@farmerman,
Just to set the record straight, the Protestants gleefully slaughtered the aboriginal inhabitants of land they colonized--the principle example being the English in their colonies. So did the Dutch and the Swedes, although the former were more interested in making money, and the latter just had that tiny colony on the east coast of North America which is now called Delaware.
Modern scholars estimate that 40,000 to 50,000 people (mostly women, who were mostly elderly) were executed as witches in the 16th and 17th centuries.
No one knows who many Africans were slaughtered by the European colonists, but modern scholars estimate that from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 were killed in the Belgian Congo, alone. In all the African colonies, such atrocities were usually justified by alleging the victims to have been savage pagans. When Columbus came back from his first voyage, he asked Queen Isabella of Castilla y Léon for permission to enslave the "Indians" (Arawak, specifically the Taíno). She refused him, categorically forbidding him to do so. As far as she was concerned, if they converted, the were christians and could not therefore be enslaved (although I doubt if the Taíno would have understood a distinction between peonage and slavery); if they did not convert, they were limbs of Satan and must be extirpated. When Chris returned to the Caribbean, he immediately enslaved the Taíno, which the Spaniards in the islands had no problem with. Columbus returned from that voyage, fitted out his third expedition, and departed. It was only after he had sailed that Isabella learned that he had instituted slavery in the new colonies. Isabella was not someone you wanted to piss off. She had accomplished the
reconquista in large measure, by losing her temper and charging the Muslim forces (who invariably outnumbered the Spaniards), leading her knights and men at arms to attack with fanatical ferocity. When she learned that Chris had blatantly disobeyed her, she ordered his execution on his return. Fortunately for Chris, Ferdinand II, her hubby, was present, and convinced her to impose a huge fine. Chris got back, was run through a quick trial, and thrown into prison because he couldn't pay the fine. Eventually, well-wishers came up with the money to pay the fine, and he was released. He made one more voyage in 1502, but he was a broken man by then.
There was a Dominican friar named Bartolomé de las Casas who became disillusioned with the abuse of the aboriginals. He freed those
indios who had been his slaves, and lobbied through the Dominicans for these abuses to be suppressed. Eventually, King Carlos, the loony HRE Charles V, established the Council of the Indies (1524, 1525?) who supervised and administered the royal authority in the New World and the Philippines. Modern scholars estimate that 8,000,000 aboriginal people died during the Spanish conquest--although most of the probably died of disease.
But the conservative/reactionary whackjobs ignore the slaughters carried out by christians because they have an anti-Muslim agenda. At most, they will just say that those events are history, old news--if they are willing to admit these things at all. But slaughter of others by Christians at some magical point after the beginning of the 20th century--the slaughter has continued.That includes denying the slaughter of nominal Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, when more that 8000 Bosnians, mostly unarmed men and boys, were gunned down by Serbs.
Inconvenient truth. Enough Muslims had been slaughtered by the end of the last century that one can understand why Muslim whack jobs are eager to kill christians. As far as many Arabs are concerned, the crusades never ended.
