Non-Orthodox Christians welcomed Muslim conquest as liberation from Byzantine persecution

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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern in Tolan’s book and to the book’s guiding theme that religious minorities responded to Islamic rule differently based on their prior position under Orthodoxy.