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Excellent article. |
Posted on 12/01/2002 1:36:12 PM PST by Forgiven_Sinner
This was published last spring, but it's still applicable to a correct understanding of the crusades.
This one has always irritated me. From any logical Muslim perspective at the time, the Crusades were a minor border skirmish compared to the Mongol invasions, which almost destroyed Islam in its heartland.
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Excellent article. |
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Wow! Whoda' thunk, that dedicated professionals such as universities scholars and journalists could be driven by greed or agenda. I'm sorry, I just can't accept this conclusion. (/sarcasm)
Take away the Crusades (a blip in Islamic Jihad history), and the Islamaphiles go positively dumb...
As if the events of 300 years previous and 600 years afterwards never happened.
I had no idea that there is a "correct" understanding of anything. This word was only used by the Church and the communists instead of "approved."
When getting modern, revisionist, politically correct history shoved down our throats (I was a History major) it is painfully funny to realize the writers dishing this trash out have absolutley no clue about what they are writing.
Isn't this the same, word for word, as what supporters of communism say about it's history? You see, people have perverted the otherwise great system. Well, it's funny to hear this from an American who hears from his childhood about checks and balances. No checks and balances --- the system is at fault. But don't take it from me: the authors says so himself in the very next sentence:
The image of the Jew as Christ-killer was a staple of popular belief long before the events of 1096, intermittently provoking violent acts of "retribution" against Hebrew communities in Europe.
Exactly. If there is no condemnation for these acts, and there is a call to fight the infidel, why not kill the infidel Jews on the way to killing the infidel Muslims? Would you not think this way? Actually, you should then start with the Jews: Muslims did not kill the Son of God.
It is rather telling that the author speaks in incomplete sentences: Urban II called for an armed expedition to the East to aid fellow Christians and liberate Jerusalem. Expedition against whom? Liberate Jerusalem from what?
Ah, if he were to complete the annunciation of the call, he would have to concede the aforementioned point: the call was to liberate the Holly Land from the infidel, and you cannot blame a poor Christian soldier for doing what he was called to do; that is, uphold Christianity against infidels.
The author seems to suffer a complete loss of memory when analyzing the issue at hand. He seems to abstract away from the notion of fiduciary duty, such as that of an expert to a novice and that of a leader to the followers. If the Church has issues a call to arms, it was its duty to spell out the goal. If it failed to do so, don't blame the results on some poor and undedicated soldiers that merely answered the call.
The article gets worse to the point of being funny:
The pogroms were motivated by a combination of vendetta and greed [emphasis mine -TQ].
Background information: ven•det•ta:
1. A feud between two families or clans that arises out of a slaying and is perpetuated by retaliatory acts of revenge; a blood feud.
2. A bitter, destructive feud.
If, as the author claims, it was a vendetta, what specific acts did the Jewish community commit as part of that feud? Which "acts of revenge" by the Jews were recorded in 900 years of history of German anti-Semitism? Unless, of course, you believe that Jews poisoned wells in Europe and thereby causes the Plague; that they kill Christian children to use their blood for matzos, etc. I am sure that the author does not believe this nonsense, yet he perpetuates the favorite escape of anti-Semites that "the Jews get themselves in trouble." See, they perpetuated a feud, no wonder there was vendetta.
IS HE JOKING when he refers to continual persecution of the Jews as vendetta? A more precise question is, where he has hidden his shame?
Look at the second of the aforementioned "reasons" --- greed. This, too, perpetuates the anti-Semitic claim of "Jewish wealth." Just like any other community, the Jewish community consisted, at all times, mostly of poor folk; of the recent pop-culture sources, The Fiddler on the Roof depicts that fairly accurately. Even in our own, the most wealthy of countries, as recently as in 1910-20s, there were discussions in American newspapers on whether the "uneducated, poor, backward Jews with poor hygiene and their Oriental mind" can even grasp the notions of western civilization.
To say that Gentiles attacking Jews were motivated by greed, whether in Rhineland during the Crusades or in Ukraine during Khmelnitsky's massacres, is to claim implicitly that the Jews as a whole where more wealthy than their neighbors. This is an outright falsehood, at variance with facts. Is this supported even by the author's own facts? The slaughter of Jewish babies --- was that an estate tax on the wealthy? The wombs of pregnant women open with knives sticks --- was that done only to the wealthy women? Total nonsense, of course. Today, the one who wants money robs a gas station but the one who hates Koreans burns the whole neighborhood. This was true then also. If the Crusaders had wanted the money they would ask for ransom; they would have burned the houses of the wealthy. Instead, they wiped out the whole communities. Greed, you say?
Thus, in one sentence, the author not only serves as a subtle apologist, he manages to promulgate two of the anti-Semites' favorite myths. He may not be such himself, but he is surely not discrete in choosing his friends.
Nor is he capable of even making up his mind:
Massacres occurred in Worms, Trier, Mainz, and Cologne. The attackers offered the Jews the option of conversion. Few opted for this, choosing suicide or martyrdom instead.
You've got to admit that this is really confusing: since when could conversion ameliorate someone's thirst for money? If the crusaders are motivated by greed, why would they find satisfaction in conversion? Similarly, if this is a part of the ongoing "feud," as also alleged by the author, why would they find satisfaction in conversion? Typically, vendetta consists of revengeful acts, such as "you killed my uncle I will kill yours." This is different from "you killed my uncle, now you've got to convert." This point is besides what I already mentioed earlier: there were no "uncles" killed by the Jews. The violence of the crusaders against the Jews was as much vendetta or feud as the violence of a rapist against a woman he just met in a park.
The pogroms of 1096 were perversions of crusading zeal; they were definitely not the normal response. If they were perversions, then why did not the Church respond to them forcefully? Surely, the Church knew how to do that: the Inquisition established shortly before the Albigensian affair and which existed for centuries dealt quite effectively with heretics. Why not with these terrible perverts of the Christian ideal?
The author is Freudian at the end of the sentence: once again speaking in incomplete sentences, he characterizes the violence against the Jews as not "the normal response." I am asking again: response to what? What was that the Jews had done to their Gentile neighbors? Name one act of violence in 1700 years.
It is scary that the person who has written this is going to teach history to our children.
Returning to the main point:
The evidence firmly contradicts the charges that violent anti-Semitism was ingrained in the crusading movement, yet contrary claims persist.
Arguing against the straw man: violent anti-Semitism was indeed NOT ingrained: a non-violent anti-Semitism was ingrained and has found a violent outlet once the leaders has urged violence and gave it rational. That very prejudice against the Jews as foreigners, as the "Christ-killers," which had been condoned by the Church, has merely found its outlet. The call to uphold Christianity against the infidel was read as it was stated, and Jews were infidels that had to be converted or killed. So much for vendetta; so much for greed; so much for the alleged Jewish wealth.
Towards the end the article deteriorated rapidly. For instance:
let us consider the faulty use of terminology in both the Carroll outlook and the "First Holocaust" camp, namely, the confusion of anti-Judaism with anti-Semitism. The latter is a nineteenth century ideology rooted in racial theory.
This is outright stupid: "anti-Semitism" is the new word for the same, old ideology invented in the XIX century. The racial theory was advance as a basis for complete extermination of the Jews and Roma and subjugation of others. In other words, the solution for the "problem" that was offered was different: whereas Crusaders offered conversion, Hitler did not.
But this is not new: the author disregards the same measures in Spain, after the complete expulsion of the Jews by Isabella the Catholic in 1492. Almost a century later, any Christian of Jewish descent was prohibited from holding office. Discrimination on the basis of bloodlines rather than religion was not invented by Hitler. Incidentally, was that persecution in the Catholic Spain an aberration, a perversion? If so, where are the papal edict and condemnation?
The author does show himself in his writing fully:
In fact, the pogroms were not due to an intrinsic anti-Jewish attitude among crusaders, note the omission of a qualifier like "entirely" or "solely:" now the author tells us that the pogroms were not AT ALL due to an intrinsic anti-Jewish attitude.
but at least partly due to the breakdown in secular authority in the region. No, silly: you confuse the cause for the action with factors that determined its success. Crusaders where motivated in their pogroms by their anti-Jewish attitude. Period. That would propel them into action, but that action would not necessarily be successful. Indeed, what made the pogroms successful was the absence of opposition, the weakening of central authority. But these are apples and oranges: had there been no anti-Jewish attitude, no central authority would be needed to stop the crusaders.
The ending of the article goes even further than the aforementioned blunders:
Those who promote such a view do so to further their agendas, ideologies, and book sales.
Firstly, to advance an accusation without a foundation is a sin. The author should no his commandments since he studies religion. Secondly, he should have known by now that it is impossible to guess the motivations of people. Even if those whom he argues against are indeed incorrect, theirs may be a sincere mistake. One has to ponder why massacres and expulsions of Jews in Europe continued for millennia while bases entirely on libel. There is clear continuity here. Of course, if someone says, literally, that Holocaust and crusades are the same thing, that is too simplistic to be true. But they clearly have a common antecedent, the continuous presence of which is clearly there throughout the last two millennia.
I do not want to make the same mistake as the author and will not therefore speculate on the author's motives. His writing, however, it that of an apologist for certain rather sinful the past. As I said earlier, in the very least he can be accused of keeping, perhaps inadvertently, a bad company: in order to explain history, he resorts to anti-Semitic myths.
I also hope that he will learn to think more clearly before he take his qualifying examinations.
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