Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (49 page)
46
Durie,
The Third Choice
, 199.
55
Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed.,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 242.
56
Adel Guindy,
Hikayat al-Ihtilal
, in translation,“Stories of the Occupation: Correcting Misunderstandings,” (Cairo: Middle East Freedom Forum, 2009), 88.
59
Adel Guindy,
Hikayat al-Ihtilal
, in translation,“Stories of the Occupation: Correcting Misunderstandings,” (Cairo: Middle East Freedom Forum, 2009), 117–131.
60
Sidney H. Griffith,
The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 11.
61
To give them their modern names, not necessarily the names they were known by during the conquests.
62
Alfred Butler,
The Arab Invasion of Egypt and the Last 30 Years of Roman Dominion
(Brooklyn: A & B Publishers, 1992), 464.
64
Nomikos Michael Vaporis,
Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period 1437-1860
(Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 62–64.
67
Unlike the Janissaries, who were exclusively “recruited” (that is, abducted and enslaved as children) from the many conquered Christian populations under the Ottoman Empire, the Mamluks were derived from Christians and others, notably pre-Islamic Turkic peoples.
77
It is interesting to note that the Arabic relative pronoun used to indicate these captive women is “ma”:
ma
[what]
malakat
[possess]
aymanukum
[your right hands], literally, “
what
your right hands possess” (see Shakir’s acclaimed English translation which most literally translates this). In Arabic, when one refers to a rational being (i.e., a human), the word used is
man
, which means “who(ever)”;
ma
, on the other hand, refers only to things or animals—trees, rocks, dogs and cats—very much similar to the English “it.” Thus, in proper Arabic the phrase might have been
man malakat aymanukum
: “whom(ever) your rights hands possess.” Revered Islamic scholar al-Qurtubi (d.1273) also observed this point in vol. 5, p.12 of his authoritative 20-volume
Tafsir Al Koran
(Exegesis of the Koran). He points out that members of the human race should be referred to with
man
(who), whereas only “inanimate objects” or “brute beasts” should be referred to with
ma
(what). This phenomenon (portraying concubines as nonhuman) accords well with a number of hadiths that place females and animals in the same category.
Musnad Ibn Hanbal
(vol. 2, p. 2992), for example, records Muhammad saying “Women, dogs, and donkeys annul a man’s prayer.” Indeed, in Qurtubi’s same
Tafsir
(vol.15, p. 172), after examining such hadiths, he writes, “A Woman may be likened to a sheep—even a cow or a camel—for all are ridden.”
80
Arabic video of television show on which Qutb was pressured to respond to sex-slavery and stormed out, Rfyreytert Asdas, YouTube video, October 16, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCmRnit6IMM
, translation by the author.
84
Abdelmassih, “Report: Egyptian Muslim Ring Uses Sexual Coercion.”
85
As told to the author in a phone interview.