"We have not forgotten, as a Church, that the Crusades were defensive wars in response to Muslim atrocities which occurred after Islamists conquered what had been Christian lands."
In terms of jus ad bellum, the Crusades were no more act of "aggression" than the Allies' landing at Normandy.
People forget that "the Christian world" as of the early 7th century had included Egypt, Syria, the Levant, all of Northern Africa to Gibraltar and the entire Iberian peninsula up to the Pyrenees, with thriving Christian communities, Byzantine and Nestorian, in what is now Iraq and Iran, along the Silk Road, even to the Indus.
People forget that almost all of this fell to the sword of Islam under the Rashidun (632–661) and the Umayyad (661–750) Caliphates, ---the Muslims had invaded and focibly taken over 2/3 of the Christian world.
Perhaps I shouldn't say "people forget." I'm pretty sure most of us never knew.
Have you ever been in a college class or other setting where this fact is blatantly in front of everyone and you seem to be the only person who is on some level of reality? Doesn’t matter how many times you tell people how Islam was spread or why the Crusades happened, they just don’t hear it.
This is probably one of my top reasons for not going back for my Masters in History, there’s not enough Valium I could take to save myself.
” People forget that “the Christian world” as of the early 7th century had included Egypt, Syria, the Levant, all of Northern Africa to Gibraltar and the entire Iberian peninsula up to the Pyrenees, with thriving Christian communities, Byzantine and Nestorian, in what is now Iraq and Iran, along the Silk Road, even to the Indus.
People forget that almost all of this fell to the sword of Islam under the Rashidun (632–661) and the Umayyad (661–750) Caliphates, -—the Muslims had invaded and focibly taken over 2/3 of the Christian world.
Perhaps I shouldn’t say “people forget.” I’m pretty sure most of us never knew.”
No, Mrs. D, you Western Christians and secularists forgot, not my people. We’ve never forgotten and neither will our children or their children to the tenth generation and beyond.