Posted on 08/09/2014 1:09:08 PM PDT by EBH
As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word "crusade" in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn't the present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades' brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren't the Crusades really to blame?...
...Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins...
..So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicculture.org ...
ping
There isn’t anything about Islam that is peaceful, tolerant or divine. Mohammed was an evil, malevolent, sexually perverted man.
Nice that the truth is still out there.
Now that Europe is on its knees before islam, what can be done to cleanse our beloved United States from this pestilence?
Am I the only one who remembers "Crusader Rabbit"
So there were Bolsheviks among the Crusaders!
The initial impetus of the Crusades is when the Muslims began robbing and molesting Christian pilgrims.
It will take time and more slaughter but a time will come when stern men of good will again will take up the rosy cross and beat Islam back into the darkness it so richly deserves. Dieu Le Veut!
Great article
Thanks for posting
Very interesting! Thank you.
It was funny that last night I did an online search for the Crusades history and how ‘politically correct’ most of the information was.
I was happy to find this one...
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“So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already by 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. “
Great summary - seems like nothing’s changed in a thousand years.
No, I too remember Crusader Rabbit. He’s usually drawn with the ears very far apart, so much so that the 1957 Dodge (the year most makes of cars sprouted tail fins) was called `Crusader Rabbit’ for its fins & taillights.
Anyway, the First Crusade was a defensive counterattack against Muslim aggression and conquest, and nothing less.
The muzzies are at it again with ISIS. We need another Christian counteroffensive. Yeah, I know, when pigs fly.
No, you’re not the only one who remembers Crusader Rabbit. I once attended an appearance by Lucille Bliss, who did his voice, at the Acadamy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.
bump...
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