Hey Tucker, Here’s The Truth About the Ottomans, Israel, and the Treatment of Christians
- Ron Cantor
- 1 hour ago
- 8 min read
[PERSONAL NOTE — many of you know about the brouhaha with Tucker Carlson’s podcast a few weeks ago, where disqualified former Pastor J.D. Hall said some very not nice and untrue things about me, Shelanu TV, and the nation of Israel. I made my own YouTube video and also did an interview with Ruslan KD. But now I want to go a bit deeper into some of the other outrageous things he said. Why? Because 2.7 million people have viewed the video and may believe the lies.]
What surprised me even more than hearing my own name mentioned on a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show was listening to history presented as though it were settled fact. Tucker’s guest, J.D. Hall, made a series of claims about the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Christians — claims specifically designed to make the modern State of Israel look harsh by comparison. The claim is highly misleading when viewed in its historical context, and I want to show you exactly why.
What Was Actually Said
Hall told Carlson plainly: “The Muslim rulers didn’t tax churches during the Ottoman period. They were very kind to Christians... Islamic authorities rebuilt the Church of the Sepulcher three different times over the centuries.” The comparison being drawn was not subtle. Israel, the implication went, treats Christians worse today than the Ottoman Turks once did.[1]
Hall does hold a graduate degree — an M.A. in History — but not in Islamic or Ottoman history specifically. Scholars specializing in Ottoman and Islamic history have challenged these claims.
The Jizya and the Mafia Analogy
Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey publicly challenged the account on her own program, noting that Christians under Ottoman rule paid the jizya — a special, often crushing and discriminatory tax imposed specifically on non-Muslims — and she pointed to the horrors of the 1453 fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman-era Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides as a rather large asterisk on any claim of historic Ottoman kindness.[2]
If the Ottomans were kind to Christians, it was the same kindness a New York dry cleaner might describe from the mafia — protection was available, for a price. Orthodox Christians and other non-Muslims held dhimmi status — tolerated, but explicitly second-class — conditioned entirely on paying that tax. You were not paying for protection from some outside force, but from the Ottomans themselves. The arrangement resembled a protection racket far more than modern notions of religious liberty.
According to Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam scholar at the Hoover Institution from a Coptic background (meaning his family members were Christians under the Ottomans), failure to pay the jizya would have dire consequences: “Not only would they be killed or sold into slavery, but their churches would have, as on countless occasions, been raised to the ground or turned into mosques.”[3] J.D. Hall refers to this treatment as “kindness,” but it’s Israel, which does nothing like this to its Christian or Messianic citizens, that is the true evil.
[Take eight minutes to watch his video]
Islam scholar Robert Spencer added that the Ottomans’ celebrated repairs to the Holy Sepulchre were pragmatic maintenance by a weakening empire seeking to keep Christian subjects loyal, not benevolence — and that earlier Muslim rulers had actually destroyed the same church centuries before.[4]
A Tax Code Named After the Church Itself
What Hall omitted is equally important: Ottoman Jerusalem’s economy depended heavily on Christian pilgrimage revenue. Academic research on Ottoman capitulations shows that taxes tied to pilgrim access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were, at times, “the most important source of revenue for the city’s treasury” — exceeding even standard land taxes.[5] Ibrihim claims “the [Church of the] Holy Sepulchre was a major source of revenue for the Muslim authorities. Thousands of pilgrims from all over Europe had to pay top dollar to enter it.”[6]
Ottoman law even had a dedicated legal code for this exact purpose: the Kanunname-i Kumame, or “Law Code of the Holy Sepulchre,” which laid out precise taxes, called resm-i Kumame, charged to pilgrims based on where they came from. Hall’s statement relies on an exceedingly narrow definition of “taxing churches.” While the church buildings themselves were generally not taxed as ordinary property, the Ottoman government maintained a legal code specifically governing taxes collected from pilgrims visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The motive was not hidden: Ottoman authorities kept the church accessible to competing Christian factions specifically “to generate as much profit as possible.”[7]
What Israel Actually Did — and Didn’t Do
Hall’s line that “Israel started just a few years ago” taxing churches sounds sharp, but it doesn’t hold up once you look at what actually happened. He’s talking about a 2018 decision by the Jerusalem municipality to collect property taxes on some church-owned commercial buildings. That episode is now eight years behind us, and even then, it never touched houses of worship. The dispute was over things like hotels, banquet halls, office buildings, and other income‑producing properties the churches owned—not sanctuaries, not chapels, not the places where people gather to pray. Within days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the plan on hold for further review, and the whole fight stayed inside Jerusalem’s city limits. It was never a nationwide move to start “taxing churches” the way Hall suggests. Set alongside the Ottomans’ explicit tax code built around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the claim that Israel is following their example is not just off; it turns reality upside down.[8]
Against that backdrop, Hall’s comparison runs in the opposite direction. The Ottoman Empire maintained an entire legal code taxing pilgrims to a specific church by name. Modern Israel exempts churches from taxes.
The Comparison Hall Never Makes
Israel does maintain one narrow law of its own, dating to 1977, against proselytizing by way of material bribery — a law that has nothing to do with preaching, evangelism, or free speech, and everything to do with financial inducement. A related provision also restricts seeking to convert a minor without parental consent. Those are the principal legal restrictions..[9]
Compare that to the Islamic world Hall was so eager to defend. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, and many other nations, converting a Muslim to another faith — or converting away from Islam yourself — can carry a legal death sentence, not a theoretical one. At least 700 million people live under some version of this restriction today.[10]
So why the outrage at Israel, and the sympathy for the Islamic world? Modern Israel is by no means perfect. But set beside her neighbors, the picture is a democracy alongside authoritarian regimes, freedom of speech beside its systematic denial. A fair-minded critic could find plenty to genuinely criticize in Israel without needing to invent grievances or ignore atrocities happening next door.
Hall’s willingness to bend history in order to turn Christian audiences against the Jewish state is not a harmless historical footnote. It is exactly the kind of thing that must be confronted — old contempt, dressed in new and unexpected clothing, finding a home wherever an audience is willing to receive it.
Historical revisionism isn’t just an academic problem; it can cause devastating harm, especially when it is weaponized through tweets and podcasts to demonize an entire people. When we clean up the story of the Ottoman Empire and turn it into a feel‑good tale of tolerance, then paint modern Israel as uniquely cruel, we’re not telling the truth about either one. Israel has its flaws, and honest friends of Israel can and should point them out. But our criticisms have to be anchored in reality, not in myths that happen to fit our politics.
The apostle Paul warned Gentile believers not to grow arrogant toward Israel (Romans 11:17–22). He loved his own people so deeply that he could write, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Messiah for the sake of my brothers” (Romans 9:3). He carried this stubborn hope that after the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25–26).
That’s why the idea that Israel is somehow “Christ‑hating” rings so hollow to me. More Jewish people believe in Jesus today than at any time since the first century. In Israel alone, more than 30,000 Jewish believers worship Yeshua, and hundreds of thousands of Messianic Jews and other Jewish believers are scattered around the world.[11] God has not walked away from His covenant people. He is still, quietly and persistently, drawing them to His Son.
I’ve often said that Jesus is not coming back for an antisemitic bride. He is coming for a Church that loves what He loves, that grieves over what grieves His heart, and that longs to provoke Israel to jealousy through the mercy it has received (Romans 11:11). If we are going to speak about Israel—historically, politically, or theologically—we owe it to our Jewish neighbors, and to the Lord Himself, to tell the truth.
[1]J.D. Hall, interviewed on The Tucker Carlson Show, June 2026; https://youtu.be/KN36yhie2_c. Hall stated: “The Muslim rulers didn’t tax churches during the Ottoman period. They were very kind to Christians... Islamic authorities rebuilt the Church of the Sepulcher 3 different times over the centuries.”
[2]Allie Beth Stuckey, “Allie Beth Stuckey Calls Out Dangerous Islam Myth Pushed on Tucker Carlson’s Podcast,” Relatable, Blaze Media, June 2026, https://www.theblaze.com/shows/relatable/allie-beth-stuckey-dangerous-islam-myth-carlson-podcast.
[3] Raymond Ibrahim. “Here’s How Muslims Were ‘Very Kind’ to Christians – Full Historical Debunk” Raymond Ibrahim, YouTube video, 1:19, https://youtu.be/gJQpKbgVgh8.
[4]Robert Spencer, “Robert Spencer Destroys Tucker Carlson’s Attempt to Whitewash Islam’s Treatment of Christians” (exclusive interview), RAIR Foundation, July 2026, https://rairfoundation.substack.com/p/robert-spencer-destroys-tucker-carlsons.
[5]Radu Dipratu, “Visiting the Noble Jerusalem: Catholic Pilgrims in the Ottoman Capitulations of the Seventeenth Century,” Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes LVI, no. 1–4 (2018): 137–163, at p. 154. Dipratu notes that pilgrimage-related taxes were, at times, the most important source of revenue for Jerusalem’s treasury under Ottoman rule.
[6] Ibriam, “Here’s How Muslimes Were “Very Kind’ to Christians.”
[7]Dipratu, “Visiting the Noble Jerusalem,” pp. 153–154. Ottoman law included a dedicated legal code for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Kanunname-i Kumame, specifying the resm-i Kumame tax levied on pilgrims according to their place of origin, and Ottoman authorities kept the church accessible to competing Christian groups “to generate as much profit as possible.”
[8]Rory Jones, “Jerusalem’s Church of Holy Sepulchre Closed Indefinitely in Protest of Israeli Bill, City Tax Policy,” Haaretz, February 25, 2018; “Israel Suspends Taxation Legislation for Jerusalem’s Churches,” Al Jazeera, February 27, 2018. The 2018 measure, targeting an estimated 650 million shekels in unpaid municipal tax (arnona) on commercial church-owned properties, explicitly exempted houses of worship and was suspended within days by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pending committee review.
[9]Israeli Penal Law Amendment (Prohibition of Enticement to Change Religion), 5738-1977, criminalizes offering or promising material benefit to induce religious conversion; it does not restrict preaching, evangelism, or religious speech generally, and a related provision separately prohibits proselytizing directed at minors without parental consent.
[10]Figures compiled from UN Population Fund (2025) and U.S. country population estimates for nations with codified apostasy laws, criminalized proselytizing to Muslims, or both, including Pakistan (~241 million), Iran (~92 million), Egypt (~119 million), Sudan (~52 million), Yemen (~42 million), Afghanistan (~41 million), Algeria (~48 million), Morocco (~39 million), Saudi Arabia (~32 million), Malaysia (~34 million), Somalia (~20 million), UAE (~12 million), Mauritania (~5 million), Qatar (~3 million), and Brunei (~0.45 million), among others; see also “How 1 in 4 Countries Restrict Religious Conversion,” Christianity Today, September 2023, and “Analysis: What to Know About Apostasy Laws Worldwide,” Baptist Press, 2020.
