Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Reclamation

The Moorish New World was, first and foremost, Christian. During the Age of Exploration, the Five Families actively encouraged Isidoran missionary efforts, for entirely cynical reasons: it gave the Christians something to do besides revolt, and New World dhimmitude made it much easier to systematically exploit its staggering wealth. Islamization only came during the colonial era, when it was profitable to be above Christians.

Relations didn't significantly sour until the Liturgical War, which Umayyad Seville handled with an infamously heavy hand, but once they were soured they stayed soured. Come the Mexican Revolt, there was (of necessity) a staggering amount of anti-Muslim violence - and when the dust settled, the Moorish Empire was gone. And in its place, in the New World, was the G.P. of Mexico: a Christian government with a significant, and very diverse, Muslim minority.

Reclamation in theory and ideology

By the time Teresa Maria ascended to the throne, Mexico was suffering serious battle fatigue. Its economy was a mess, and an entire generation had never known peace. And (given that the First Mahdist War had only just died down in the Old World, and Cuba was still strong in the Caribbean), "peace" would be nothing but a chance to reload unless something serious was done to either placate the Muslims or permanently dispose of them.

That "something serious" turned out to be the policy now known as "Reclamation."

Reclamation in practice

Reclamation is less of a conversion effort than a cultural engineering campaign.

1. Destroying Islamic space: Reclamation's most heavy-handed component is the effort to systematically write Islam out of the G.P.'s geography and psychogeography.
  • At the most basic level, Islam receives no official state support. Mosque maintenance must be privately supported; every time Medina Mexico has an earthquake, the number of zawiyas decreases, because the money to repair them all simply isn't there.
  • Muslim spaces are openly but unofficially lower-priority. When mosques or other specifically Muslim buildings are constructed, urban governments work to rule; an imam has to jump through hoops that nobody else does.
  • Several of the largest were seized under eminent domain, and either demolished or remodeled. Others were bought under very low-interest mortgages, which legally transferred ownership of the mosques to Mexico without a large transfer of wealth that could be used for a remotely equivalent replacement.
2. Asserting Christian heritage: Emphasizing Christianity, specifically Catholic (and more specifically Roman Catholic) Christianity, as the original and authentic faith of the modern New World.
  • The historiography of the Liturgical War has been hugely important for the Reclamation; the international Sodalite presence is emphasized to reinforce the European (as opposed to Maghrebi) nature of Mexico. (Not for nothing was Mexico's first great cathedral dedicated to the Martyrs of Mexico.)
  • For the same reason, Mexican Catholicism is specifically Roman: it follows the custom of Christian Europe, not Muslim Spain.
  • Mexican Sevillan has gone through significant reforms since the Revolt; most of them are politically motivated. Written Mexican Sevillan has been significantly conformed to (Old World) literary Sevillan, and certain vocabularies have been de-Arabized, replaced with Ibero-Romance neologisms or aboriginal (usually Na'atl) equivalents.

Reclamation outside the G.P. of Mexico

Reclamation has been quite successful in Christianizing Mexico. It's only had one drawback: a fair part of the world views it as abhorrent.
  • Not surprisingly, the UCNA (which got a big demographic boost from the early Reclamation) has always voiced its opposition to Reclamation (although never enough to do anything about it officially.) A fair number of Mexican mosques are deeply dependent on Andalusian money to stay operating.
  • Axamalla, while it only has a small Muslim minority, is quite happy to object to Reclamation, in part because tarring Mexico as an authoritarian despotism and playing up their plebeian freedom is a national pastime. (Absent any discussion of this, of course, is the fact that they were complicit in the anti-Muslim violence, and that they'd probably have been okay with Reclamation if only the Grand Prince [who?] had guaranteed them the protection the Prussian Clique demanded.)
  • The Moorish diaspora is awesomely anti-Reclamation, in no small part because they're hostile to what they see as Christian colonialism in general. The Spanish Crown provoked the Third Mahdist War by trying to implement a policy similar to Reclamation.
  • Even France has been known to make Reclamation an issue, albeit only when they want a pretext to talk trash. At present, the Grand Prince of Mexico has a fair bit of support from the Guisards (being acclaimed as the Guise pretender, albeit making no claims himself), and the systemic religious discrimination smacks a little too much of the très-chretiennisme that Bourguignon France is still living down.

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