re: The Mongols knew how to deal with Islam

quote:

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The New Testament teaches "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (the separation of faith and law).

The Islamic holy books do not allow for separation of faith and law. They are one and the same. Islam is more than just a religion... it's a cultural, religious, and political system.

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The first quotation does not imply the separation of faith and law. It merely says that if you live under a non-Christian Caesar, you should follow his laws. It may imply, further, that Christians should not handle money, because money has Caesar's face stamped on it (they should rely on charity, which the early Christians did).

But what happens when Caesar is a Christian? The Christian scriptures give no guidance here, nor do they say that laws shouldn't be "Christian laws".

Again, this scripture was written during a time when Christians were a minority in the empire, and viewed--like the Jews, since they were a sect of Judaism--with suspicion and occasionally outright hostility.

Certainly, the first generation of Church fathers who lived under the empire didn't interpret that scripture as asserting a "separation of faith and law," and neither did anyone else until--surprise--the rise of calls for the separation of religion and politics during the Enlightenment.

I agree with the second part, though. And we can again make sense of why if we understand the context in which the Muslim holy books were written.