The year was 1860, and the world was, as usual, in upheaval. In
China, the Second Opium War was coming to an end. America was
preparing itself for major surgery, in the form of the Civil
War, that would finally cure the young nation of its congenital
defect of slavery. And in the heart of the Middle East, in a
province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire that would later become
modern-day Syria, an unholy concoction was brewing. That’s
right: politics was mixing with religion. Christians and Muslims
had lived side-by-side in the holy land for over a thousand
years. Muslim armies had conquered modern-day Syria, Lebanon,
Israel, and Egypt in the middle of the seventh century, and
while the Muslims maintained full political authority,
Christians and Jews were allowed to freely practice their
religion. The notion that non-Muslims were forced to convert at
the point of a sword is laughable – in Egypt, for instance, it
is estimated that Muslims made up only half of the population in
the year 1200 – five hundred years lat