypt her name is Emman.
She is also Coptic Christian.
Before the Islamic invasion of Egypt texts show that approximately 85%of Egypt was Coptic Christian.
The reverse of those stats is true today.
She says that in Coptic circles in her country the story of the slaughter of the Christians of Fez is well known.
I knew of the history and read about it in print, and on google years ago,can’t find it on google anymore.
I know the political bent of google on most subjects so I’m inclined to believe my co worker from Egypt.
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Hi Matt,
Thank you for your comment.
If your choice of what to believe is between what you find on Google and a Coptic friend, I’d say first of all that you should dig a bit deeper. My own views weren’t formed by Google. Would you like some library references to histories of medieval Fes?
Kindly ask your Coptic friend to reference the alleged event in Fes, which took place 1,000 years ago supposedly, mind you, with some relatively contemporary literary source in any language of the time (Latin, Greek, Arabic.)
I’m pretty sure that she cannot do that. Nor would I trust an oral tradition, dating back 1,000 years ago, about a supposed event that took place several thousand miles away from Egypt.
I’ve read a lot of North Africa history of the Maghreb. Copts don’t figure into it.
I suspect that your friend is telling you what you want to hear and you are willing to accept it. But it comes from a modern day Egyptian, not a historian.
This is not exactly evidence, wouldn’t you agree?
The Copts have lived as second class citizens since the conquest of Egypt by Muslim armies, and have benefited by being dhimmi under Islam law, People of the Book, that is, having partial access to Revelation. Jews, other Christians, and sometimes Zoroastrians also fall into this category. That said, depending on the time and place they have been discriminated against and sometimes subject to violence.
With the rise of Islamic extremism in the 20th century, there has been an increase in prejudice and violence against Coptic communities. While the Egyptian government does not promote this activity, it also has not protected Copts from local attacks.
I happen to know some Copts personally. One was a student who was bitter at the treatment of Copts in Egypt. He never had a good thing to say about Muslims. It’s understandable. He considered himself a political refugee, but as you know, our country has a checkered history when it comes to accepting refugees. I sympathized with him, but there wasn’t much I could do for him.
In summary, if you want me to take your comment more seriously, get back to me with those old documents about what supposedly happened in medieval Fes. Testimony from a living Coptic woman doesn’t satisfy me. It shouldn’t satisfy you either.
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