152 Jesus, Prophet of Islam
Indeed it was at this stage in the evolution of European Christi
anity -when the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church was
being threatened not only by the Byzantine Church to the East, but
also by the rapidly expanding Muslim Empire to the South; and
now that its doctrines and practices were obviously more deeply
rooted in the culture and philosophies of Europe than in the way
of life and teachings of Jesus and his followers from among the
twelve tribes of the Tribe of Israel; and when almost inexplicably
Unitarian Christians kept on surfacing and appearing throughout
Europe and especially in France -that the Roman Catholic Church
established the Mediaeval Inquisition, in the early 13th century AD,
in order to put its house in order by tirelessly eliminating corrup
tion from among its priesthood, and by relentlessly rooting out
'heretics' from among its congregations, in a demonstration of such
heartless 'compassion' and ruthless 'mercy' that has probably never
been equalled since.
Itis perhaps not surprising that the Mediaeval Inquisition con
centrated more on the congregations than on the priesthood in its
efforts to investigate and eliminate any traces of 'deviation' from
the now firmly, albeit erroneously,establisheddoctrines of the Trini
tarian Church. The exact record of how many people were mur
dered in the name of Jesus by this notorious institution of mediae
val gangsters is not known, but certainly a great number suffered
and perished at their hands, especially after the Mediaeval Inqui
sition had developed both its techniques of torture and its tortu
ous polemics in its extended role as the Spanish Inquisition - which
was used as part of the elaborate and brutal mechanism whereby
all Jews, Unitarian Christians and Muslims living in the Iberian
peninsula were systematically hunted down and either killed or
forced to flee for their lives during the period between the 13th
and 16th centuries AD.
Having been tested and perfected in Europe, the Trinitarian In
quisition was then exported to the 'New World', where hundreds
of thousands of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas and
the West Indies were either wiped out or enslaved for the greater
glory of God, and lots of gold.
This extreme expression of tyranny and greed, which so obvi
ously contradicted the example of compassion and generosity
which had been demonstrated by Jesus, was feared but not accepted
by many of Europe's Trinitarian Christians, especially once most
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