True Inquisition

What do the fate of Jews and Muslims (Moors in particular) in the late 15th century and the Spanish Inquisition have in common? That's a question this short post will try to answer

Most people's knowledge about Christianity's violent past starts and ends with the Crusades, a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. What's become less widely known or discussed is Christianity's centuries-long opposition against Jews, or the fact that the Spanish Inquisition was much more than the state approved prosecution of witches. Medieval Inquisition, as well as the Spanish Inquisition were all part of what's in the wider Catholic Inquisition, and had the aim to to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in Christian kingdoms and empires.

With the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, the whole ordeal gained a racial dimension, as it led to the mass expulsions of Moors, next to other Muslims and Jews, from Spain. In total, between 3,000 and 5,000 people, who were only guilty of having another faith, were executed and hundreds of thousand more were interrogated and tortured, at least until they converted to Catholicism. And even then some were executed. The cover-story for this mass persecution was the witch-hunt, but in fact it was an egregious act of genocide, just one more to add to Europe's troubled history, but one that's almost never discussed as such.

Since the Spanish and Portuguese were the first to engage in the trans Atlantic slave trade, there are a lot of links and associations between it, Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Inquisition. It's safe to say that the genocidal origins of the Spanish Inquisition, the aim to reserve the territory of the Iberian Peninsula has left traces of white supremacist convictions that still survive to this day and have shaped the interactions between black Africans and white slave-holders for centuries. The idea that people are worth less according to the darkness of their skin is founded in this period of European history and has intimate ties to its predominant religion.

I had very little time to write a post today, so forgive me for not elaborating much; the idea I wanted to convey is that history is a complicated thing, and that everything in it is connected to the point that lines can be drawn from religion to witchcraft to racism and slave-trade. It's also to show that some of those lines are purposefully hidden in order to further certain established beliefs necessary to maintain support for a status quo that's been around for centuries. So please watch the below linked video in which one of my favorite reggae artists, Mutabaruka, shares his unique perspective on this subject.

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