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

[curt]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> 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.
>
>   

I think this understates the difference between the two cases in 
question. The Japanese were defending their nation against foreign 
aggression in the form of Christian Missionaries. There was nothing 
secret or even all that coy about the alliance between missionaries and 
European colonialism. But the Jews in Spain were not the advance men for 
would be foreign conquerors.

The Japanese gave explicitly political reasons for they did - and those 
reasons mirrored the reality of the situation. The Spanish Christians 
gave explicitly religious reasons for what they did - and those reasons 
mirrored the systematic and systemic violent intolerance that had 
characterized Christianity since the year 325.

Curt Steinmetz