On June 22, 2026, self-described Christian theologian JD Hall told Tucker Carlson that Muslims under the Ottoman Empire treated Christians better than Israel treats them today. He also claimed that Christian holy sites have deteriorated under Jewish rule.

None of that is true.

Let’s start with what life was actually like for Christians under Ottoman Muslim rule.

What Life Was Actually Like for Christians Under Ottoman Rule 

For centuries, the Ottoman Empire treated Christians as dhimmis — legally protected, but explicitly second-class subjects under Islamic law. Christians paid special jizya taxes that Muslims did not. They faced restrictions on where they could worship, how they could dress, what they could build, and how they could participate in public life. They could not freely build or repair churches, could not testify against Muslims on equal terms in court, could not openly proselytize, and were often barred from carrying arms or holding positions of power.

Then there was the devshirme, or “blood tax.” Ottoman authorities systematically seized Christian boys from their families, converted them to Islam, and trained them as soldiers and administrators. This was state-sponsored child abduction and forced assimilation.

The Empire Ended in Christian Genocide 

Things became far worse in the empire’s final years.

The late Ottoman period witnessed some of the worst anti-Christian atrocities of the modern era:

• The Armenian Genocide claimed approximately 1.5 million lives.
• Hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians were massacred or deported in what became known as the Sayfo genocide.
• Hundreds of thousands of Greek Christians were killed, expelled, or driven from their ancestral homes.

Christian communities endured death marches, forced conversions, mass confiscation of property, ethnic cleansing, and systematic sexual violence.

Rape Was Used as a Weapon 

Women and girls were frequently subjected to rape, forced marriage, sexual slavery, and coerced conversion. In many cases, sexual violence was used deliberately to terrorize Christian populations, erase their identities, and prevent the continuation of their communities.

This is the regime JD Hall is holding up as a model of Christian treatment.

Israel: The Middle East’s Christian Success Story 

Now compare that to Israel.

Israel grants its Christian citizens full legal equality, voting rights, representation in government, freedom of worship, and protections under the law. Christian schools operate freely. Churches own property. Pilgrims arrive from around the world. While Christian communities across much of the Middle East have collapsed or fled under Islamist pressure, Israel is the one country in the region where the indigenous Christian population has steadily grown.

In 1949, Israel’s Christian population stood at roughly 34,000. Today it is approximately 181,000 — an increase of more than 400 percent.

Israel’s commitment to religious freedom is embedded in the country’s Declaration of Independence and reinforced by the Protection of Holy Sites Law, enacted after the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.

Did Christian Holy Sites Decline Under Jewish Rule? 

Which brings us to Hall’s second claim: that Christian holy sites have deteriorated under Jewish rule.

The evidence shows the opposite.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre — Christianity’s holiest site — has undergone extensive restoration during the Israeli era. Major projects included restoration of the church’s dome between 1994 and 1997 and the complete restoration of the Aedicule, the structure housing the traditional site of Jesus’ tomb, in 2016–2017 after engineers warned it had become structurally unsafe.

Ironically, the period when the church was visibly deteriorating was not under Israeli rule, but under Jordanian control.

In November 1949, a massive fire raged through the church’s dome for more than 24 hours. Israel offered firefighting assistance through the United Nations despite the church being located in Jordanian territory. Jordan refused the offer. The dome’s roof was destroyed.

A 1959 report by The Times of London described the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as being held together by a maze of steel and wooden supports that barely prevented collapse. Visitors, the paper reported, were confronted by “almost impenetrable gloom and dirt.”

Christian leaders sought major restoration work, but disputes with Jordanian authorities delayed the project. When Jerusalem was reunified in 1967, much of the work remained unfinished.

By 1973, The New York Times reported that the church’s façade was finally emerging from decades of scaffolding and that pilgrims were being greeted by a brighter, safer, and structurally sound interior.

Bottom Line

JD Hall isn’t defending Christianity. He’s betraying every Christian who was enslaved, raped, forcibly conscripted, or massacred under the empires he’s implicitly rehabilitating. He wants his audience ignorant enough to forget that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was crumbling under Muslim rule and restored under Jewish rule — that Christian populations flourished in Israel while they were being exterminated everywhere else in the region. 

Sources

X, MDPI, EBSCO, Israel Truth Network, National Geographic, UN, New York Times, Cambridge