Labeling Muslim leaders as collaborators ignores that no realistic alternative existed

Evidence

With the incomplete evidence available now, it would be impossible to attempt any evaluation of the motives of those who accepted to serve the Castilian authorities in the way that el Fisteli and many other men of substance in the community did. To describe him, and Yuce Banegas, Ali Sarmiento, Pedro de Granada, and so many others as “collaborators” (as I have myself done above) or as “collaborationists” with the Castilians, is superficially accurate enough. How should we correctly describe men who, whether in a concerted way or as individual opportunists (how are we to tell?), adopted a policy to which there was no realistic alternative either in 1501 or later? — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 232

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Grapples with the ethics of historical judgment when the actors had no viable alternative — a genuinely knotty historiographical and moral question about whether ‘collaboration’ is even a meaningful category when resistance was impossible.