Muslims demand papal apology for crusades

Muslims demand papal apology for crusades Highest Sunni authority sends official request to Vatican

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 19, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

The world's highest Sunni Muslim authority has demanded an official apology from the pope for the medieval Christian crusades.

Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf, president of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, said his panel sent the request to the Vatican in February, the Morocco Times reported.

The demand arose from Pope John Paul II's apologies to the Jewish people and his visits to Syria and Egypt a few years ago, Zafzaf said.

The Morocco paper said the Vatican's ambassador to Egypt has declined to comment, saying Al-Azhar's request is being considered by the Holy See.

While many Christians have expressed remorse for the crusades, some scholars insist the common characterization of zealous imperialists attacking peaceful Muslims is wrong.

Thomas F. Madden, author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," contends the Crusades "were in every way a defensive war."

"They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world," he wrote in a National Review column. "While the Arabs were busy in the seventh through the tenth centuries winning an opulent and sophisticated empire, Europe was defending itself against outside invaders and then digging out from the mess they left behind. Only in the eleventh century were Europeans able to take much notice of the East. "

Madden said the event that led to the crusades was the Turkish conquest of most of Christian Asia Minor, modern Turkey.

"The Christian emperor in Constantinople, faced with the loss of half of his empire, appealed for help to the rude but energetic Europeans. He got it. More than he wanted, in fact," wrote Madden, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University.

Over the past several years, pronouncements from Al-Azhar have sparked controversy.

In 2003, Al-Azhar's grand sheikh, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, stated suicide bombers are considered "martyrs" under Islamic law.

In December 2002, the Islamic Ruling Committee in Al-Azhar declared the acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a religious obligation for Islamic states.

A member of panel, Sheikh Ala A-Shanawi, said, "The Islamic nation has to recognize the enemy, and to prepare itself accordingly."

Answering a question he received, A-Shanawi wrote, "Allah's messenger [Muhammad] would have prepared himself with all the resources possible in order to deal with the enemy. Therefore, if the Islamic nation is not equipped with the desired weaponry needed, it will be forced to suffer the consequences, and will be blamed for negligence."

The sheikh continued, "All Islamic nations are required to seize nuclear weaponry, giving the nation the utmost respect. We see how far behind our nation is as a result of not being prepared as well as it should be, while the enemy has equipped itself with the best weaponry there is, which it will use to harm and destroy Muslims."

Muslims use all kinds of perfidious means to force conversions or make the lives of relious minorites miserable in countries where they are dominant. Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities are subject to pogroms in which gangs of Muslims will enter their homes and carry off their goods while the Muslim police look on and frequntly even participate in the looting. Christian girls are raped by Muslim men and have no legal recourse. Christians are frequently forced to work for Muslims at little or no pay because Muslim employers hold threats of false accusations over them, false accusations they know the corrupt Muslim courts will uphold. If a Christian, Jew, or other religious minority should find himself arrested and jailed, threats of gang rape by Muslim prisoners will usually bring about a forced conversion, a conversion he can only later renounce by imperiling his own life, since apostasy carries a death sentence in many Muslim lands. Such a one cannot return to his own Christian family and will have no Muslim family to turn to. He will live the rest of his life in a kind of destitute limbo of begging alms. There are thousands of such individuals in the Muslim countries. Furthermore, incidents outlined above take place every day in Muslim lands where religious minories are present.
The Pope ought to tell this cleric to go pi$$ up a palm tree. However, this same Pope who stood so strongly against Communism shifts into political correctness when it comes to the Muslims. Islam is at least as despotic a system (and possibly more so) than Communism.

October 1914 Turkish troops and Kurdish tribesmen invade and plunder the villages of Urmia. January 2-10, 1915 Plundering and destruction of seventy of Urmia's villages, massacres in the plains. Unknown number casualties. "There was absolutely no human power to protect these unhappy people from the savage onslaught of the invading hostile forces. It was an awful situation. At midnight the terrible exodus began; a concourse of 25,000 men, women, and children, Assyrians and Armenians, leaving cattle in the stables, all their household hoods and all the supply of food for winter, hurried, panic-stricken, on a long and painful journey to the Russian border, enduring the intense privations of a foot journey in the snow and mud, without any kind of preparation...It was a dreadful sight,...many of the old people and children died along the way." (The Death of a Nation, pp. 119-120) Statement of German Missionaries "The latest news is that four thousand Assyrians and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the mission, within the last five months. All villages in the surrounding district with two or three exceptions have been plundered and burnt; twenty thousand Christians have been slaughtered in Armenia and its environs. In Haftewan, a village of Salmas, 750 corpses without heads have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christina head.... In Dilman crowds of Christians were thrown into prison and driven to accept Islam." (The Death of a Nation, pp. 126-127) Urfa (Urhai) Twenty years after the harsh memories of the New Years massacres, the new Assyrian inhabitants relived history when they were ordered to surrender their weapons to the Ottomans and Kurds. Cognizant of their recent history, they refused to comply with the Ottoman demand. The Ottoman army, under the leadership of two German officers and armed with heavy artillery, attacked and destroyed the fort (Qalaa) and its Assyrian and Armenian inhabitants. Fortunately, few did survive when the attack ceased at the government's behest to pardon the Christians. February 23, 1915 More than sixty Assyrian notables were taken from the French mission and shot by Turkish troops. Among these was Mar Dinkha, a bishop of the Assyrian Church. "Here, then, in the ancient city of Tebarma, the scene of many previous martyrdoms, an Assyrian bishop is being led to be executed. He was not alone. He had a large company of his Christian brethren with him. What Mar Shimun Bar Sabaee, the first Assyrian Patriarch had done, during the persecution of Shapur the Magi, in the fourth century, was now to be gloriously repeated by another bishop of his church in the twentieth century. The Moslems had established a rule in asking of their victims to deny Christ and embrace Islam in order to save their lives. But weaker men and women than this body of prisoners had already chosen to be burned alive, and to be cut to pieces with aces, then deny their Redeemer! 'Be brave, take courage, be patient, falter not, be firm and look up. In a few moments we will be with Christ!' With such words he encouraged his companions in bonds, till they reached the end of their fatal journey, where they were all shot to death." (The Flickering Light of Asia, pp.49-51.) February 25, 1915 Turkish and Kurdish troops attacked the village of Gulpashan, one of the most prosperous villages of Urmia. Almost all of the men ware shot, and most of the women were violated. March 5, 1915 About 800 Assyrians who remained in Salamas, most of whom were old people, with some of the poorer and younger women, were gathered together and killed. April, 1915 Massacre in Gawar and other districts in Turkey. The number of martyrs is unknown. 1915 Tel Mozilt Twenty years later, the Turkish saviors of 1895 were now the attackers of the 600 Assyrian homes in cooperation with neighboring Kurdish tribes. After capturing the city, they took all the men they found between the ages of 12 and 70, a total of 475, and imprisoned them. The next morning, the prisoners were taken out in rows of four and shot. After some arguments between the Kurds and the Turkish officials on what to do with the young boys and girls left behind, the army decided to slay them as well. Approximately 1,500 children, among them Reverend Gabrial (the red-bearded priest), were murdered. Agha Ayoob Hamzah personally butchered the Priest. (Gorgis, Deacon Asman Alkass, Jirah Fi Tarikh Al-syrian, Trans. Subhi Younan. 1980. pp. 24). March 5, 1915 Turkish and Kurdish troops attacked their village of Gulpashan, one of the most prosperous villages of Urmia. Almost all of the men were shot, and most of the women were violated. pril 1915 Massacre in Gawar and other districts in Turkey. The number of martyrs is unknown. June, 1915 The Vali of Mosul begins attacks on the highlanders and destroys lower Tyari. The number of martyrs is unknown. Massacres at Sairt Djeudet Bey, Military Governor of Van, upon entering Sairt with 8,000 soldiers whom he himself called the "The Butchers' Battalion" (Kassab Tabouri), gave orders for the massacre of the Assyrians. "The Chaldean-Assyrian diocese of Sairt comprises, exclusive of the Chaldean-Assyrians of the town, more than thirty villages, not to count a large number of other villages inhabited by Jacobite-Assyrians, of whose number we are ignorant. All these prosperous villages were pillaged, looted and burned, those who dwelt therein being put the sword." The following is an almost complete list with the number of Chaldean-Assyrians inhabitants who were massacred: Sairt 2000 Sadagh 2000 Mar-Gourya 1000 Guedianes 500 Hadide 1000 Redwan 500 Dehok 500 Ketmes 1000 Der-Chemch 200 Piros 1000 Tentas 500 Tellimchar 1500 Telnevor 500 Benkof 200 Mar-Cmoune 300 Harevena 200 Der-Mar-Yacoub 500 Bekend 500 Ain-Dare 200 Berke 500 Archkanes 500 Galwaye 500 Goredj 500 Artoun (Altaktanie) 500 Der-Mazen 300 Der-Rabban 300 Charnakh 200 Artoun 1000

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