Non-Chalcedonian Christians initially greeted Muslim rule as divine deliverance

Evidence

Yet to other Christians the situation did not look so bleak. If the Melkite church (i.e., the Duophysite “orthodox” church now under Muslim dominion) saw its power and prestige diminished by the Arab conquests, adherents of rival churches on the other hand seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. No longer subjected to pressure (and intermittent persecution) from Constantinople, they were granted broader religious freedoms by their new Muslim rulers. Sebeos, an Armenian Monophysite, wrote in 661 that Muhammad was learned in the law of Moses, taught the knowledge of God of Abraham to Arabs, who “abandoning the reverence of vain things, … turned toward the living God, who had appeared to their father Abraham.” God granted to Arabs the lands he had promised to Abraham, and gave them victory over the impious Byzantines. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 309 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Sophronios looks forward to the imminent destruction of the Saracens, whose role in the divine scheme of history he limits to a brief cameo appearance as divine chastisement, an unpleasant but necessary interlude in the reign of the Christian Roman empire. Over the next several years, the Muslim invaders showed no signs of going away. Sophronios himself had to surrender Jerusalem to the caliph ‘Umar; in the last of his sermons to come down to us, he bewails the desolation wreaked by the Saracens and predicted by the prophets; the Saracens, he complains, boast that they are subduing the whole world. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 298 (#complicates, via linked claim)

For the Muslim, this was the rational, normal order of things. God had rewarded his faithful with dominion over the richest lands of the earth. He had shown Islam’s superiority to Christianity (and Judaism) twice: first through the Koran, then by making Jews and Christians submit, as dhimmi, to the Muslim yoke. Their weakness and submission were appropriate to their inferior, secondary status in the eyes of God. More and more of them, moreover, were seeing the light and converting to Islam. There was still, of course, the weakened but still important Christian power of Rûm (Rome), with its capital, Constantinople, that resisted repeated Muslim attacks. Muslims prayed to have it delivered to Islam, and some day it would be. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 279 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Syrian Jacobites welcomed Muslim conquest as deliverance from Byzantine persecution; Christians expected a brief divine chastisement that instead became permanent Muslim rule — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 298; Non-Orthodox Christians welcomed Muslim conquest as liberation from Byzantine persecution — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 309 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Non-Orthodox Christians welcomed Muslim conquest as liberation from Byzantine persecution #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 309
• Christians expected a brief divine chastisement that instead became permanent Muslim rule #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 298
• Early Muslims read Christian and Jewish submission as divine sanction of Islam’s superiority. #complicates (0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 279
• Christians constituted Islam as a Christian heresy, not a foreign religion #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1020
• Some medieval Christians saw Muslims as near-conversion-ready believers close to salvation #complicates (0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1069
• Medieval Christians recognized Islam as morally demanding, not merely permissive #complicates (0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1128
• Admiration for Muslim civilization intensified Christian theological opposition to Islam #complicates (0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 46