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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

My country has quite a few castles which were destroyed by Turks. It is written on welcoming billboards along with other important dates. Some multiple times. Some castles were build specifically to defend against turks and families who ruled them became "famous Turk killers".

So you know, Islam conquering parts of Europe happened.

And Vikings did attacked north of Europe and I think they ruled Russia basically at one point.

So I still don't know whether there are details that makes their meeting impossible or whether you just chalked away possibility of Turks and Islam attacking Europe in the past impossible without studying it.

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No one doubts contact occurred. But articles like the original are often interpreted to mean 'see a thousand years ago Islam was peaceful, everything was great then white people screwed it up.' Whether that interpretation is warranted is of course dependent on how you feel about where it was published- if the original article was just in some journal somewhere no one would care. But because it was turned into a story by the BBC, it is immediately cast in the light of current politics regarding Islam.

The parent says that there was contact and used the word "conquered" and "slave trade".

Downvoting it for political reasons that have zero to do with history being discussed, because some unrelated discussions about tolerance something is textbook suppressing of historical truth for political reasons.

Agreed.

There is nothing controversial/political about that.

They were neighbours because they conquered Sicily and Spain

"Cultural exchange" in past happened mostly thanks to slave trade. Teachers were mostly foreign slaves, who converted young elite to their culture. For example Greek culture spread in city of Rome mainly by this.

Equating Turks (not sure if you mean that or Ottomans?) conquering armies with "Islam conquering parts of Europe" (Greece?, Spain?) seems likely to be problematic; the latter would suggest willful adoption en masse of Islamic religion, political structure, warring.

Did the conquerors instigate Sharia, did they do the Mohammedean standard "pay jizya, convert, or die" offer to the populous? Did the conquered people convert and then seek to forcibly "convert" others?

Yes they did. That's how we've got Bosnians (and other Serbian-language people of Muslim Nationality), and Albanians, and there's a subset of Bulgarians too as far as I remember.

They tried to convert people everywhere, there was resistance. Not in the ISIS style, I have to admit. But by hindering Christians and giving preferences to Muslim converts.

Do you realize about 100 years ago, the Ottomans genocided a few million Christians in Greece and Armenia?

Boys taken to serve in their army all had to convert. Or die.

You think they were spreading atheism or christianity? Of course not, they pushed for their own religion.

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