The NAACP bombed building in Colorado.
and for videos of Charlie Lebdo:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30710883
A little history thanks to : at www.http://christianleadershipcenter.org/me4.htm
IV. The Islamic and Christian Wars
Jihad and Crusades
General Background
The concept of “holy war” is becoming well known in the world, thanks to the media coverage of the current crisis with militant Islam. But the subject of Islamic wars takes us back hundreds of years; and a knowledge of this history will go a long way in helping us understand the difficulty of the current crisis.
Popular coverage, and certain Islamic communications, would have us believe that Islam is a religion of peace, that life for Christians under Islamic rule is perfectly acceptable and free, that Islamic men can convert to Christianity if they wish, and that the Christians, along with the Zionists, on the contrary have been the ruthless enemies of Islam and throughout history, and certainly during the crusades, savagely slaughtered Islamic people. Anyone traveling in Islamic countries, especially in the Middle East, will sooner or later hear this take on the crusades, and on the modern so-called Christian nations. We cannot do justice to this issue in such a brief survey, but we can take a general look to help us think through the matter.
The concept of “holy war” is found in both Islam and Christianity; and in both religions it has been variously interpreted as a spiritual war, or by the militants as a physical war. The period of the crusades is certainly a dark period in Church history, and we with the privilege of looking back can see the problems, biblically and historically. But we also know that the crusaders truly wanted to help Christians in other parts of the world who were in distress, wanted to do something noble for Christ, prayed and fasted before many of the battles, desired forgiveness of sins, and for what it is worth demonstrated real devotion and courage. And this makes the assessment more difficult–of them then, and of the modern events now.
The subject of the crusades usually focuses on a period of a couple of hundred years, from 1095 to 1291 A.D., in the Holy Land. But crusading occurred over a longer period, and continued even to the 17th century. But more importantly, it is just one part of the religious animosity and warfare that stretched back a millennium. We have already surveyed how the Islamic wars dominated that part of the world for a number of centuries before the crusades. A Byzantine, predominantly Christian, empire had been driven out by the forces of Islam, to create an Islamic empire. But they continued to spread along the seabord, and up into southern Europe. Their expansion was stopped, though, in a number of European places. And the Byzantine Empire was reduced to Asia Minor.
For some time there was peaceful co-existence in the Holy Land between religious groups, albeit under Islamic Law and tribute. But there were tensions, and one major crisis came with the ruler al-Hakim (“the wise”, but really “the mad”). He was fanatical, bringing terror to Jews, Christians, and even Moslems; he burned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. One night he went on a nocturnal ride and was never heard of again, to the relief of many. His son gave permission to rebuild the church.
A significant turning point in the frequent struggle for power came with the invasion of Turkoman nomads, called Seljuks, from central Asia. They were converts to Islam, and therefore more zealous than others; they began an inter-Moslem war, quickly taking over Persia, Iraq, Armenia, and Egypt. They seized the land routes and harrassed Christian pilgrims, controlled Jerusalem, and suppressed Christian worship. It was if Hakim had returned from the dead.
The Crusades
There were many reasons: concern for the spread of this new and feared religion, outrage over the occupation of Christian holy sites, persecution of Christian pilgrims and worshipers, and destruction of churches. There were also elements that prompted people to crusade: the militarization of society at that time with a militant papacy, a hunger for forgiveness, a quest for honor, and a certain amount of restlessnesss. Arabs usually say that the Crusaders were simply restlessness, needing somewhere to fight, and were barbaric, and that the Moslems were fighting a defensive war. That is surely one-sided propaganda–but it is what the people believe. There were legitimate and illegitimate reasons for the wars, on both sides; and there were atrocities on both sides.
First Crusade (1095-1099)
The vision for the crusade came from Pope Urban II; it was preached by Peter the Hermit (the sermons had to persuade the people of the vision and call them to service), and waged under the leadership of Baldwin of Boulogne and various other Frankish lords. It started with the disastrous “People’s Crusade,” but ended with the military conquest of Jerusalem. Along the way German knights slaughtered Jews in Worms, Mainz, Trier, Neuss, and Prague, reasoning that they too were enemies of Christianity (who often sided with Islam).
The outcome of the first crusade was the conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, under Baldwin I. The defeat of Jerusalem was not easy, but eventually achieved–a major bloody slaughter (under rules of warfare, if a city surrendered it was given peace or passage; if not, there were no prisoners; because the city did not surrender, it was utterly put to the sword). This is remembered by Arab history tellers.
But gaining the victory was one thing, holding the land was another. After the defeat of Jerusalem, most of the crusaders went home, leaving the conquered lands defenseless for the new king. An order of knights, the Order of the Hospitallers of St John, was established to care for the sick and defend the pilgrims. It lasted some 600 years, moving out of the land to Malta when the land fell (then known as the Knights of Malta). Also, the Order of the Templers was formed with their headquarters on the temple mount in Jerusalem. Their charter was written by Bernard of Clairvaux.
Second Crusade (1145-1148)
Edessa in Syria had fallen, so this crusade was planned to take it back. Bernard preached this one, supporting the “fighting friars,” or Templars. There was far less interest for this crusade than the first, especially since the first crusaders returned and found their lands and families gone. But even after it started it did not turn out well. In this campaign the Germans could not get along, and were defeated in Asia Minor; the crusade could not take Edessa, and so tried to take Damascus back. But they were defeated in that attempt, and therefore criticized, and very disillusioned.
Third Crusade (1187-1191)
Jerusalem had now fallen back to Islam, so this crusade sought to re-capture it. The holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Phillip II of France, Richard Lionheart of England and Pope Gregory VIII were behind it. Their main opponent was Saladin, a Muslem Kurd from northern Iraq. Over the course of these fights Saladin defeated them, the major blow coming at the Horns of Hattin, a disaster for the knights. On a hill west of the Sea of Galilee Saladin cut off the route of the nights to the water in the sea, burned the fields where they were, and them too in their armor. Saladin went on to capture 50 castles that the crusaders had built.
But in the battle for Jerusalem the people threatened to destroy Islamic shrines if they were not given a peace treaty, and so a compromise was reached. Saladin’s empire stretched from Turkey to Egypt, but he had to leave the crusaders some cities, such as Acre, on the Mediterranean coast near modern Haifa, thanks to the victories of Richard. Out of this the Order of the Teutonic Knights was formed, remaining in later times in the Germanic states.
Fourth Crusade (1198-1204)
This was an attempt to defeat Egypt and regain control of that part of the land. But there was conflict before Egypt was ever on the horizon. Pope Innocent III launched the struggle against German opponents; the Cistercians preached it against the sect known as Albigensians, who were massacred. When the crusaders finally focused on their mission, they arranged a deal in Venice to transport the troops to Egypt, but could not pay, so they agreed to conquer a city in the Adriatic for the Venetians. After this they got into a war in Constantinople, and relations were ruined. It was a disaster.
Fifth Crusade (1217-1221)
Another plan was launched to defeat Egypt. A children’s crusade of all things in 1212 was a disaster; those who made it to the southern coasts of Europe and found passage to Egypt either ended up enslaved or died in shipwrecks. The real crusade managed to take a strategic tower in Egypt, and so the Moslims offered to give up Jerusalem. Then inland attacks failed and the crusaders retreated. St Francis accompanied them on this crusade, preaching to both sides. Afterward the Teutonic Knights were commissioned to take Prussia.
Sixth Crusade (1228-1229)
The pope, Gregory IX, and emperor, Frederick II, wanted to retake Jerusalem and the holy land, because the other crusades had not succeeded. Frederick vowed to go, then backed out; so the pope excommunicated him for failing his vow. He made a treaty to obtain Jerusalem instead, but not the temple mount. He was excommunicated again for not gaining total victory. He staged a crown wearing ceremony at the church, but the pope placed Jerusalem under interdict. This was not a true crusade, but a struggle for religious power over Jerusalem.
Seventh Crusade (1248-1250)
This was a purely political crusade to defeat Egypt finally, the center of Islamic power. Louis IX of France (St. Louis) and Pope Innocent IV were the leaders. But in the battle the crusaders were surrounded, Louis was held for ransom, and malaria and other diseases decimated the troops. But the invasion led to the change in leadership within Islam to the Mamlukes–their leader was Baybars.
Eighth Crusade (1267-1272)
Baybars took Nazareth, Jaffa, and Antioch by 1271. The crusade sought to re-capture the holy land fortresses. In the process King Louis was sidetracked at Tunis in a war, and died of disease; Edward of England arrived too late to help Louis, but went to Acre to help save it. In 1291 Acre fell to the Mamlukes, and the Christian presence in the land came to an end.
Observations
The crusades were a bad idea, but in the times understandable, and probably unavoidable. But the errors of those days do not mean devout Christians were not involved, or that they were only interested in land and power. The Christians learned a lot about crusading from jihad–the promise of forgiveness of sins for crusaders, guarantee of heaven if they died, and making the wars “religious” or “holy” when they were often merely conquests. The crusades did stop the spread of Islam into Europe, and gave western Europe a new identity. After all, they started as a response to jihad.
The preaching and the music that came from the period remain a wonderful window on devotion and piety. Country churches (for the friars) sprang up everywhere. Art, manuscripts, and architecture spread throughout the world. But the problem never went away, and the people of Islam have a long memory.
The piece above is wildly biased, but not as off-truth as this one below:
Islam’s Religious War with Everyone
April 22, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield 247 Comments
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islamFew divides are as impossible to bridge as those of religion. You either believe or you don’t.
When it comes to Islam, non-Muslims are expected to take its goodwill on faith. If you believe your eyes and ears, Islam and violence go together like peanut butter and jelly. But if you believe Muslims and their spin doctors with academic degrees, Muslims are the victims of other religions.
If Muslims fighting Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists are the victims of non-Muslims, what are we to make of Muslims fighting other Muslims in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? Religious civil wars make it hard to believe that Muslims are the victims of other religions instead of the authors of their own violence.
Religions have a long history of not getting along with one another, but there is only one religion that has never gotten along with any other religion, is engaging in a religious war with every religion that exists, with atheists who have no religion, and even with its own co-religionists.
Is all this violence someone else’s fault? Or is it Islam’s fault?
Muslim hostility to Christians and Jews is not a phenomenon that began with the modern State of Israel or American foreign policy.
Muslims have warred with Christians and Jews as minorities and persecuted them as majorities. Academic apologists claim that Muslim hostility toward Christians derived from an ongoing conflict, but at no time during the history of Islam until the twentieth century did the Jews have a functioning state.
Israel has conveniently become the focus and explanation for Muslim hostility toward Jews, but that fails to explain over a thousand years of Muslim hatred and persecution … long before Herzl or the IDF.
Why did Muslims persecute and kill Jews long before Zionism was even a word? For the same reason that they killed Christians.
Islam hated Judaism and Christianity from the start. The Koran urges Muslims not to befriend Jews or Christians (Koran 5:51) speaks of “enmity and hatred” with Christians (Koran 5:15) and the Jews (Koran 5:65) who are also to be cursed. The Jews are accused of “creating disorder” (Koran 5:65) and Christians are accused of worshiping their priests (Koran 9:31). The Jews and Christians believe in evil things (Koran 4:52) and Allah’s curse will be upon them (Koran 9:30).
Muslims don’t hate and kill Jews because of Israel. They hate Israel because it is Jewish.
September 11 was part of an ongoing war against Christians dating back over a thousand years.
The real reason why a Muslim carries out a terrorist attack in New York or Boston is the same reason why a church gets burned in Egypt or bombed in Syria. It’s the same reason why teenage British girls get raped and why the Christian population of the Middle East has shrunk from a quarter to a tenth.
Everything else is just Muslim war propaganda that only fools and appeasers take at face value.
The Koran’s scriptural hatred encouraged Muslim warlords to spread Islam through the mass murder, enslavement and rape of Jews and Christians. The legacy of hatred began with the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from what is today Saudi Arabia and the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians and Jews continues into the modern era.
It is this old hatred that is behind the terrorism against Israeli Jews and Egyptian Christians. It is not a new hatred, but an old one.
The religious basis for everything from Hamas’ war against Israel to Al Qaeda’s war on America derives from these and other verses in the Koran, from teachings in the Hadiths and later rulings of Islamic law.
Terrorism against Christians and Jews cannot be detached from Islam because it is Islam.
When Muslims chant the old genocidal battle cry, “Khybar khaybar ya yahoos,” at Oxford or Toulouse University or when University of California Professor Hatem Bazian recites the Hadith that states, “The Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews”; the fiction that this is a new conflict dating back to 1948 unravels.
If Islam’s conflict were only with Christians and Jews, it might be dismissed as an old rivalry. But Islam, at least scripturally, hates Jews and Christians less than it hates every other religion out there.
While Jews and Christians have the provisional status of People of the Book, second class citizens, the rest of the world is treated as idolaters and polytheists and faces an even more unrelenting genocide.
If the Koran is nasty toward Christians and Jews, it’s even worse when it comes to everyone else. “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them” (Koran 9:5), “Kill them wherever you meet them” (Koran 2:192) and “When you meet in regular battle those who disbelieve, smite their necks” (Koran 47:5).
These are not mere words. The Muslim conquests of India led to the mass murder of as many as 80 million Hindus. The Hindu Kush mountain range commemorates a small part of the genocide that took place. Likewise the Buddhists were massacred in large numbers.
Islam does not win many religious debates. It achieves its victory through the Koranic command, “Fight those who believe not in Allah” (Koran 9:29).
This isn’t ancient history; it’s why Muslims continue to kill Hindus and Buddhists today.
Apologists will claim that it’s the Hindus and Buddhists, like the Christians and Jews, who are persecuting Muslims. But it’s hard to argue that Hindu and Buddhist minorities in Pakistan are persecuting Muslims.
(NO, BUT IT IS EASY TO ARGUE THAT BUDDHISTS IN MYANMAR ARE KILLING MUSLIMS!)
Not even the most shameless apologist for Islam would attempt to claim that Zoroastrians are being persecuted in Iran… because that tiny oppressed minority is persecuting the Islamic majority. The persecution of the Bahai in Iran or the Kalash in Pakistan show that Muslim religious intolerance exists even entirely divorced from foreign affairs or past history.
Islam is not intolerant as a response to intolerance. It is inherently intolerant.
Ten of the fifteen most religiously intolerant countries in the world are Muslim. There is no way to square that with the claim that Muslims are the victims of religious intolerance, rather than its perpetrators.
Muslims engage in religious conflicts both as majorities and minorities. They engage in religious conflicts with both minorities and majorities. They persecute other religions regardless of whether they are old or new, even if there is no existing history of conflict. They are motivated by a relentless xenophobia.
It doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as your belief differs from theirs. You can believe in nothing at all. You can even believe in another version of Islam.
When Muslims run out of non-Muslims to persecute, they attack other Muslims. In Libya and Tunisia, Salafists have targeted Sufis. Syria and Iraq are being torn apart by conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites.
In Australia, a Sheikh prays, “Oh Allah, count the Buddhists and the Hindus one by one. Oh Allah, count them and kill them to the very last one.” On Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Spiritual Guide,Yusuf al-Qaradawi prayed for the Jews, “O Allah, do not spare a single one of them. O Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” A Gaza sermon demands, “Strike the Jews… the Christians… Allah count them and kill them to the last one.”
This is genocide. It’s also Islam. Not a tiny minority of it either.
Islam did not expand by treating minorities well. It grew through genocide, slavery and war. That is still how it is growing today.
Islamic terrorism is not a protest movement; it is a new wave of religious conquests, spreading fear and death into the lands to be conquered. Into the Dar-al-Harb. The House of War. A Muslim bombing is not a cry for help by the oppressed, it is a demand that the bombed submit to their new Muslim oppressors.
from: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/islams-religious-war-with-everyone/
Doug’s 2cents:
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It matters how quickly anyone at all like a STATESMAN or STATES Woman stands side by side would-be enemies and sits down and resolves it. If not:
Both of these one-sided mono-tribes (like a diatribe but more parochial, less visionary) only go to show why the often-attacked Muslims living between Saudi Arabia and Western Afghanistan and all parts in between,except, at least this time,Iran and Saudi Arabia. Wait. Saudia Arabia? The same country that willingly over pumped oil at the bequest of Barack Obama,thus screwing Russia into a deep economic grave,yes that samekingdom,whose prince was OsamaBin Laden,and who sent 15 of the 19 911 hijackers our way: HAS ALWAYS BEEN OUR FRIEND. Read Pulitzer Prize winner Craig Unger’s House of Bush House of Saud. Read about the Carlyle Group run by Papa Bush (good health to you sir) which invests the Saudi money for them,buying, amoung otherthings, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts.
Thus,if they are our friends (See Farrenheit 911, Michael Moore) AND attacked the World Trade Center, And put a “dying of liver cancer” Osama up as a target (one that was hit,perhaps AFTER Bin Laden died of cancerous causes?) and icing Obama as a can-do Bush style hawk.
Less than a week after the DI and Dodi thing I wrote of this possibly being the beginning of World War Three. I wish I could say I was dead wrong back then,but by the looks of it,the potential for such a conflagration is growing by the hour.
We dove in headlong on this apparently FINAL Christian Muslim war when Dodi and Di perished in Paris. The latest 12 dead in France at a completely likely site, when the country was in triple lock-down for terrorist attacks,and that that Charlie Hebdo,the satirical newspaper that wisecracks about all religions and fool-hearty human behavior, was once already firebombed.
Worse yet President Hollande listed this magazine’s building as being “securely safe” or Safely secured,”
to which the electronosphere responded,post facto:
Je Suis
Charlie
But, race fans, and for those keeping score at home,this USA versus the Muslims,and then whipping up Shia versus Sunni with stunts like using former Republican Attorney General to defend Saddam Hussein, thus allowing Hussein to keep whipping up Sunni-Shia Hatred,and before that,in the 2000 election, ummm, Ramsey Clark was Al Gore’s lead defense lawyer. oh? Why was Al using a Republican lawyer? Why did Clark suggest only recounting 7 counties when the Florida law required a recount of all 100? OH, AH, yes, because recounting all 100 found Gore an overwhelming winner. And that doesn’t include the 16,000 African Americans that were turned away at the polls,which pales in comparison to the 40,000 that were turned away in North Carolina the same year.
This mega war fix has BEEN IN since 1980 one could figure. Those of you who are not yet nervous or with contingency plans might wanna spend sometime planning for “hard times.” Only hard times will allow our government to payback its debt (see Southern Europe, Ireland,etc.).So find a way to join a co-op that grows its own food. Find a way to grow your own. Make close and closer friends of all ages and persuasions. Philosophical overlap is not really required,a simple commitment to survive can cause many folks to work together,if we only will. The media has been driving wedges into our society in multiple attacks from differing angles.
Copyright, Doug Stuber, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given, and with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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