Posted on 02/05/2015 1:50:44 PM PST by Kaslin
If you were to engage in a debate about religious violence with your average high school senior, you might encounter the claim that the modern scourge of religiously-inspired barbarity attributable to those who consider themselves Muslims is no historical anomaly. They might contend that the Christian world engaged in its own form of fundamentalism at the turn of the first millennium when the medieval European world embarked on a campaign to liberate the Middle Eastern territories conquered by Muslim armies. Having erected a dubious moral equivalency, your interlocutor is likely to then insist that it is hypocritical for Westerners to scold the Muslim world for incubating a violent strain of Islam that has become one of the predominant threats to international security.
This was essentially the familiar argument President Barack Obama made at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. After conceding that there will likely always be those who will seek to “hijack religion for their own murderous ends,” he reminded his audience that Islam is merely following a dark path forged centuries ago by Christians.
“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Obama also denounced Islamic State terrorists for professing to stand up for Islam when they were actually “betraying it.”
“We see ISIL, a brutal vicious death cult that in the name of religion carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism,” he said criticizing them for “claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.”
Entering into arguments over which great religion holds the most defensible claim to moral purity is often a waste of effort. What is noteworthy in Obama’s comments is not his attempt to establish an equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence, but that he has undermined his oft-repeated claim that ISIS and its cadre of supporters are unrepresentative of their faith.
It’s strange that so few see the contradiction inherent in this assertion. The president, and many of his allies on the left, frequently trip over themselves to emphasize – correctly, as it happens – that ISIS’s acts of brutality are not archetypical Islamic behavior. The insurgency’s most recent atrocity, the immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot, is apparently a violation of Islamic norms according to even Koranic scholars in the Middle East.
But to assert this and in the same breath suggest that Christianity was also a violent, expansionist religion a mere 800 years ago is a contradiction. Why make this comparison if ISIS is not representative of Islam? Isn’t the concession in this claim that those who commit acts of violence in the name of their religion, regardless of whether those acts are supported by a majority of coreligionists, that they are representative of their faith? Therefore, by perfunctorily nodding in the direction of a moral equivalency between Christian and Islamic violence, isn’t the president invalidating his own claim that ISIS, Boko Haram, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Sayyaf, and a host of other fundamentalist Islamic terror groups are agents of a violent strain of the Islamic faith?
A tired liberal shibboleth holds that the strain of violent militancy that is self-evidently more prevalent among Muslims today than among other religious adherents is not historically noteworthy. This is not to say that Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, &c. are incapable of violence, though that must be plainly stated in order to satisfy the willfully obtuse. The president’s decision to link medieval Christian violence committed in the name of their faith to the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic terrorists today, however, has eroded the foundations of his argument that religion plays no role in the global war against Islamist terrorism.
We didn’t do that kind of thing then. The Christian nations continued to be attacked by the Islamic nations. Christianity finally had enough and fought back. Temporarily, the reclaimed lands that had been Christian for centuries, and prior to that those lands had CHOSEN to be Christian on their own. Most of the middle east and North Africa were Christian. All were turned Islamic by conquest and forced conversion.
There were thousands of Muslim incursions into Spain and France leading up to the Crusades. Without the Crusades Europe would have been overrun by the muzzie infidels.
Just a few centuries ago his liberal hellhole of Massachusetts was burning and hanging witches.
You know, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan 70 years ago?
You know, most Democrats opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act 50 years ago?
You know, Republicans passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act over a Democrat filibuster 50 years ago?
You are right. This IS fun.
First of all, those people in the crusdades were NOT Christians, no more so than dear leadrer is- regardless of what hey called themselves they were of the Evil one- Period! Even the evil one can cvlaim he is a ‘christian’ but that doesn’t make him one
Secondly, He is comparing approx. 1 million deaths to literally 100’s of millions committed I nthe name of secularism, atheism, or other non Chrian ‘religions’? Really? Let’s take a look at the claim that “More wars were started I nthe name of religion than anyhting’ (this claim is a LIE- More people have been killed and murdered In the name of atheism and false religions than by CHristianty- Far more!)
China 221 B.C.-19 C. Deaths= 33, 519,0004 Religious? No
Mongols 14 C-15 C Deaths= 29 927,000 Religious? No
Slavery 1451-1870 Deaths= 17,267,000 Religious? No
Amer-Indians 16 C-19 C13, Deaths= 778,000 Religious? No
30-Years War 1618-1648 Deaths= 5,750,000 Religious? No
In India 13 C-1 9 C Deaths= 4,511,0005 Religious? No
In Iran 5 C-19 C Deaths= 2,000,000 Religious? No
Ottoman Emp. 12 C-19 C Deaths= 2,000,0005 Religious? No
In Japan 1570-19 C Deaths= 1,500,0005 Religious? No
In Russia 10 C-19 C Deaths= 1,007,0005 Religious? No
Crusades 1095-1272 Deaths= 1,000,000 Religious? Religious? Yes
Aztecs Centuries Deaths= 1,000,0006 Religious? Ye
Inquisition 16 C-18 C Deaths= 350,000 Religious? Yes
French Rev. 1793-1794 Deaths= 263,000 Religious? No
Albigensians 1208-1249 Deaths= 200,000 Religious? Yes
Witch Hunts 15 C-17 C Deaths= 100,000 Religious? Yes
Atheist Nations that murdered for no reason
Afghanistan 1978-1992 DEATHS= 1,750,000
Albania 1944-1985 DEATHS= 100,000
Angola 1975-2002 DEATHS= 125,000
Bulgaria 1944-1989 DEATHS= 222,000
China/PRC 1923-2007 DEATHS= 76,702,000
Cuba 1959-1992 DEATHS= 73,000
Czech 1948-1968 DEATHS= 65,000
Ethiopia 1974-1991 DEATHS= 1,343,610
France 1793-1794 DEATHS= 40,000
Greece 1946-1949 DEATHS= 20,000
Hungary 1948-1989 DEATHS= 27,000
Cambodia 1973-1991 DEATHS= 2,627,000
Laos 1975-2007 DEATHS= 93,000
Mongolia 1926-2007 DEATHS= 100,000
Mozambique 1975-1990 DEATHS= 118,000
North Korea 1948-2007 DEATHS= 3,163,000
Poland 1945-1948 DEATHS= 1,607,000
Romania 1948-1987 DEATHS= 438,000
Spain 1936-1939 DEATHS= 102,000
U.S.S.R. 1917-1987 DEATHS= 61,911,000
Vietnam 1945-2007 DEATHS= 1,670,000
Yugoslavia 1944-1980 DEATHS= 1,072,000
20’th century Democide
Country Year Deaths Atheist?
U.S.S.R. 1917-87 61,911,000 Yes
China 1949-87 35,236,000 Yes
Germany 1933-45 20,946,000 No
China 1928-49 10,075,000 No
Japan 1936-45 5,964,000 No
China 1923-49 3,466,000 Yes
Cambodia 1975-79 2,035,000 Yes
Turkey 909-18 1,883,000 No
Vietnam 1945-87 1,670,000 Yes
Poland 1945-48 1,585,000 Yes
Pakistan 1958-87 1,503,000 No
Yugoslavia 1944-87 1,072,000 Yes
N. Korea 1948-87 1,663,000 Yes
Mexico 1900-20 1,417,000 No
Russia 1900-17 1,066,000 Yes
China 1917-49 910,000 No
Turkey 1919-23 878,000 No
UK 1900-87 816,000 No
Portugal 1926-82 741,000 No
Indonesia 1965-87 729,000 No
LESSER MURDERERS 1900-87 2,792,000 ?
WORLD TOTAL 1900-87 169,202,000 107,047,000
Bookmarked.
Spoken like a true follower of the Prophet Mohammad
The muslim prophet Obama has spoken!
Obama distorts the history of the Crusades to justify today’s debauchery committed in the name of Allah by the followers of Obama’s religion of “peace.”
Excerpts
Robert Spencer, at frontpagemag.com (3-22-05):
Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, which will out from Regnery Publishing in a few months.
In it, I am clearing away propaganda and telling what really happened. 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. The churches that St. Paul addressed in his letters collected in the New Testament are located in Asia Minor, modern Turkey, as well as modern Greece. North of Greece, in a buffer zone between Eastern and Western Europe, were lands that would become the Christian domains of the Slavs.
Antioch and Constantinople (Istanbul), in modern Turkey, and Alexandria, in modern Egypt, were three of the most important Christian centers of the first millennium.
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 Qur’an 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.
Conversion to Islam became the only way to live a decent life. And lo and behold, the Christian populations of these areas steadily diminished.
Conventional wisdom has it that these Christians welcomed the invaders, preferring the yoke of Islam to that of Byzantium. 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. Here is a contemporary account of the Muslims’ arrival in Nikiou, an Egyptian town, in the 640’s:
Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiou. There was not one single soldier to resist them. They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches — men, women and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found. . . .But let us now say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed when they occupied the island of Nikiou. . . .
Not only did this involve massacres, but exile and enslavement — all based on a broken treaty:
Amr oppressed Egypt. He sent its inhabitants to fight the inhabitants of the Pentapolis [Tripolitania] and, after gaining a victory, he did not allow them to stay there. He took considerable booty from this country and a large number of prisoners. . . .The Muslims returned to their country with booty and captives. The patriarch Cyrus felt deep grief at the calamities in Egypt, because Amr, who was of barbarian origin, showed no mercy in his treatment of the Egyptians and did not fulfill the covenants which had been agreed with him.
Once the Muslims were entrenched in power, they began to levy the jizya, the tax on non-Muslims:
. . Amr’s position became stronger from day to day. He levied the tax that had been stipulated . . . But it is impossible to describe the lamentable position of the inhabitants of this town, who came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month, finding no one to help them because God had abandoned them and had delivered the Christians into the hands of their enemies.[3]
An eyewitness of the Muslim conquest of Armenia in 642 tells what happened when they took the town of Dvin: “The enemy’s army rushed in and butchered the inhabitants of the town by the sword. . . . After a few days’ rest, the Ismaelites [Arabs] went back whence they had come, dragging after them a host of captives, numbering thirty-five thousand.”[4]
On the island of Cos a few years later, the Muslim general Abu l-A’war, according to another contemporary account, “laid waste and pillaged all its riches, slaughtered the population and led the remnant into captivity, and destroyed its citadel.”[5]
According to the Syrian Orthodox patriarch, Michael the Syrian (1126–1199), Muslims conquered Cilicia and Caesarea of Cappadocia in the year 650 in this way: They [the Taiyaye, or Muslim Arabs] moved into Cilicia and took prisoners . . . and when Mu’awiya arrived he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped.
After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye led everyone into slavery — men and women, boys and girls — and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town; they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches.[6]
Muslim chroniclers of the time make no secret of this. The Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), in his world history entitled The Complete History, includes this account of eighth and ninth century Muslim incursions into Spain and France:
In 177 [17 April 793], Hisham, [Muslim] prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda [Gerona]. . . . For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God knows how much booty.
In Amorium in Asia Minor in 838, says Michael the Syrian, “there were so many women’s convents and monasteries that over a thousand virgins were led into captivity, not counting those that had been slaughtered. They were given to the Moorish slaves, so as to assuage their lust . . .”[7]
Much later, when Muslim armies resumed their expansion in Europe after a period of relative decline (which most notoriously included the loss of Sicily in 1091, the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, and the steady erosion of their power in Spain), they held true to this pattern of behavior. 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.”[8]
The circumstances of the first Crusade were these:
Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being molested by Muslims and prevented from reaching the holy places. Some were killed. This was finally the impetus that moved Western Christianity to try to take back just one small portion of the Christian lands that had fallen to the Muslim sword over the last centuries.
“The Crusade,” noted 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.”[9]
Whatever undeniable sins Christians committed during their course, the Crusades were essentially a defensive action: a belated and insufficient attempt by Western Christians to turn back the tide of Islam that had engulfed the Eastern Church.
“When accusing the West of imperialism,” says the historian of jihad Paul Fregosi, “Muslims are obsessed with the Christian Crusades but have forgotten their own, much grander Jihad.”
The lands in dispute during each Crusade were the ancient lands of Christendom, where Christians had flourished for centuries before Muhammad’s armies called them idolaters and enslaved and killed them. If Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim lands, then Muslims had no right to take them in the first place.
Thus if Al-Azhar wants to demand an apology for the Crusades, it should be ready to apologize for the conquest of the Middle East and North Africa. But the most disturbing element of this sorry exercise of historical revision is that their “request” may well be granted by the Vatican. And if it is, it would be just one more link on a long chain of double standards by which Western authorities seem ready to bend over backwards to grant concessions to the Islamic world, while asking for and receiving nothing in return.
For example, Al-Azhar itself has praised suicide bombers as martyrs[10] and declared that Islamic states have a religious obligation to acquire nuclear weapons.[11] Yet no one in the West is demanding an apology from them for these approvals of very contemporary menaces. It figures.
Notes:
[1] Bill Clinton, “Remarks as delivered by President William Jefferson Clinton, Georgetown University, November 7, 2001.” Georgetown University Office of Protocol and Events, www.georgetown.edu.
[2] Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, University of California Press, 1982, p. 7.
[3] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996, pp. 271-272.
[4] Ibid., p. 275.
[5] Ibid., p. 276.
[6] Ibid., pp. 276-277.
[7] Ibid., p. 283.
[8] Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.
[9] Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History , Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 163-4.
[10] “Egyptian grand shaykh: Islamic law sees suicide-bombers as martyrs,” Independent Media Review Analysis, November 3, 2003.
[11] “New Islamic Ruling Calls for Nuclear Weapon Armament,” Independent Media Review Analysis, December 24, 2002.
No Barry, nobody but Satan is as bad as ISIS.
Don’t be sucked into an argument over who’s more violent. The Crusades were initiated by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to a plea from the Christian Byzantine Emperor for help beating back the invading Mohammedan hoards who were doing the same thing then that they are doing now: slaughtering infidels.
Okay, but Christ didn’t advocate those things. Muhammad did.
few:
1. An indefinite, but usually small, number of.
8 isn’t exactly “small”. Obama probably failed math, as well.
I'm surprised he hasn't yet designated the Vatican as a "free fire" zone and sent armed Feds to Montreat, NC, to wipe out those dangerous Crusaders - Billy and Franklin Graham.
When will the U.S. population wise up to what is happening?
Tu quoque. A fallacy.
Implying that ISIS’ violence is understandable and, on some level, acceptable.
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