Killing at god's command: Niketas Byzantios' polemic against Islam and the Christian tradition of divinely sanctioned murder

Abstract

My article has two objectives: I discuss aspects of the Byzantine debate about the principles on which a Christian value system should be based and I show how this debate was mirrored in Byzantine polemics against Islam. My starting point is a ninth‐century controversy between the Byzantine philosopher Niketas Byzantios (fl. c. 850) and an anonymous Muslim author. The Muslim author justified the concept of holy war by arguing that murder can be either licit or illicit, depending on...