The Crusades

[Tuco]

Just watched the first two episodes of a series of five on the crusades. A facinating documentary. Okay, naybe not a documentary, but a facinating story told as documentary.

The atrocities that are attributed to the Catholics are shocking. Slaughter of entire cities and subsequent eating of the dead. Children put on spits and roasted, etc. Many millions of people killed (mostly islamic) in the name of religious cleansing.

All started by a pope that waived the commandment of thou shall not murder if the victim is of Islam. Telling soldiers that all sins will be forgiven if they go on the crusade to take back the holy city and kill as many infidels as possible.

Nice stuff this religion.

Not a related topic, but a guy named Tariq Ali was featured, doing alot of the background fill. I did some googling and found this quote from him:

" (the) massacre of civilian populations was always an integral part of US warmaking strategy"

How fair or unfair is this?

Tuco.

[MMMMMM]

I saw several episodes of the Cross and the Crescent on TV. The Crusades were indeed overdone and contained many atrocities.

The historical context that led to the crusades, however, should not be forgotten: Muslim armies forcibly speading Islam over ever-growing swathes of forcibly conquered lands. Islam was subjugating the infidels by force in a very aggressive manner over centuries. Islam had a long history of violent conquest and of gaining land through war, and subsequently subjugating all non-Muslims in those regions.

The first Crusade was, in my opinion, a good idea in order to drive the aggressive, supremacist, religio-fascist, bent-on-conquering foe back from whence they came. My view is that once that was accomplished to a significant degree, as it was in the First Crusade, the latter crusades had far less justification. Of course some of the atrocities were indeed horrible (not saying two wrongs make a right, but Islamic armies committed horrid atrocities too).

[excerpt]"Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century. At that time Egypt, Libya, and all of North Africa were Christian, and had been so for hundreds of years. So were Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Asia Minor. But then Muhammad and his Muslim armies arose out of the desert, and -- as most modern textbooks would put it -- these lands became Muslim. But in fact the transition was cataclysmic. Muslims won these lands by conquest and, in obedience to the words of the Koran and the Prophet, put to the sword the infidels therein who refused to submit to the new Islamic regime. Those who remained alive lived in humiliating second-class status.

Clinton may be right that Muslims still seethe about the sack of Jerusalem, but he and they are strangely silent about similar behavior on the Muslim side. In those days, invading armies were considered to be entitled to sack cities that resisted them. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople, the jewel of Christendom, finally fell to an overwhelming Muslim force after weeks of resistance by a small band of valiant Greeks. According to the great historian of the Crusades Steven Runciman, the Muslim soldiers "slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit."

The first Crusade was called because Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being molested by Muslims and prevented from reaching the holy places. Some were killed. "The Crusade," noted the historian Bernard Lewis, "was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war -- to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage."[end excerpt]

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=6959

So you see there are two sides to nearly everything, and there were reasons for the First Crusade.

[canis582]

I am a little mad at the Muslims for burning the Alexandria Library. Who knows what great literary and theatrical works were lost forever. Now we are stuck with Oedipus and the Iliad. I bet Sophocles wrote some kick ass stuff that didn't survive.

[Tuco]

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Muslim armies forcibly speading Islam over ever-growing swathes of forcibly conquered lands. Islam was subjugating the infidels by force in a very aggressive manner over centuries. Islam had a long history of violent conquest and of gaining land through war, and subsequently subjugating all non-Muslims in those regions.


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They kind of skipped this in the series. The only thing mentioned was that Jerusalem had been muslim for 400 years.

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The first Crusade was, in my opinion, a good idea in order to drive the aggressive, supremacist, religio-fascist, bent-on-conquering foe back from whence they came.

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The idea of the first crusade (according to the series) was to take back Jerusalem and kill as many muslims as possible. I don't really see how this can be called a good idea. The pope made it clear that killing the enemy would cleanse the soldiers' sins.

Wish they would do a series on how the muslims ruled so I wouldn't have to now do a bunch of readin'.

Tuco.

[MMMMMM]

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The idea of the first crusade (according to the series) was to take back Jerusalem and kill as many muslims as possible. I don't really see how this can be called a good idea. The pope made it clear that killing the enemy would cleanse the soldiers' sins.



[/ QUOTE ] Yes, taking back Jerusalem was a large part of it; driving the Muslim aggressors out of Spain was another part of the whole scenario; there was a lot to the whole picture, more than we have written, and more than the series covered. That said, I thought the series was well produced overall, though I wish they had not neglected to include much on the greater background before the Crusades, which led up to the Crusades. The Crusades in a vacuum look simply awful, but as a belated response to centuries of Muslim conquest by the sword, and the subjugation of non-Muslims, the Crusades are at least somewhat more understandable, although undeniably barbaric in some aspects.

[Cyrus]

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The Crusades were overdone.

[/ QUOTE ] Oh Jesus. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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The historical context ... should not be forgotten: Christian armies forcibly speading Christianity over ever-growing swathes of forcibly conquered lands. The Christians were subjugating the infidels by force in a very aggressive manner over centuries. Christianity had a long history of violent conquest and of gaining land through war, and subsequently subjugating all non-Christians in those regions.

[/ QUOTE ]Fixed your post!

And let me know if you find something wrong with my fixing, so's we can have a laugh with your argument.

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The first Crusade was, in my opinion, a good idea.

[/ QUOTE ] This only shows how ignorant you are of History. I'm sorry but there's no other way of putting it.

The First Crusade's army was populated mostly by tens of thousands of commoners who lacked any war-making experience and who were in it to get wealthy. The Pope who started the frenzy was explicitly promising that "robbers will be turned to barons" (see Urban's sermon in Clermont, France). It was a power grab with a lot of ideological (xenophobic and intolerant) propaganda thrown to the masses.

The logistics of moving 100,00 people across Europe were staggering. The Crusaders were attacked almost everywhere they passed through - and understandably too, since they wanted food and amenities which the locals were not too eager to provide for free or on the cheap! When the first wave of the peasant crusaders arrived, they were duly massacred by the organised army of Turks.

Notably, the First Crusade caused the unleashing of the first wave of anti-Semitic massacres in Christian Europe (see, inter alia, the "First Holocaust" by ...German knights), since many people chose to fight (i.e. murder) the "infidels" at home rather than travel thousands of miles to do so!

Finally, the First Crusade weakened the Christian Byzantine empire (although the Byzantines had a hand in causing it!) and antagonized further the two Christian Churches, thus enabling Constantinople's later fall from power -- and Islam's subsequent advance until the gates of Vienna!

...Yeah, a brilliant idea that Crusade, no doubt about it. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[MMMMMM]

Cyrus, many Christians did bad things and especially in war, HOWEVER, Jesus did not call for making slaughter on the enemy and forcibly subjugating them: Mohammed did. Jesus did not advocate forced conversion or death of infidels: Mohammed did. Jesus did not resist even his own tormentors and executioners, and called for forgiveness and turning the other cheek: Mohammed led many military campaigns of conquest; took slaves; killed the enemy and forcibly took their wives as his slave-concubines; and encouraged his soldiers with rights of booty and plunder. Which do you think is the more aggressive and totalitarian religion, at heart? Which do you think is the warlike religion, in itself (irrespective of the perverse acts of its followers)?

Mohammad oversaw the slaughter of 600 helpless Jews at Medina, after accepting their surrender. Most of the Middle East was forcibly taken by the followers of the warrior-prophet, and fascistic regulations were thereafter decreed. The loathsome laws of Islam continue to this day in many countries: laws which deny non-Muslims equal civil rights; laws which make a non-Muslim's word in court legally equal to only a fraction of a Muslim's word in court; and laws which grossly deny women anything even approaching equal rights. Yes, Christians have done evil things too; but why do you stick up for the side of greater evil, of greater fascism, of greater totalitarianism?

If you love freedom and hate totalitarianism, you must despise the utter authority of Islamic totalitarianism, which seeks to regulate every aspect of mankind's existence on this globe.

Many of the Christians did not understand that Jesus preached non-violence. Hence, they, too, did much evil in the name of religion. But the founder of their religion did not advocate and lead them on in such violent and evil conquests, whereas the founder and leader of Islam most definitely did lead Muslims in such manner.

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This only shows how ignorant you are...

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Ever worry about falling off that perch you sit upon?

[Cyrus]

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Ever worry about falling off that perch you sit upon?

[/ QUOTE ] You object to my calling out MMMMMM's profound ignorance of History?

How else are we supposed to call it? Here he claims that the slaughters by Christians were due mainly to a ..misunderstanding!

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Chris Alger]

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"The historical context that led to the crusades, however, should not be forgotten: Muslim armies forcibly speading Islam over ever-growing swathes of forcibly conquered lands."

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The first crusade (1096) had nothing to do with the spread of Islam over new territories, which had been more or less halted more than 350 years prior when Christians checked the Arabs at the battles of Constantinople (718) and Tours (732).

The first crusdade was instigated by the request of the Byzantine Emperor to the Pope for assistance in checking the threat of the (only nominally Muslim) Seljuk Turks. Because the crusaders were ambivalent about the eastern church and had their own agenda, the Turks were ignored as Frankish knights undertook their own agenda of stealing land by murder in the traditional western manner, from Alexander to the current day. As for driving the victims "back from whence they came," virtually all of them came from the land where they were slaughtered.

Your unbelievable ignorance of basic historic fact, your preference for rightist propoganda organs when plenty of objective sources are available, and your appalling double standards are all indicative of your fundamentally racist mindset. I don't know how many times you've slammed affirmative action against American whites on the grounds the they had "nothing to do with" the offense for which they are being held accountable and that any such notion of collective responsibility to future generations is an example of "racism." But when it comes to non-whites, Muslims and other "others", you constantly demand punishment on the grounds of collective guilt and group vengence to justify conquest, torture and murder of indisputable innocents and their children by the millions.