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Vendaval -> RE: This is what made me pro-mosque (9/16/2010 1:44:01 AM)
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Fast Reply -
As an example of "bad taste" much closer to home there is the enslavement, forced conversion and genocide of the California Native Americans that was systemtically carried out by the Spanish Catholic Dominicans, Jesuits, and Franciscans in the name of God. There are 21 missions in Alta California and 23 in Baja California. These missions and churches meet the same criteria as is being used to describe a "victory mosque" in this thread.
"California Genocide"
Genocide is a strong word denoting a planned extermination of a racial, political or cultural group. It should not be used lightly. But what happened to the indigenous tribes of California qualifies as genocide, and that history is explored in A Seat at the Drum.
"Then in 1769, a Franciscan missionary named Father Junipero Serra led a Spanish army up from Mexico and reached present-day San Diego. It was he who built the first of 21 missions that would extend up north to San Francisco. When he encountered the Chumash, Fr. Serra failed to recognize a centuries-old religious tradition. "Believe me," he wrote, "when I saw their general behavior, their pleasing ways and engaging manners, my heart was broken to think that they were still deprived of the light of the Holy Gospel." He promptly set out to convert all the Indians he encountered to Christianity.
He also set out to make the native populations slaves to the farms supporting the missions. Spanish soldiers kidnapped Indians by the thousands. They were given Spanish names, dressed in blue uniforms and became farm workers — something they had never done. They also were forced to care for livestock, tanned hides, and produced candles, bricks, tiles, shoes, saddles, soap and other necessities.
If they misbehaved, they were whipped, branded, mutilated or even executed. Hundreds and thousands of Indians — both in the missions and in surrounding areas — died of malaria, smallpox or other new diseases imported by the Spanish for which there was no native immunity.
Beginning in 1775, many of the mission Indians began to revolt. Some 800 Ipai and Tipai Indians burned down the San Diego mission that year. The revolt was brutally put down by the Spanish soldiers, as were all of the revolts.
The years of warfare and mistreatment took their toll. At the Santa Barbara mission alone, more than 4,600 Chumash names fill the burial registry. Indians were put in mass graves near the church, and were denied either traditional or Christian burials."
http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/calif.html
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