Christianity & Islam: the early years
The 7 th century saw the former (united) Roman empire split into three entities – the “barbarian west” where Catholicism predominated, the Eastern Byzantine empire which was Orthodox, and the Muslim world which would soon stretch from Persia to Spain (south of Europe for the most part). Christians in Muslim lands were dubbed “people of the Gospel” and were often obliged to pay the dhimmi tax. It is not always easy to distinguish between the polemical caricatures of Muslims in Christian texts and historical reality. Undoubtedly, there was sometimes religiously inspired violence against Christians in Muslim lands during this period, but there doesn’t seem to have been anything approximating “genocide” perpetrated against Christians once their lands had been conquered. Three of the five historic Christian patriarchates – Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch – quickly fell into Muslim hands. Indeed, it was...