Christopher Hitchens commonly quotes American Physicist Steven Weinberg stating, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." This has been very evident throughout history. I came across a very specific example in a history lecture the other day. It revolved around the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
Mehmed II, "the Conqueror", was a sultan in the Ottoman Turkish empire. In the name of Islam he conquered the capital of the Christian empire in 1453. This effectively brought and end to the Byzantine Empire (Kritovoulos).
Kritovoulos, a Greek, describes in great detail the bloodshed and violence involved in the battle for Constantinople. Here is his account of Mehmed's reaction to the siege:
"After this the Sultan entered the City and looked about to see its great size, its situation, its grandeur and beauty, its teeming population, its loveliness, and the costliness of its churches and public buildings and of the private houses and community houses and those of the officials . .
When he saw what a large number had been killed, and the ruin of the buildings, and the wholesale ruin and destruction of the City, he was filled with compassion and repented not a little at the destruction and plundering. Tears fell from his eyes as he groaned deeply and passionately: 'What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction!'" (Kritovoulos)
Kritovoulos. History of Mehmed the Conqueror. Trans. Charles T. Riggs. Princeton University Press, 1954.
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