Morisco scholars debated whether persecution suffering counts as penance.

Evidence

It was one of the seven holy days of the year, the twenty-fifth day of the month Dhul-qada. A whole company of honored Muslims had gathered in Saragossa, twenty Muslims, among whom were seven learned and renowned scholars [alimex in Ribera’s 1912 transcription], and after the noon prayer they began to discuss our sufferings, and each of them made a speech (arenga). Among the things said, many lamented the immense loss we had suffered, and how small were the good deeds we had done. Another scholar said that all the sufferings we underwent and those that awaited us day by day, would all stand to our credit [i.e., on Judgment Day]. Those present there repudiated what he had said, because the sufferings would not count toward making up for anything missed out from the regular obligations of the Law. If the heart of the matter is missing, and that is the summons to prayer, no good deed would be acceptable [to Allah], and the things we suffer here below are no more than a short rest before the life to come. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 845

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A real theological dispute among crypto-Muslims over whether forced-suffering could substitute for obligatory religious practice — the community rejected the comfort that their own persecution might count as religious merit.
• SEED: Angle: how persecuted communities police their own orthodoxy — refusing the consolation that suffering might count as virtue, insisting instead that abandoned obligations remain obligations.