Quote:
Originally Posted by onslowe
Tip toeing around religious extremists with a 7th century value system of life and death is going to lead to Western Civilization's decline. Please someone look at how Christian North Africa and the entire Levant was essentially erased. Back when history was still taught in the schools, did anyone come across Charles Martel? What about real and intellectually honest reasons for the Crusades? And on and on. Not 'politically correct' but true - as in honest.
Should we be "sensitive" to those religionists who are over sensitive, and may, because they are not as enlightened as us, shoot and kill at perpetrators of 'insult?' Isn't that dishonest? Isn't that truly cowardly? Acting or not acting because one is coming from some sort of 'practical standpoint' reflects a moral vacuum. When in Rome, do as the Romans…
The NY Times, like some others, has already started spreading the toxin about the murdered French journalist - he was always 'provoking,' implying of course he brought this upon himself. Let's all shoot him again. It's out of Lewis Carroll. Up is down. Wrong is right and the victim is the wrongdoer.
When I read some of the responses here I can only stand in awe of the great Winston Churchill and how he got through the appeasing, cowardly and morally vacant 1930's in Europe.
Thank God for all of us he existed and withstood the vile lies thrown at him.
Great thoughts above dbussone and beechie.
|
Besides following Muhammad, why else did the Muslims launch their Crusades out of Arabia in the first place?
In a complicated Crusade that lasted several centuries
before the European Crusades, it is difficult to come up with a grand single theory as to what launched these Crusades.
Muslim apologists like Sayyid Qutb assert that Islam’s mission is to correct the injustices of the world.
What he has in mind is that if Islam does not control a society, then injustice dominates it. But if Islam dominates it, then justice rules it .
Even today, they all seem to think the westerners are "infidels".
Islam is expansionist and must conquer the whole world to express Allah’s perfect will on this planet, so Qutb and other Muslims believe. But this is ambiguous at best.
Over the centuries until now, Islam does not represent justice.
People, especially women, are oppressed in Islamic lands—for reasons beyond bad rulers like Saddam Hussein. The essence of Islam, which Qutb correctly describes elsewhere , is to control the details of society, but sharia (Islamic law) sometimes becomes excessive. Excess is never just. Nonetheless, Qutb describes Islam as politically and militarily expansionist from the very beginning, and in this he is right.
Most think of the Crusades which were military campaigns sanctioned by the Latin Roman Catholic Church during the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages.
In 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to holy places in and near Jerusalem.
Many historians and some of those involved at the time, like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, give equal precedence to other papal-sanctioned military campaigns undertaken for a variety of religious, economic, and political reasons, such as the Albigensian Crusade, the Aragonese Crusade, the Reconquista, and the Northern Crusades.
Following the First Crusade there was an intermittent 200-year struggle for control of the Holy Land, with six more major crusades and numerous minor ones.
In 1291, the conflict ended in failure with the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land at Acre, after which Roman Catholic Europe mounted no further coherent response in the east.
Islamic Crusades vs. Christian Crusades
Who should own the "Kingdom of Heaven"?
In Ridley Scott’s monumental movie, "The Kingdom of Heaven", which is another way of saying Jerusalem according to the end of the film, the European Crusaders and the Muslim Crusaders fight over the city, with the Muslims coming out victorious.
The city historically and originally belonged to the Jews; they owned it a thousand years before Christ came and 1600 before Muhammad came. And when they were exiled, many came back, as soon as it was feasible; the love for this city runs deeply in them. So it belongs to them today.
It is simply a myth to assume that Muslims or Christians won Jerusalem by some kind of divine right or by an unchallenged assumption that says, "of course they own the region."
With that said, however, the film makes an erroneous assumption. It assumes that the European Crusaders and the Muslim Crusaders stand on an equal footing when they fight over Jerusalem.
The opposite is true. When the Medieval Christians fought over earthly ground, they abandoned the example of Jesus Christ.
However, when the Muslims fought over Jerusalem and conquered other cities, they were following the example of their prophet Muhammad. So the two religions do not stand on the same ground whatsoever.
The Islamic Crusades
Few Westerners know that the Muslims launched their own Crusades outside of Arabia two years after Muhammad’s death of a fever in AD 632.
The word Crusade (derived from the Latin word for "cross") means a holy war or jihad.
It is used as a counterweight to the constant Muslim accusation that only the Europeans launched a crusade. Muslims seem to forget that they had their own, for several centuries before the Europeans launched theirs as a defense against the Islamic expansion.
Who or what inspired the Islamic Crusades?
It may surprise the reader that Muhammad was the first to launch a Crusade.
In October to December 630, after the conquest of Mecca in January 630, Muhammad launches a Crusade to Tabuk, a city in the north of Saudi Arabia today, but in the seventh century it was under the control of northern tribes.
"Crusade" is the right word, because early Muslim sources say the army had 30,000 men and 10,000 horsemen and because Muhammad did so under the banner of Islam.
On his way north, Muhammad extracts (or extorts) "agreements"—without provocation—from smaller Christian Arab tribes to pay the jizyah tax, instead of being attacked and killed (a jizya tax is exacted from non-Muslims for the "privilege" of living under Islam).
They also had the option to convert, but most do not and agree, rather, to pay the tax. Once the Muslims reach Tabuk, however, the Byzantine army fails to materialize. Muhammad the prophet had believed a false rumor. So Muhammad and his large army return home.
So it is Muhammad himself who inspired the first generations of Muslims to carry out his Crusades.
Will it ever end????? They are still in their HOLY WAR.....