Persecution strengthened rather than extinguished Morisco cultural resistance

Evidence

As for the converts themselves, there were mixed motives present too. Many Moriscos were attached to aspects of the material and intellectual culture of the Christian majority. What they wanted was to participate in society on an equal footing. But others clung resolutely to their distinctive heritage. What they wanted was to be left alone. Contradictory processes were at work. With the passage of time, the minority culture, subjected as it was to increasing persecution, became weaker, but then as time passed, many Moriscos, with understandable human stubbornness, became ever more determined to resist the erosion of their traditions. Over the time span that we are studying, Islam did not ever show signs of quietly fading away. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 533

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the One Square Inch of Silence finding that pressure against a thing can increase attachment — and the general principle behind ‘blood of the martyrs’ resistance dynamics.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dual-process observation — that assimilation and resistance pull toward opposite outcomes simultaneously, with persecution paradoxically hardening the identity it targets — is a genuinely subtle model of how minority cultures respond to pressure over decades.