WE ARE STILL EVOLVING

Recently, at a luncheon with some close friends, our cheerful conversation took a wrong turn and some rather staunch Christians began to talk about the atrocities of Muslim fundamentalists. Torture, stonings, mutilations and beheadings were brought up, just before my favourite dessert, Kuih Talam was brought in.

I tried with a little timid interruption to mention that religious zealots, and armies in times of war, were equally brutal, if not more so. There were a few loud dissenters. I mentioned the War of the Roses and Joan of Arc and treatment of bonded labourers and slaves who were given the task of building the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids, in quick succession. One person at the table looked at me like he could be agreeing but the rest grew even more vociferous.

I tried to recollect a few more facts on torture and terror used for displaying and maintaining power, horror that men could inflict on fellow humans, but little support came my way.

A few days later in one of my readings I came across some of the ancient atrocities that were committed.

I guess we are still evolving and the sooner the better. Compassion is what is lacking these days.

From the “Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford.

“Genghis Khan’s army killed their captives as ‘matter of policy’. The Mongols did not torture, mutilate, or maim. But other contemporary rulers used the simple and barbaric tactic of instilling terror and horror into people through public torture or gruesome mutilation. In a battle of August 1228 battle with Jalal al-Din, the son of the sultan, four hundred Mongol prisoners fell into enemy hands….The victors took the Mongol warriors to nearby Isfahan, tied them behind horses, and dragged them through the streets of the city to entertain the city’s residents.

“All the Mongol prisoners were thus killed as public sport and then fed to dogs…In another case where a Mongol army lost a battle, the Persian victors killed the captives by driving nails into their heads, the seat of their souls according to Mongol belief. This episode was echoed a century later in 1305, when the sultan of Delhi turned the deaths of other Mongol prisoners into public entertainment by having them crushed by elephants.

“Civilized rulers and religious leaders from China to Europe depended upon these gruesome displays to control people through fear and discouraged potential enemies through horror.

“When the Byzantine Christian emperor Basil defeated the Bulgarians in 1014, he had fifteen thousand Bulgarian war captives blinded. He left one man out of each hundred with one eye in order that he might lead the other ninety-nine homeward and thereby spread the terror.

“When the Christian Crusaders took cities such as Antioch in 1098 and Jerusalem in 1099, they slaughtered the Jews and Muslims without regard for age or gender, but merely because of their religion.

“Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who ranks as one of Germany’s greatest historical and cultural heroes, best exemplified the use of terror in the West. When he tried to conquer the Lombard city of Cremona in the north of modern Italy in 1160, he instituted an escalating series of violent acts of terror. His men beheaded their prisoners and played with the heads outside the city walls, kicking them like balls. The defenders of Cremona then brought out their German prisoners on the city walls and pulled their limbs off in front of their comrades. The Germans then gathered captive children and strapped them into their catapults. which were normally used to batter down walls and break through gates. With the power of these great siege machines, they hurled the living children at the city walls.”

Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford – from Amazon.com