[Buddha-l] Religious Persecution [was: NYTimes.com: Let UsPrayforWealth]

[Dan Lusthaus]

Franz,

I also meant to comment on your last sentence.

>Like the Muranos, I recall they hung
> around for centuries.)

I'm guessing you mean the Marranos. Hardly the model one would go to for an
argument about letting people privately practice their religion. Marrano is
an old Spanish word for "pig" -- it is a derogatory term for forced converts
who were suspected of secretly still practicing Judaism behind closed doors
while to all outside appearances now being good Iberian Catholics.

The less derogatory term is Conversos (Converts).

Suspected Conversos could and would be put to death.

Conversos continued in hiding in Spain and Portugal for centuries, some
making it to Amsterdam (one of the few places in Europe where Jews were
allowed to live in the 16th-17th c) and returning to Judaism. After many
centuries Converso families would continue to transmit "family" rituals, but
later generations had no idea what their significance was, nor that they
were originally Jewish. Anthropologists have discovered such "family"
rituals in Mexico and other Latin American countries, among people who had
no idea why their family ate this dish on that holiday, or did this or that.

Rumors held that the late Generalissimo Franco came from a Marrano family.

For more on Marranos/Conversos:

http://www.haruth.com/JewsMarranos.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Marranos.html

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/marranos.html

http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/Secret.html

http://www.kulanu.org/brazil/returns.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrano

So what Japan did was nothing unusual for the times -- exact mirror image of
what the Iberian Catholics did -- except the Spanish and Portugese Catholics
DID do this for religious reasons, and continued to persecute the converted,
while the Japanese motive was purely political. And, the Jews had been
living there -- and flourishing -- for many centuries before the Catholics
arrived. Richard hadn't offered them Utah yet.

Dan