Ramadan Day 19 thought for the day from my new book The History of Jihad:
In 1419, the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Malik Safyaddin summoned the Coptic pope Gabriel V to his presence. The fifteenth-century Muslim historian Ibn Taghribirdi recounted that Gabriel “received reproaches and blows and was berated by the sultan…” Gabriel was “even threatened with death.”
The real problem was that the Christians were no longer observing the dhimmi restrictions. Ibn Taghribirdi continued:
After a long discussion between the doctors of the Law and the sultan on this subject, it was decided that none of these infidels would be employed in government offices, nor by the emirs; neither would they escape the measures taken to maintain them in a state of humiliation. Thereupon the sultan summoned Al-Akram Fada’il, the Christian, the vizier’s secretary, who had been imprisoned for several days; he was beaten, stripped of his clothes, and ignominiously paraded through the streets of Cairo in the company of the chief of police, who proclaimed, “This is the reward for Christians employed in government offices!” After all this, he was thrown back into prison….In this manner was Islam exalted and infidelity humiliated, and nothing is more praiseworthy in the eyes of Allah.
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