Reasons For Conversion To Islam
As a rule, the Ottomans did not require the Greeks to become Muslims, although many did so in order to avert the socioeconomic hardships of Ottoman rule, take advantage of greater employment prospects and possibilities of advancement in the Ottoman government bureaucracy and military, or simply because of the corruption of the Greek clergy. Thomas Walker Arnold noted that the Greek Church hierarchy burdened Christians with extraordinary tax, and made them purchase, at high rates, the right of a Christian burial as well as other sacraments.
Read more about this topic: Greek Muslims
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“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.”
—F.H. (Francis Herbert)
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“The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”
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“Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
—Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)