WI: The Sultan of Rum coverts to Orthodoxy

What if the Sultan of Rum, may it be Suleyman or his son Kilji Arslan I, converts to Orthodoxy in order to legitimize his rule amongst the populace, and later form a culturally Turkish Orthodox church? (Anatolia will still become Turkish, and Beys/other feudal titles remain Turkish)
 
What if the Sultan of Rum, may it be Suleyman or his son Kilji Arslan I, converts to Orthodoxy in order to legitimize his rule amongst the populace, and later form a culturally Turkish Orthodox church? (Anatolia will still become Turkish, and Beys/other feudal titles remain Turkish)
The nearest Janissary, other officer or close relative frags him 30 seconds later.

You do NOT convert away from Islam. It's totally anathema.
 
The nearest Janissary, other officer or close relative frags him 30 seconds later.

You do NOT convert away from Islam. It's totally anathema.

One reason why a lot of people don't like Islam.

Back to the thread: Should the rulers succesfully convert it would be interesting how they deal with Constantinople and the Islamic middle east. Also when the mongols eventually come it would be wise not to piss the mongols off
 
What if the Sultan of Rum, may it be Suleyman or his son Kilji Arslan I, converts to Orthodoxy in order to legitimize his rule amongst the populace, and later form a culturally Turkish Orthodox church? (Anatolia will still become Turkish, and Beys/other feudal titles remain Turkish)

What populace? The lot of the Greek or Hellenized population fled when the Byzantines evacuated the premises and what remained wouldn't be enough to convince the Turkic nomads to convert.
 
The nearest Janissary, other officer or close relative frags him 30 seconds later.

You do NOT convert away from Islam. It's totally anathema.
I don't know which part of your post is more ignorant, the part where you seem not to understand that the Janissaries were an Ottoman creation, centuries after the time of Kilij Arslan, or the time when you make an absolute statement about one of the world's largest religions. There have been in fact high-profile converts from Islam including Akbar the Great, perhaps the most famous of Mughal Sultans and although the move wasn't especially popular, nor was his head cut off by angry Muslims bearing curvy swords.

Though I have to agree with Cuāuhtemōc here. Anatolia was relatively quickly Turkified, especially in comparison to the later conquests in the Balkans of the Ottoman Turks. I don't see it as being all too likely that a Sultan of Rum would convert to Christianity from Islam. If you wanted a culturally Turkish Orthodox Church, your best chance is probably with a beylik after the collapse of Rum.
 
The nearest Janissary, other officer or close relative frags him 30 seconds later.

You do NOT convert away from Islam. It's totally anathema.

This is true in principle, and there's a minority that does not uphold that as well (on the basis of the "no coercion in faith" verse of the Qur'an). But conversions from Islam are not unheard of, even in Medieval contexts.

EDIT: ninja'd.
 
This can be contrasted to all the examples of Christian crusaders converting to Islam.

Wait a minute...

I said my statement from a modern perspective not from the Crusade era. Beside most of premodern society would rather have you dead than convert to the "enemy" religion it aint just a Christian and Muslim thing.

Dathi said his statement with such certainty and not taking into account that muslims did convert and not get killed in past and present.
 
Though I have to agree with Cuāuhtemōc here. Anatolia was relatively quickly Turkified, especially in comparison to the later conquests in the Balkans of the Ottoman Turks. I don't see it as being all too likely that a Sultan of Rum would convert to Christianity from Islam. If you wanted a culturally Turkish Orthodox Church, your best chance is probably with a beylik after the collapse of Rum.
No it wasn't. By WWI the Ottomans still had an Orthodox population of over ten percent, split between Greeks and Armenians. The conversion and Turkification was gradual, and only completed through multiple rounds of genocide and population exchange. When the Seljuks are around, Anatolia is predominantly Greek.
 
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