Comment by wageslave99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wageslave99 | Hacker News Reader

As a Spaniard my 2 cts:

- The law had an expiration date for sure (don't know why). Maybe to avoid convenience nationality acquisitions?

- "Why would the descendants of Spanish Muslims not have the same opportunity if the objective is … to reconcile Spain with its past?" Because the Moriscos[1] rebelled against the Crown[2], while the Sephardic Jews were expelled because of their faith (the last Jews of being expelled of Europe).

- "This hypocrisy led Cembrero and other commentators to speculate the law for Sephardim was proposed for economic reasons, or as an effort to appease Israel after Spain voted to recognize Palestine in the United Nations, or as a retaliation for the Catalan separatist movement." This is speculative from my point of view. There was an earlier law that allowed the Sephardim to get the Spanish Nationality but with the condition of residence created by a dictator in the first quarter of the XX century Miguel Primo de Rivera[3].

- All Hispanic-American citizens can acquire the Spanish Nationality after 2 years of residence. You can see that there are a ton of Spaniards of Hispanic-American origin in Madrid, for example.

- Calling the PP (Partido Popular)[4] "a party with Francoist roots" is a bit of stretch. PP is the typical center-right party like the German CDU, Les Républicains in France or the Democrats in USA. However, Vox[5] would be to the right of the PP and that Party could be seen as an inheritor of Franco's dictatorship.

- I'm sorry that there are racist judges, like this one, that asked tricky questions to void the nationality request of some people. He was investigated by the Judges Control Institution but they saw no wrongdoing in 2010 (a dog does not eat other dogs).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morisco

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion_of_the_Alpujarras_(1...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Primo_de_Rivera

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(Spain)

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_(political_party)

Edit: sources and format

“Because the Moriscos[1] rebelled against the Crown[2], while the Sephardic Jews were expelled because of their faith (the last Jews of being expelled of Europe).”

Wait? What? Every Muslim woman, child and man in Spain rebelled against the crown? Going to call bullshit on that.

But let’s say for a moment you might even be passably correct? Why did they rebel? Was it because they were being violently subjugated by the crown?

(Keep in mind that crown went on to do a lot more subjugating in the New World. The Spanish crown loved murdering people who weren’t Catholic.)

No, I meant that they wanted a separate political entity (or at least Moriscos' leaders wanted that). As you can guess, they were assumed to be traitors and expelled of Spain.

> But let’s say for a moment you might even be passably correct? Why did they rebel? Was it because they were being violently subjugated by the crown?

They were subjects of the Crown, as the things worked that way then, if you rebel against the Crown you were killed. Obeying the Crown in the XVI century meant to follow the official religion. The Muslims did the same some centuries earlier so I can imagine that "forcing people to practice a religion" was a common practice during that era.

> (Keep in mind that crown went on to do a lot more subjugating in the New World. The Spanish crown loved murdering people who weren’t Catholic.)

Well, of course the Spanish Empire was subjugating its subjects the same way English or French were doing. That was a common practice during that time (not that I'm defending that). In the case of the Spanish Empire, they were lucky to find people that were slaved by the Mexica (common known as Aztecs by us) and they rely on their help to conquest what is now Mexico. You can guess the other parts of Hispanic-America suffered a similar fate.

I don't get your point, you are using current culture and values to judge facts that happened 5 centuries ago. Of course they were evil and inhumane, what did you expect?

> The Muslims did the same some centuries earlier so I can imagine that "forcing people to practice a religion" was a common practice during that era.

This is generally not true for Al-Andalus. In general Christians were not forced to convert to Islam under the initial Umayyad rule and by the later periods almost 80% of Al-Andalus’ Muslim population was estimated to be from converts from Christianity to Islam, called the Muladi. This was by and large voluntary. And the remaining Christians were given a protected Dhimmi status which preserved their religious practice and conducting their internal affairs via Christian courts.

Castile also had an edict of tolerance that was revoked when they decided to expel the Moors and took a very extreme approach of convert or leave or die.

It’s not equal at all, the Kingdom of Castile which later became Spain committed in what modern day we would term a genocide against Moriscos and Conversos. Some Moriscos fled to mountains or adopted cryptic ways of preserving their traditions and religious practice under the Spanish oppression centuries after the fall of the Emirate of Granada.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_cultural_exchange....

Well, I don't want to rain on your parade, but there are several events of pogroms and massacres against Christians and Jews in the Arab Iberian Kingdoms[1][2].

Of course, most of the Muslims of Iberia were converts. Arabs were the nobles and ruling class, but the workers came from the same population that was already there. Because of the taxes that Muslim rules forced upon the non-Muslims[3] (Mozarabs mostly[4]), most of them convert to Islam. It had already happened in the past when most of Celtiberian converted to Roman religion, most of Romans converted to Christianity, Arianism Visigoths converted to Catholicism, and of course Christians converted to Islam once their rules pushed them to do so.

> Castile also had an edict of tolerance that was revoked when they decided to expel the Moors and took a very extreme approach of convert or leave or die.

Yeah sure, after the Moriscos rebelled. Sadly, rules pushing for a "state religion" was nothing new.

> It’s not equal at all, the Kingdom of Castile which later became Spain committed in what modern day we would term a genocide against Moriscos and Conversos. Some Moriscos fled to mountains or adopted cryptic ways of preserving their traditions and religious practice under the Spanish oppression centuries after the fall of the Emirate of Granada.

Well, as I said, that was common practice during that era. At least, the ruling class gave them the opportunity to convert to other religion (it's something). Moriscos rebelled against the Crowns (Castile and Aragon) and took arms against the Kingdom, what would you think it could happened to them?[5] A contemporary example, what did happen to the Byzantine population when Constantinople fell to Ottomans?[6] Let me tell you, 50k slaved people.

My point here is that you are nitpicking and isolating facts and not seeing the historical context where these events happened:

- There were no human rights at that time.

- Racism and discrimination were commonplace and assumed at the standard way of life.

- What Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Iberian Muslim Taifas or whatever other medieval ruler on what we know today as Spain were brutal and fierce.

- The situation of most of the population was dire (it didn't matter who was the ruler).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozarabs

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Moriscos

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

Pogroms did occur but they were not the norm for the society. Al-Andalusia is notable for periods of tolerance between its diverse strata.

The point I was conveying in my previous comment was that they are not equal and the same. We have much evidence that the Christian kingdoms in Iberia were much more brutal to the inhabitants of Al-Andalus. Partly this had to do with the dogmatism of the Christian kingdoms which refused to allow other beliefs to settle once things like the Spanish Inquisition really set into motion.

It is disingenuous to claim they are the same. The Muslim empires extended relatively much tolerance to their Christian minorities, as part of doctrine also, compared to the reverse in a Christian dominated realm at the time.

The jizya taxes were a way for minority religions to obtain protection under Dhimmi status, which enabled them practice of their religion. Compare this to how the Christian Kingdoms in Iberia after completing their “Reconquista” began forced conversions and even new converts were treated with suspicion to the point they were forced to perform litmus tests like drinking alcohol and pork, which both Jews and Muslims do not eat. In fact, religious rulings were issued specially for the remaining Muslims in Iberia which allowed them to outwardly confirm to Christian faith under duress [1] while still practicing their own religion.

The fall of Constantinople was limited to three days of looting, which was lenient considering the prominence of obtaining the capital of old Roman Empire. Additionally, the nature of slavery within the Ottoman Empire slaves were an answer to dealing with prisoners of war instead of massacre or mass rape & were not forcibly converted except in case of the later Devsirme system which gave rise to the Janissaries.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oran_fatwa

> Al-Andalusia is notable for periods of tolerance between its diverse strata.

Al-Andalus was not a particular tolerant kingdom. Some examples:

- Almanzor campaigns were famous for his cruelty and slavery of civilians [1] - Civil wars among the Taifas were crucial for the Reconquista [2]

I'm afraid I see you are nitpicking facts that match your agenda. Medieval times in the Iberian Peninsula where cruel, nightmarish, and a time where human life had no value. You are also forgetting the fact that Muslims were very fond of sexual slavery[3]

There was no particular difference in social or equalitarian behaviour between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, even sometimes they were allied warring against a third-party![4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanzor#Loot_and_slaves

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista#Muslim_infighting

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_concubinage_in_the_...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Granada#Formation_a...

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