:-)
Posted on 09/15/2006 6:08:01 AM PDT by areafiftyone
According to the CIA World Fact Book Turkey is 99.5% muslim. I never forget that when thinking of their policy decisions.
Truth be told:
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 7:50 AM
Subject: The Real History of the Crusades
The Real History of the Crusades
by Thomas Madden
"So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.
With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense."
More@ http://www.staycatholic.com/the_crusades.htm
Thanks. I will do it.
We could use a Churchill now. That man was a genius.
Seriousl question here, though. Are these statements GENERAL orders to be carried out for all time, or specific to a specific time and situation? I don't know the context.
Pope John Paul stood up to communism and now this Pope is standing up to islam. I say good on both of them. And yes, the rock thrown into the pack of dogs obviously found its target hehe.
I'm not enough of a scholar to answer you. But look at their conduct to see what many in that world think.
But they're a wonderful neutral democratic country, dontchaknow?
He gets my vote for "man of the 20th century". What he did in WWII was legendary but he was right on the mark from the Boer war on. The idea of Gallipoli IIRC was his. It was brilliant strategery - unfortunately like a lot of WWI the execution was seriously flawed.
:-)
Kewl!
Yes. I'm so sick of the Crusades cry. Doesn't anyone ever ask why the $#$! Moslems were in the Jews' Jerusalem? No. Moslems took over what wasn't theirs at all.
Liberals are so duplicitous. They ignore Moslem conquests but cannot stand white Americans taking over "Indian lands".
The Pope set them up. :). Nothing like taking time from blowing up oneself in the midst of a crowd of innocents to complain about the rude comments.
Pope Benidict has really surprised me. He has shown himself to be a man of extreme faith and real courage. I hope he dosen't retreat from his recent statements about the cult of Islam. He speaks the truth. I fear he now wears a target and is a marked man. Islam cultists don't like what he has said. they will try and silence the infidel. I pray they fail miserably in their efforts to silence the Pope.
The Roman Catholic Church has had its own dark period with the Inquisitions and othe unsavory acts. It is history. However, that passed on and we have worked to better the human condition since then. The Roman Catholic Church started whe Jesus Christ told Peter that "he is the Rock and upon this Rock I will build My church". Islam, otoh, started with a maniacal, pedophile, meglomaniac bent on destroying everyone that won't submit to the dictates of Islam and the destruction of everything that offends Islam. My tagline says it all.
And what I mean of course is he sent out this quotation from times past knowing full well they'de go crazy. Just helping to point out what intolerance looks and feels like.
Some god! Who is served by such followers.
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