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As we draw nearer the period of decadence in Islam we find complaints being raised about the treatment of Christians and Jews. In the first few centuries restrictions such as the interdiction against the ringing of church bells or the building of churches higher than the mosque, etc. were temporary occurrences under narrow-minded rulers such as 'Umar Ii or the 'Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil, a "repulsive bigot, who knew well how to reconcile a wine-bibbing drunkard's life, immoderate sensuality and the encouraging of obscene literature with dogmatic orthodoxy". As proselytism and religious hatred began to emerge in Islam, the cause of oppression was mostly to be found in acts of violence by minor governors who, on account of the weakness of the central government, were not punished for their crimes. In connection with this, Becker's statement "that Christian influence was the first to call forth opposition against Christianity" is interesting. Becker is of the opinion that intolerance towards believers of other religions had never been so great in the Christian world as at that time, and that Christianity taught this attitude to Islam. This opinion is shared by the outstanding Islamic scholar Leone Caetani who wrote: "In the initial period the Arabs were not fanatical, but associated in an almost brotherly manner with their Christian Semitic cousins; but, however, after these had rapidly become Muslims too, they brought into the new religion that implacability, that blind hostility against the Byzantine faith in which they had previously left Eastern Christianity to languish."
(163:1)
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