The Crusades - The First Holy war

[quirk]

by Andrew Curry - Published in U.S. News on 4/8/2002

It was the fall of 1187, and an emissary from the besieged city of Jerusalem had come to beg Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, for mercy. After barely four days of assaults, the Christian defenders saw that Saladin had them hopelessly outmatched. Waiting in his tent outside the city's walls, the Muslim ruler knew both sides had a lot riding on the outcome of this battle.

For the city's defenders, the prospect of Saladin's wrath loomed. The last time Jerusalem was sacked by an invading army–a Christian one–its narrow streets ran red with blood. For Saladin, his honor depended on capturing Jerusalem. All summer his armies had battled their way north through the Holy Land, sweeping through the Christian fiefs like an angry desert wind, with only one goal: recapturing the holy city that had been occupied by European invaders for 88 years.

Now the sultan stood on the hills north of Jerusalem. But the Christian emissary trudging toward him had no prize to offer, only surrender. For days Saladin's men had bombarded the city from the heights to the north, finally breaching St. Stephen's Gate. The few defenders who remained knew that prolonging the fight would only worsen the consequences of defeat.

And so a triumphant Saladin entered Jerusalem on Oct. 2, 1187. For the sultan's army, it was a moment of both joy and sadness. The

Christians had profaned some of Islam's holiest sites. The al-Aqsa mosque had been used as a stable for horses. Pieces of the rock from which Mohammed was said to have ascended to heaven had been chipped away to sell in Constantinople.

But the victorious Saladin forbade acts of vengeance. There were no more deaths, no violence. A token ransom was arranged for the thousands of residents. Saladin and his brother paid for hundreds of the poorest themselves and arranged guards for the caravans of refugees.

Sound familiar? If not, don't feel bad. Saladin doesn't get much play in Western history books. You're more likely to read about Richard the Lion-Hearted, the leader of the European expedition to retake Jerusalem–and even he is most often remembered as a peripheral character in Robin Hood tales. But ask most Muslims, and they'll tell you all about Saladin and his generosity in the face of Christian aggression and hatred. And they'll be right.

The battle between Saladin and Richard marked the high point of the Crusades, the first major clash between Islam and Western Christendom, which lasted more than three centuries. And though they are only faint in the Western consciousness, in the Muslim world the Crusades still loom large in cultural memory. When Osama bin Laden declared his own jihad in 1998, he accused America of "[spearheading] the crusade against the Islamic nation." And in a tape released to his followers last year, he promised that the world would "see again Saladin carrying his sword, the blood of unbelievers dripping from it."

His words tapped into a reservoir of ill will. "The impact of the Crusades created a historical memory which is with us today–the memory of a long European onslaught," says Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, D.C. Its legacy was profound. For Muslims, then probably the strongest and most vibrant civilization on the globe, the Crusader victories and the destruction that followed were a confidence-shaking blow. At the same time, the Crusades were a tipping point for Europe, pushing the continent out of an isolated dark age and into the modern world.

Christian soldiers. From their beginnings in 1095, the Crusades inspired more passion than anyone expected. The First Crusade was preceded by droughts and famine and heralded by meteor showers. The idea of an expedition to reclaim Jerusalem from the unbelievers seized the imagination of people from all social classes. Led by deeply religious knights like Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred, armies of "Latin" Christians (followers of the Church of Rome) from France, Germany, England, and elsewhere marched through what is now Hungary to Constantinople, the great center of Christianity in the East.

When the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, they looked like one undifferentiated barbaric mess to their Muslim foes, who called them all Franks. But the unsophisticated Franks were tough. In 1099 they surrounded Jerusalem, assaulting the well-defended city for weeks. Finally, Godfrey and Tancred broke through, and the Crusaders poured in. Bloodthirsty after their fiercely fought siege, they swarmed over the walls and set upon the city's inhabitants–Muslim, Jewish, and even Christian. Later they boasted of wading through the city's holy sites knee deep in blood. Their brutality horrified the Muslim world. "Amongst the Moslems, who had been ready hitherto to accept the Franks as another factor in the tangled politics of the time, there was henceforward a clear determination that the Franks must be driven out," writes British historian Steven Runciman. "When later, wiser Latins in the East sought to find some basis on which Christian and Moslem could work together, the memory of the massacre stood always in the way."

It took almost a century before a leader strong enough to unite the Muslim Middle East appeared. When Saladin finally retook Jerusalem, it was Christendom's turn to be shocked. The archbishop of Tyre, a Christian stronghold north of Jerusalem, hurried west to Italy on a black-sailed ship with news of Jerusalem's fall, along with letters begging for help–and a crude drawing of an Arab beating a bloodied Jesus. Chroniclers say that when Pope Urban III learned of Saladin's victory, he died of grief. His successor, Gregory VIII, sent messengers to spread the word of a new Crusade to wrest back the holy city. "Every person of ordinary discretion is well able to appreciate both the greatness of the danger and the fierceness of the barbarians who thirst for Christian blood," he wrote. "The goal of those who profane the holy places is nothing short of sweeping away the name of God." Echoing Urban II, the pope promised salvation through violence: He would "acquit before God all the sins of those who would bear the sign of the cross to go recover the Promised Land, provided that they had confessed and were truly penitent," wrote contemporary chronicler William of Tyre.

The pope's message of salvation and the opportunity for earthly glory drew the most powerful kings of Europe–like the young Richard the Lion-Hearted, who sailed east leading armies of knights and peasants. Expeditions like Richard's would be repeated on a smaller scale over and over again for almost five centuries, from 1095, when the First Crusade was declared, to 1578, when the last true Crusade was launched against Turks in Morocco. Though historians used to write of eight distinct Crusades, scholars today argue that "Crusades were going to the Holy Land all the time during the 200 years that the Franks were able to hold onto their states in the Middle East," as author Karen Armstrong writes in Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World. "Long after they lost these states it was not uncommon for kings and barons to take the cross and vow to march on Jerusalem." Many scholars now also believe that crusading eventually spanned the entire continent of Europe, as the church used it to fight "heretical" Christians and convert pagans at sword point.

The First Crusade, in which wide swaths of the Holy Land were seized by Latin Christians, is the only one that can be considered a European victory. Crusades thereafter were either catastrophes or barely successful attempts to preserve European strongholds in the Middle East known as the "Latin kingdoms." But the Third Crusade is the best remembered, perhaps because of the personalities involved. Like Richard the Lion-Hearted, the handsome and temperamental king of England: Though known today as a paragon of chivalry, Richard was a merciless adversary. The son of Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France and England, he was already a veteran warrior and strategist when he arrived in the Holy Land in 1191 at the age of 33. He took a different view of war from Saladin's. After one battle, he had the captured men–16,000 of them, according to William of Tyre's occasionally inflated account–beheaded within full view of their own armies. For 16 months, Saladin and Richard battled across the parched plains of the Holy Land. Finally, ill and leading an exhausted army, Richard negotiated a truce with Saladin and headed home. He never returned.

Colonial West. But Richard did come back in the popular imagination–if in a different guise. Marching into a Jerusalem captured from the Turks in 1917, a British general, Sir Edmund Allenby, proudly declared "today the wars of the Crusaders are completed," and the British press celebrated his victory with cartoons of Richard the Lion-Hearted looking down at Jerusalem above the caption "At last my dream come true." The colonial powers glorified the Crusaders as their ideological forebears.

At the same time, Western expansion into the Middle East embittered Arabs. "For [Muslims], imperialism is a dirty word, and they turned the Western memory of the Crusades on its head and demonized it," says Jonathan Riley-Smith, a historian at the University of Cambridge in Britain and author of The Crusades: A Short History. Angry Muslim nationalists adopted the Crusades as a convenient metaphor. It still works. "Since the late 19th century, Western imperialism and Zionism were portrayed as a modern crusade," says Hebrew University historian Benjamin Kedar. "This is why the topic is so timely in Arab political discourse."

Undoubtedly, George W. Bush had a different sense of the term in mind after September 11 when he told the nation "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." But Bush's statement resounded like thunder in the Muslim world. "It was precisely the worst word he could have used–it allowed bin Laden and others to conceptualize the nature of the struggle into resisting Christian and Jewish invaders and point out the hostility of the West to the Muslim world," Ahmed says. "Crusader lore is only part of this rage, but it's a significant part."

This rage is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning just over a century ago, when memories of the Crusades were revived as a historical analogy to colonialism. Before Europe's colonial expansion into the Middle East, Muslim chroniclers paid little attention to the Crusades. "In actual historical reality, the Crusades were far more important for the West than for the Muslim world," says John Voll, associate director of the Georgetown University Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

For decades, Western historians held on to the idea that the Crusades were a colonial venture motivated by just about everything but the cross: greed, lack of opportunity in Europe, territorial expansion, or just plain aggression. Few gave credence to the idea that the Crusaders were motivated by genuine religious feeling. But recently Crusades scholarship has recognized that faith could move people to violence as easily as could greed or land. The best example is the First Crusade, called by Pope Urban II. Eager to unite warring Christians, on Nov. 27, 1095, he spoke to a massive crowd gathered near Clermont in France. Describing the cruelties inflicted by Muslims on Christian pilgrims trying to visit Jerusalem and the defeats suffered by the Byzantine Christians, he called on all of Western Christendom to rescue their Eastern brethren. "They should leave off slaying each other and fight instead a righteous war, doing the work of God, and God would lead them. For those that died in battle there would be absolution and the remission of sins," Runciman writes. "Here they were poor and unhappy; there they would be joyful and prosperous and true friends of God."

The response was tremendous. Urban's speech was interrupted by cries of "Deus lo volt"–"God wills it." Hundreds crowded up to Urban begging permission to go on the holy expedition. Soon tens of thousands of commoners and knights were heading off to the Holy Land. Across Europe, preachers called the faithful to sew crosses on their clothes, to mark them until they succeeded in their quest.

United under the cross and ruled by strict religious principles, the Crusaders were able to set aside their differences. "Among those people who spoke so many different languages there were the strongest pledges of concord and friendship," reads a Crusader's code written in 1147. "In addition to this they enforced the severest laws, for example that a death was to be demanded for a death, a tooth for a tooth. They forbade every kind of display of rich clothes; and women were not allowed to go out in public." The key to Urban's call was a revolutionary (and doomed) theology: salvation through the sword. "There is a very powerful devotional element," says Riley-Smith. "West European Catholics believed they could aid their salvation by fighting the infidel in the East. [Crusading is] as much a penance as fasting on bread and water. . . . This idea is without precedent in Christian history."

"Milk and honey." Jerusalem was the medieval Christians' equivalent of Mecca, Christ's tomb their quest. To take up the cross in the city's defense was a deeply spiritual act. And more: Ever on the edge of starvation, usually tied to a lord's land, superstitious peasants saw the journey as a road to heaven. "To ignorant minds the distinction between Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem was not very clearly defined," writes Runciman in History of the Crusades. Fiery itinerant preachers like Peter the Hermit, whose army of starving peasants had no place in Urban's vision of an orderly march on Jerusalem, promised paradise. "Many . . . believed that he was promising to lead them out of their present miseries to the land flowing with milk and honey of which the Scriptures spoke," Runciman writes.

Peter's success was cited over and over again in the years to come. The defeats suffered by better-organized Crusades led many to believe that it was the humble who were destined to succeed, not the proud, rich military classes. In the end, these "People's Crusades" ended in disaster too. None ever reached the Holy Land, and most of the peasant Crusaders were either slaughtered as they plundered their way across Europe or disbanded before ever reaching a port. Without the resources to reach the Holy Land, most turned on more-convenient targets, namely Europe's Jewish communities. "[Why] are we going to seek out our profanity and to take vengeance on the Ishmaelites for our Messiah, when here are the Jews who murdered and crucified him" was the rationale, as recorded by a Jewish eyewitness.

But persuading landed knights to take up the cross took more than antisemitic rants and vague stories of the Promised Land. Europe's warrior class, the fighting force Pope Urban II really wanted, had a lot to lose: Crusaders faced death, disease, or capture. There were also more-mundane risks. A knight's lands and title could be stolen in his absence. If his Crusade failed, the returning knight risked the scorn of those who blamed him for failing to do God's work. And the costs involved in crusading were a risk in themselves. King Louis IX of France (later to become St. Louis) set out in 1249 on crusade from a harbor he had specially constructed with an artificial canal and grand tower, stocked with plentiful supplies. He spent six times his annual revenue on the venture, which ended when he was captured and forced to pay a 400,000-pound ransom. "Most Crusaders engaged in a dangerous, unpleasant, unprofitable, and extremely expensive enterprise, and they do not seem to have expected anything else," says Riley-Smith.

Though most were military and financial fiascoes, the Crusades had a long-term impact on European civilization that went beyond finding an outlet for the violence of warring Christian kingdoms. "[The Crusades] made the Continent more cosmopolitan and gave Europeans a far greater awareness of the wider world. Like all wars, veterans came back and had seen things they never would have if they had stayed in their villages," says James Reston Jr., author of Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade. The stories they brought back also sparked a creative blaze in Europe. Beginning in the 12th century, or around time of the First Crusade, literature and verse flowered in the form of memoir and song. Coming after the virtual silence that marked the Dark Ages, the proliferation of Crusader epics like the French Song of Roland is referred to by some scholars as the "12th-century Renaissance."

Many chose not to return at all, especially second and third sons with no chance of inheriting land back in Europe. Those who stayed created a cultural, military, and mercantile outpost in the Holy Land. The fortresses they built after the First Crusade were usually transplanted reflections of the European feudal system, but over time the "Latin kingdoms" in the Holy Land also served as a powerful integrating force. Contact with the libraries of the Arab world opened up new worlds for the isolated scholars of Europe, who gradually gained access to a wealth of ancient Greek texts that had been preserved for centuries in Arabic. "Violent interactions were paralleled by economic and conceptual exchanges," argues Georgetown's Voll. "In some ways the Crusades' positive intellectual dimensions outweigh the negative impact."

First contact."The Crusades were an absolute failure, but they did integrate European travelers and traders into an ongoing world system," says Janet Abu-Lughod, author of Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. Increased demand for Middle Eastern luxury items meant that Europeans had to come up with trade goods of their own, helping build industries like wool and textiles. "By stimulating an interest in the goods of the East, they had a double-back effect on the development of European economies." Even later failures may have hidden some positive benefits. The end of the Crusades and the Latin kingdoms meant the end of easy access to Asian trade goods, but not to demand. Some historians have speculated that the closing of the Middle East to European merchants in the 15th century accelerated the voyages of discovery that led to the New World.

But even the Europeans' increasing sophistication did little to redeem them in the eyes of the Muslims whose land they occupied and controlled. To the Arabs they were "illiterate barbarians, for whom physical force is a supreme virtue, their religion is a despised polytheism, their medicine a collection of superstitions," writes historian Joshua Prawer in The Crusaders' Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages. "Far from feeling inferior to the conqueror, the conquered regarded himself not only as his equal but by far his superior."

More than nine centuries after Urban II called the first Crusade, the legacy of misunderstanding and animosity is still with us today. In the West, many of the most lasting misperceptions of Islam stem from that time. In the Arab and Muslim world, the Crusades have made an unfortunate rhetorical comeback. "Such analogies are really not very helpful to understand the Crusades or present-day realities–they obscure rather than clarify," says Kedar. "People get so obsessed with . . . the past that they don't react to the reality but to the reflection." With that reflection distorted almost beyond recognition by rhetoric and misunderstanding, a clearer vision of the past has never been more important.

http://submission.org/christians/crusades.html

[ciaranxavier]

crusades are one of many crimes committed by the church.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

crusades are one of many crimes committed by the church.

well ciaran this quote further highlights your ignorence to historical facts,such as there would have been no need for a "crusade" if the islamic armys had not marched on christian lands,the crusades were a defensive measure,the islamic armies were forcing there way from the middle east up into eorope and in fact got as far as half way through france untill the christian armies fought them all the way back,the muslim armies were the aggressors to begin with the christians had no choice but to defend themselves,this is a fact that is commonly over looked.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Historical facts say that Islam has been imperialistic—and would still like to be, if only for religious reasons. Many Muslim clerics, scholars, and activists, for example, would like to impose Islamic law around the world. Historical facts say that Islam, including Muhammad, launched their own Crusades against Christianity long before the European Crusades.

Today, Muslim polemicists and missionaries, who believe that Islam is the best religion in the world, claim that the West has stolen Islamic lands and that the West (alone) is imperialistic.One hardline Muslim emailer to me said about the developed West and the undeveloped Islamic countries: 'You stole our lands' and then he held his finger on the exclamation key to produce a long string of them.

Thus imperialism, a word that has reached metaphysical levels and that is supposed to stop all debates and answer all questions, explains why Islamic countries have not kept up with the West. The emailer did not look inwardly, as if his own culture and religion may play a role. Instead, it is always the West's fault.

Westerners—even academics—accept the notion that the West alone was aggressive. It seems that Islam is always innocent and passive. It is difficult to uncover the source of this Western self—loathing. It is, however, a pathology that seems to strike Westerners more than other people around the globe. This anti—West pathology shows up in Westerners' hatred for the European Crusades in the Medieval Age.

It must be admitted that there is much to dislike about the European Crusades. If they are contrasted with the mission and ministry of Jesus and the first generations of Christians, then the Crusades do not look so good. But did the Europeans launch the first Crusade in a mindless, bloodthirsty and irrational way, or were there more pressing reasons? Were they the only ones to be militant?

The purpose of this article is not to justify or defend European Crusades, but to explain them, in part—though scholarship can go a long way to defend and justify them

In this article, the word 'crusade' (derived from the Latin word for 'cross') in an Islamic context means a holy war or jihad. It is used as a counterweight to the Muslim accusation that only the Europeans launched crusades. Muslims seem to forget that they had their own, for several centuries before the Europeans launched theirs as a defense against the Islamic expansion.

We will employ a partial timeline spanning up to the first European response to Islamic imperialism, when Pope Urban II launched his own Crusade in 1095. The timeline mostly stays within the parameters of the Greater Middle East. The data in bold print are of special interest for revealing early Islamic atrocities, their belief in heroism in warfare, or politics today.

The Islamic Crusades were very successful. The Byzantines and Persian Empires had worn themselves out with fighting, so a power vacuum existed. Into this vacuum stormed Islam.

After the timeline, two questions are posed, which are answered at length

The Timeline

630 Two years before Muhammad's death of a fever, he launches the Tabuk Crusades, in which he led 30,000 jihadists against the Byzantine Christians. He had heard a report that a huge army had amassed to attack Arabia, but the report turned out to be a false rumor. The Byzantine army never materialized. He turned around and went home, but not before extracting 'agreements' from northern tribes. They could enjoy the 'privilege' of living under Islamic 'protection' (read: not be attacked by Islam), if they paid a tax (jizya).

This tax sets the stage for Muhammad's and the later Caliphs' policies. If the attacked city or region did not want to convert to Islam, then they paid a jizya tax. If they converted, then they paid a zakat tax. Either way, money flowed back to the Islamic treasury in Arabia or to the local Muslim governor.

632—634 Under the Caliphate of Abu Bakr the Muslim Crusaders reconquer and sometimes conquer for the first time the polytheists of Arabia. These Arab polytheists had to convert to Islam or die. They did not have the choice of remaining in their faith and paying a tax. Islam does not allow for religious freedom.

633 The Muslim Crusaders, led by Khalid al—Walid, a superior but bloodthirsty military commander, whom Muhammad nicknamed the Sword of Allah for his ferocity in battle (Tabari, 8:158 / 1616—17), conquer the city of Ullays along the Euphrates River (in today's Iraq). Khalid captures and beheads so many that a nearby canal, into which the blood flowed, was called Blood Canal (Tabari 11:24 / 2034—35).

634 At the Battle of Yarmuk in Syria the Muslim Crusaders defeat the Byzantines. Today Osama bin Laden draws inspiration from the defeat, and especially from an anecdote about Khalid al—Walid. An unnamed Muslim remarks: 'The Romans are so numerous and the Muslims so few.' To this Khalid retorts: 'How few are the Romans, and how many the Muslims! Armies become numerous only with victory and few only with defeat, not by the number of men. By God, I would love it . . . if the enemy were twice as many' (Tabari, 11:94 / 2095). Osama bin Ladin quotes Khalid and says that his fighters love death more than we in the West love life. This philosophy of death probably comes from a verse like Sura 2:96. Muhammad assesses the Jews: '[Prophet], you are sure to find them [the Jews] clinging to life more eagerly than any other people, even polytheists' (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford UP, 2004; first insertion in brackets is Haleem's; the second mine).

634—644 The Caliphate of Umar ibn al—Khattab, who is regarded as particularly brutal.

635 Muslim Crusaders besiege and conquer of Damascus

636 Muslim Crusaders defeat Byzantines decisively at Battle of Yarmuk.

637 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq at the Battle of al—Qadisiyyah (some date it in 635 or 636)

638 Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.

638—650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.

639—642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.

641 Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.

643—707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.

644 Caliph Umar is assassinated by a Persian prisoner of war; Uthman ibn Affan is elected third Caliph, who is regarded by many Muslims as gentler than Umar.

644—650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.

656 Caliph Uthman is assassinated by disgruntled Muslim soldiers; Ali ibn Abi Talib, son—in—law and cousin to Muhammad, who married the prophet's daughter Fatima through his first wife Khadija, is set up as Caliph.

656 Battle of the Camel, in which Aisha, Muhammad's wife, leads a rebellion against Ali for not avenging Uthman's assassination. Ali's partisans win.

657 Battle of Siffin between Ali and Muslim governor of Jerusalem, arbitration goes against Ali

661 Murder of Ali by an extremist; Ali's supporters acclaim his son Hasan as next Caliph, but he comes to an agreement with Muawiyyah I and retires to Medina.

661—680 the Caliphate of Muawiyyah I. He founds Umayyid dynasty and moves capital from Medina to Damascus

673—678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire

680 Massacre of Hussein (Muhammad's grandson), his family, and his supporters in Karbala, Iraq.

691 Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad's death.

705 Abd al—Malik restores Umayyad rule.

710—713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.

711—713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. This article recounts how Muslims today still grieve over their expulsion 700 years later. They seem to believe that the land belonged to them in the first place.

719 Cordova, Spain, becomes seat of Arab governor

732 The Muslim Crusaders stopped at the Battle of Poitiers; that is, Franks (France) halt Arab advance

749 The Abbasids conquer Kufah and overthrow Umayyids

756 Foundation of Umayyid amirate in Cordova, Spain, setting up an independent kingdom from Abbasids

762 Foundation of Baghdad

785 Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova

789 Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; foundation of Fez; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.

800 Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia

807 Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non—Muslim prayer houses and of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem

809 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy

813 Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country

831 Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy

850 Caliph al—Matawakkil orders the destruction of non—Muslim houses of prayer

855 Revolt of the Christians of Hims (Syria)

837—901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France

869—883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq

909 Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia

928—969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)

937 The Ikhshid, a particularly harsh Muslim ruler, writes to Emperor Romanus, boasting of his control over the holy places

937 The Church of the Resurrection (known as Church of Holy Sepulcher in Latin West) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked

960 Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam

966 Anti—Christian riots in Jerusalem

969 Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo

c. 970 Seljuks enter conquered Islamic territories from the East

973 Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids

1003 First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed

1009 Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937)

1012 Beginning of al—Hakim's oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians

1015 Earthquake in Palestine; the dome of the Dome of the Rock collapses

1031 Collapse of Umayyid Caliphate and establishment of 15 minor independent dynasties throughout Muslim Andalus

1048 Reconstruction of the Church of the Resurrection completed

1050 Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.

1055 Seljuk Prince Tughrul enters Baghdad, consolidation of the Seljuk Sultanate

1055 Confiscation of property of Church of the Resurrection

1071 Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia

1071 Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine

1073 Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)

1075 Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia

1076 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana

1085 Toledo is taken back by Christian armies

1086 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca

1090—1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands

1094 Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk invasions of his territory; Seljuks are Muslim Turkish family of eastern origins; see 970

1095 Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099

So it is only after all of the Islamic aggressive invasions that Western Christendom launches its first Crusades.

It could be argued that sometimes the Byzantine and Western European leaders did not behave exemplarily, so a timeline on that subject could be developed. And sometimes the Muslims behaved exemplarily. Both are true. However, the goal of this timeline is to balance out the picture more clearly. Many people regard Islam as an innocent victim, and the Byzantines and Europeans as bullies. This was not always the case.

Moreover, we should take a step back and look at the big picture. If Islam had stayed in Arabia and had not waged wars of conquest, then no troubles would have erupted. But the truth is this: Islam moved aggressively during the Caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar in the seventh century, with other Caliphs continuing well beyond that; only then did the Western Europeans react (see 1094).

It must be noted that Islamic expansion continues until well into the seventeenth century. For example, the Muslims Crusaders conquer Constantinople in 1453 and unsuccessfully besiege Vienna for the second time in 1683 (earlier in 1529). By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Islamic Crusades receded, due to Western resistance. Since that time until the present, Islamic civilization has not advanced very far.

Two questions are posed and then answered at length.

Besides following Muhammad, why else did the Muslims launch their Crusades out of Arabia in the first place?

It is only natural to ask why Islam launched its own Crusades long before Christendom did.

In the complicated Muslim Crusades that lasted several centuries before the European Crusades, it is difficult to come up with a grand single theory as to what launched these Crusades. Because of this difficulty, we let three scholars and two eyewitness participants analyze the motives of the early Islamic Crusades.

1. World religious conquest

Muslim polemicists like Sayyid Qutb assert that Islam's mission is to correct the injustices of the world. What he has in mind is that if Islam does not control a society, then injustice dominates it, ipso facto. But if Islam dominates it, then justice rules it (In the Shade of the Qur'an, vol. 7, pp. 8—15). Islam is expansionist and must conquer the whole world to express Allah's perfect will on this planet, so Qutb and other Muslims believe.

2. 'Unruly' energies in Arabia?

Karen Armstrong, a former nun and well—spoken, prolific author and apologist for Islam, comes up short of a satisfactory justification for the Muslim Crusades:

Once [Abu Bakr] crushed the rebellion [against Islamic rule within Arabia], Abu Bakr may well have decided to alleviate internal tensions by employing the unruly energies within the ummah [Muslim community] against external foes. Whatever the case, in 633 Muslim armies began a new series of campaigns in Persia, Syria and Iraq. (Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, New York: Ballantine, 1997, p. 226).

Armstrong also notes that the 'external foes' to Islam in Arabia in 633 are the Persians and the Byzantines, but they are too exhausted after years of fighting each other to pose a serious threat to Islam. Therefore, it moved into a 'power vacuum,' unprovoked (Armstrong p. 227). She simply does not know with certainty why Muslims marched northward out of Arabia.

3. Religion, economy, and political control

Fred M. Donner, the dean of historians specializing in the early Islamic conquests, cites three large factors for the Islamic Crusades. First, the ideological message of Islam itself triggered the Muslim ruling elite simply to follow Muhammad and his conquests; Islam had a divinely ordained mission to conquer in the name of Allah. (The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton UP, 1981, p. 270). The second factor is economic. The ruling elite 'wanted to expand the political boundaries of the new state in order to secure even more fully than before the trans—Arab commerce they had plied for a century or more' (p. 270). The final factor is political control. The rulers wanted to maintain their top place in the new political hierarchy by having aggressive Arab tribes migrate into newly conquered territories (p. 271).

Thus, these reasons they have nothing to do with just wars of self—defense. Early Islam was merely being aggressive without sufficient provocation from the surrounding Byzantine and Persian Empires.

4. Sheer thrill of conquest and martyrdom

Khalid al—Walid (d. 642), a bloodthirsty but superior commander of the Muslim armies at the time, also answers the question as to why the Muslims stormed out of Arabia, in his terms of surrender set down to the governor of al—Hirah, a city along the Euphrates River in Iraq. He is sent to call people to Islam or pay a 'protection' tax for the 'privilege' of living under Islamic rule (read: not to be attacked again) as dhimmis or second—class citizens. Says Khalid:

'I call you to God and to Islam. If you respond to the call, you are Muslims: You obtain the benefits they enjoy and take up the responsibilities they bear. If you refuse, then [you must pay] the jizyah. If you refuse the jizyah, I will bring against you tribes of people who are more eager for death than you are for life. We will fight you until God decides between us and you.' (Tabari, The Challenge to the Empires, trans. Khalid Yahya Blankinship, NY: SUNYP, 1993, vol. 11, p. 4; Arabic page 2017)

Thus, according to Khalid, religion is early Islam's primary motive (though not the only one) of conquering people.

In a short sermon, Abu Bakr says:

. . . Indeed, the reward in God's book for jihad in God's path is something for which a Muslim should love to be singled out, by which God saved [people] from humiliation, and through which He has bestowed nobility in this world and the next. (Tabari 11:80 / 2083—84)

Thus, the Caliph repeats the Quran's trade of this life for the next, in an economic bargain and in the context of jihad (cf. Suras 4:74; 9:111 and 61:10—13). This offer of martyrdom, agreeing with Donner's first factor, religious motivation, is enough to get young Muslims to sign up for and to launch their Crusades out of Arabia in the seventh century.

Khalid also says that if some do not convert or pay the tax, then they must fight an army that loves death as other people love life (see 634).

5. Improvement of life over that in Arabia

But improvement of life materially must be included in this not—so—holy call. When Khalid perceived that his Muslim Crusaders desired to return to Arabia, he pointed out how luscious the land of the Persians was:

'Do you not regard [your] food like a dusty gulch? By God, if struggle for God's sake and calling [people] to God were not required of us, and there were no consideration except our livelihood, the wise opinion would [still] have been to strike this countryside until we possess it'. . . . (Tabari 11:20 / 2031)

Khalid was from Mecca. At the time of this 'motivational' speech, the Empire of Persia included Iraq, and this is where Khalid is warring. Besides his religious goal of Islamizing its inhabitants by warfare, Khalid's goal is to 'possess' the land.

Like Pope Urban II in 1095 exhorting the Medieval Crusaders to war against the Muslim 'infidels' for the first time, in response to Muslim aggression that had been going on for centuries, Abu Bakr gives his own speech in 634, exhorting Muslims to war against the 'infidels,' though he is not as long—winded as the Pope.

Muslim polemicists believe that Islam spread militarily by a miracle from Allah. However, these five earth—bound reasons explain things more clearly.

Did the Islamic Crusades force conversions by the sword?

Historical facts demonstrate that most of the conquered cities and regions accepted the last of three options that were enforced by the later Muslim Crusaders: (1) fight and die, (2) convert and pay the zakat tax; (3) keep their Biblical faith and pay the jizya tax. Most preferred to remain in their own religion.

However, people eventually converted. After all, Islamic lands are called such for a reason—or many reasons. Why? Four Muslim polemicists whitewash the reasons people converted, so their scholarship is suspect.

1. The polemical answer

First, Malise Ruthven and Azim Nanji use the Quran to explain later historical facts:

'Islam expanded by conquest and conversion. Although it was sometimes said that the faith of Islam was spread by the sword, the two are not the same. The Koran states unequivocally, 'There is no compulsion in religion' (Sura 2:256).' (Historical Atlas of Islam, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard, 2004, 30).

According to them, the Quran says there should be no compulsion, so the historical facts conform to a sacred text. This shaky reasoning is analyzed, below.

Next, David Dakake also references Sura 2:256, and defines compulsion very narrowly. Jihad has been misrepresented as forcing Jews, Christians, and other peoples of the Middle East, Asia and Africa to convert to Islam 'on pain of death.' ('The Myth of Militant Islam,' Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition, ed. J.E.B. Lumbard, Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004, p. 13). This is too narrow a definition of compulsion, as we shall see, below.

Finally, Qutb, also citing Sura 2:256, is even more categorical:

'Never in its history did Islam compel a single human being to change his faith' (In the Shade of the Qur'an, vol. 8, p. 307).

This is absurd on its face, and it only demonstrates the tendentiousness of Islamic scholarship, which must be challenged at every turn here in the West. For more information and thorough logic, see this article.

2. The historical facts

History does not always follow Scriptures because people do not. Did the vast majority of conquered peoples make such fine distinctions, even if a general amnesty were granted to People of the Book? Maybe a few diehards did, but the majority? Most people at this time did not know how to read or could barely read, so when they saw a Muslim army outside their gates, why would they not convert, even if they waited? To Ruthven's and Nanji's credit, they come up with other reasons to convert besides the sword, such as people's fatigue with church squabbles, a few doctrinal similarities, simplicity of the conversion process, a desire to enter the ranks of the new ruling elite, and so on. But using the Quran to interpret later facts paints the history of Islam into a corner of an unrealistically high standard.

This misguided connection between Scripture and later historical facts does not hold together. Revelations or ideals should not run roughshod over later historical facts, as if all followers obey their Scriptures perfectly.

To his credit, Ibn Khaldun (1332—1406), late Medieval statesman, jurist, historian, and scholar, has enough integrity and candor to balance out these four Muslim apologists, writing a history that is still admired by historians today. He states the obvious:

In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. (The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History (abridged), trans. Franz Rosenthal, Princeton UP, 1967, p.183)

When the Islamic Crusaders go out to conquer, carrying an Islamic banner inscribed in Arabic of the glory and the truth of their prophet, Ibn Khaldun would not deny that the army's mission, besides the material reasons of conquest, is to convert the inhabitants. Islam is a 'universalizing' religion, and if its converts enter its fold either by persuasion or force, then that is the nature of Islam.

Moreover, Ibn Khaldun explains why a dynasty rarely establishes itself firmly in lands of many different tribes and groups. But it can be done after a long time and employing the following tactics, as seen in the Maghrib (N and NW Africa) from the beginning of Islam to Ibn Khaldun's own time:

The first (Muslim) victory over them and the European Christians (in the Maghrib) was of no avail. They continued to rebel and apostatized time after time. The Muslims massacred many of them. After the Muslim religion had been established among them, they went on revolting and seceding, and they adopted dissident religious opinions many times. They remained disobedient and unmanageable . . . . Therefore, it has taken the Arabs a long time to establish their dynasty in the . . . Maghrib. (p. 131)

Conclusion

Though European Crusaders may have been sincere, they wandered off from the origins of Christianity when they slashed and burned and forced conversions. Jesus never used violence; neither did he call his disciples to use it. Given this historical fact, it is only natural that the New Testament would never endorse violence to spread the word of the true God. Textual reality matches historical reality in the time of Jesus.

In contrast, Muslims who slashed and burned and forced conversions did not wander off from the origins of Islam, but followed it closely. It is a plain and unpleasant historical fact that in the ten years that Muhammad lived in Medina (622—632), he either sent out or went out on seventy—four raids, expeditions, or full—scale wars, which range from small assassination hit squads to the Tabuk Crusade, described above (see 630). Sometimes the expeditions did not result in violence, but a Muslim army always lurked in the background. Muhammad could exact a terrible vengeance on an individual or tribe that double—crossed him. These ten years did not know long stretches of peace.

It is only natural that the Quran would be filled with references to jihad and qital, the latter word meaning only fighting, killing, warring, and slaughtering. Textual reality matches historical reality in the time of Muhammad. And after.

But this means that the Church had to fight back or be swallowed up by an aggressive religion over the centuries. Thus, the Church did not go out and conquer in a mindless, bloodthirsty, and irrational way—though the Christian Crusades were far from perfect.

Islam was the aggressor in its own Crusades, long before the Europeans responded with their own.

James Arlandson can be reached at jamesmarlandson@hotmail.com

Supplemental Material

Please see this two—part article (here and here) for the rules of Islamic warfare. Too often they do not follow simple justice, but were barbaric and cruel, such as permitting sex with newly captured female prisoners of war.

This article goes into more detail on the motives for Islamic expansion and a comparison with Christianity. The second major section discusses the weak Islamic claim on Jerusalem.

This book by Andrew Bostom is the antidote to the false belief that life under Islam was always a bed of roses. Bostom provides many source documents, sometimes translated for the first time. Here are some online samples. This two—part article (here and here) recounts Muslim atrocities in Palestine. This two—part article (here and here) demonstrates that jihad produced the European Crusades.

References

Gil, Moshe. A History of Palestine: 634—1099. Cambridge UP, 1983, 1997.

Nicolle, David. The Armies of Islam. Men—at—Arms. Osprey, 1982.

———. Saladin and the Saracens. Men—at Arms. Osprey, 1986.

———. Armies of the Muslim Conquests. Men—at—Arms. Osprey, 1993.

———. The Moors, the Islamic West. Men—at—Arms. Osprey, 2001.

[ciaranxavier]

well ciaran this quote further highlights your ignorence to historical facts,such as there would have been no need for a "crusade" if the islamic armys had not marched on christian lands,the crusades were a defensive measure,the islamic armies were forcing there way from the middle east up into eorope and in fact got as far as half way through france untill the christian armies fought them all the way back,the muslim armies were the aggressors to begin with the christians had no choice but to defend themselves,this is a fact that is commonly over looked.

defending your lands doesnt mean entering their lands to rape and pillage them now does it? anyways it was the turks who were attacking the byzantines that started it not the "islamic armies" you prejudiced little man. and it doesnt in any way justify the slaughter of innocent civilians. plus those "islamic armies" were made up of jews and arabs so check your bigotry at the door please.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

defending your lands doesnt mean entering their lands to rape and pillage them now does it? anyways it was the turks who were attacking the byzantines that started it not the "islamic armies" you prejudiced little man. and it doesnt in any way justify the slaughter of innocent civilians. plus those "islamic armies" were made up of jews and arabs so check your bigotry at the door please.

please look at the extensive facts i have posted for your benefit ciaran,just above your last post.

[quirk]

please look at the extensive facts i have posted for your benefit ciaran,just above your last post.

Comrade can you try to remember to add a link to any material you post as it gives the rest of us an idea of where the writer might be coming from.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/11/the_truth_about_islamic_crusad.html

[ciaranxavier]

Comrade can you try to remember to add a link to any material you post as it gives the rest of us an idea of where the writer might be coming from.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/11/the_truth_about_islamic_crusad.html

heres a little more info on where tomas' gets his facts.:icon_laugh::icon_lol:

American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism, and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.

There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions, strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us. Business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions are also emphasized, as is the state of American culture.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Comrade can you try to remember to add a link to any material you post as it gives the rest of us an idea of where the writer might be coming from.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/11/the_truth_about_islamic_crusad.html

yep sorry about that,ill do it in future.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

heres a little more info on where tomas' gets his facts.:icon_laugh::icon_lol:

your point is?

[ciaranxavier]

your point is?

yours is an opinion based sight mine is facts taken out of history books. and can you explain how an "islamic armie" consisted of jews and arabs?

[OCoinnigh]

defending your lands doesnt mean entering their lands to rape and pillage them now does it? anyways it was the turks who were attacking the byzantines that started it not the "islamic armies" you prejudiced little man. and it doesnt in any way justify the slaughter of innocent civilians. plus those "islamic armies" were made up of jews and arabs so check your bigotry at the door please.

everybody body plays the racist bigot card. cause they got no f*cking leg to stand on.

[ciaranxavier]

everybody body plays the racist bigot card. cause they got no f*cking leg to stand on.


his denial of facts and calling blaming it on "islamic armies" is bigotry.

[quirk]

everybody body plays the racist bigot card. cause they got no f*cking leg to stand on.

Do you dispute what CX says about the army being made up of Jews and Muslims?

[ciaranxavier]

everybody body plays the racist bigot card. cause they got no f*cking leg to stand on.

this coming from a guy who thinks americas socialist. :icon_lol::icon_lol: you dont know me i might have no legs to stand on. that could possibly hurt my feelings.

[ciaranxavier]

if anyone would like to read the real history books theyd find the information a lot more realistic and accurate. or if youd like to go to quirks thread with the an oddly close title they would also find some credible information. this "truth" is a person opinion not historical fact. for an idea of where his opinion came from ill show you what the site is about quoted from their page.

About Us
American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism, and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.

There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions, strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us. Business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions are also emphasized, as is the state of American culture.

http://www.americanthinker.com/static/about_us.html

just an idea of where his "facts" come from

[OCoinnigh]

Do you dispute what CX says about the army being made up of Jews and Muslims?

i think he needs to show his sources.
there were also jews that fought with the nazi's.

[ciaranxavier]

i think he needs to show his sources.
there were also jews that fought with the nazi's.

my sources are books ive read about the crusades. actual verified reference books not bigots opinions. go read any recognized book about the crusades and you will see that. i dont do most my research on the internet i prefer to get my information from books its a lot more credible.

[OCoinnigh]

my sources are books ive read about the crusades. actual verified reference books not bigots opinions. go read any recognized book about the crusades and you will see that. i dont do most my research on the internet i prefer to get my information from books its a lot more credible.

your not just remembering movies you watched?

[ciaranxavier]

your not just remembering movies you watched?

are you illiterate is that why you dont know about it? i said books.

[quirk]

History of the Jews and the Crusades


The history of the Jews and the Crusades is one of Crusader atrocities against Jews and has become a part of the history of anti-Semitism for the Jews in the Middle Ages.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Background
* 2 First Crusade
o 2.1 Defending in the Land of Israel
o 2.2 Massacre of Jerusalem
* 3 Jewish crusade literature
* 4 References

[edit] Background

Further information: Crusades

In the First Crusade flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed by some crusaders (see German Crusade, 1096). In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France suffered especially. Philip Augustus treated them with exceptional severity during the Third Crusade (1188). The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320.

The atrocities were opposed by the local bishops and widely condemned at the time as a violation of the Crusades' aim, which was not directed against the Jews.[1] However, the perpetrators mostly escaped legal punishment. Also, the social position of the Jews in western Europe distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades. They prepared the way for anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III. The crusades resulted in centuries of strong feelings of ill will on both sides and hence constitute a turning point in the relationship between Jews and Christians.

[edit] First Crusade

[edit] Defending in the Land of Israel

The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June-July 1099) in fierce battles. At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known and include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza.[2][3]

[edit] Massacre of Jerusalem

See also: Siege of Jerusalem (1099)

Jews fought side-by-side with Muslim soldiers to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders.[4] Saint Louis University Professor Thomas Madden, author of A Concise History of the Crusades, claims the "Jewish Defenders" of the city knew the rules of warfare and retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" since the Crusaders had breached the outer walls.[5] According to the Muslim chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi, "The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads."[6] One modern day source even claims the Crusaders "[circled] the screaming, flame-tortured humanity singing 'Christ We Adore Thee!' with their Crusader crosses held high."[7] On the contrary, a late 11th century Jewish communication does not corroborate the report that Jews were actually inside of the Synagogue when it was set on fire.[8] This letter was discovered among the Cairo Geniza collection in 1975 by historian Shelomo Dov Goitein.[9] Historians believe that it was written just two weeks after the siege, making it "the earliest account on the conquest in any language."[9] However, all sources agree that a synagogue was indeed burned during the siege.

[edit] Jewish crusade literature

The end of the Crusades brought with it many narratives coming from both Jewish and Christian sources. Among the better known Jewish narratives are the chronicles of Solomon Bar Simson and Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, The Narrative of the Old Persecutions by Mainz Anonymous, and Sefer Zekhirah, or The Book of Remembrance, by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn.

The Chronicle of Solomon Bar Simson (1140) is mostly a record of what happened during the period of the First Crusade. There is a definite personal bias seen within the writing, as he discusses the martyrdom of resistant communities far more so than the conversion of others. It is not yet proven that Bar Simson really existed, and therefore it is hard to be sure who wrote this and for what purpose.

The Chronicle of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan (mid 1100s), as Robert Chazan proves, is known to be written by a person named Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, who was very popular in his time due to his writings. He is thought to have borrowed much of his information from Bar Simson, seeing as much of the information is the same. His writing here is extremely emotional, taking on a more apocalyptic tone in a sense. There is a definite sense of personal experience coming out of this chronicle, experience with death and suffering within his community and others. This chronicle was extremely popular at the time, as several manuscripts were written about it in a myriad of places.

The Narrative of the Old Persecutions (1300s), as the lack of the author's name implies, is from an unknown author. The main focus of this narrative is on Mainz, and takes a very realistic stance on the Crusades. It tells of the complacency of Rhenish Jews, of the reactions that Mainz Jews had to news of other communities falling to the Crusaders, and of their turn towards the Church to protect them, only to be find more despair there. It also brings in some information coming from the late Middle Ages, of Jews being associated with well poisoning.

Sefer Zekhirah (late 1160s, early to mid 1170s) has a very well known writer, Rabbi Ephraim, who was a well known liturgist of his time. He was 13 during the Second Crusade, and is considered to be an eyewitness to many of the events that occurred during that time. This writing was rather popular itself, and consists of a series of poems, all expressing grief over the suffering of the Jews through metaphors and references to fables. His accounts, despite their very emotional appeal, are corroborated by other writings from the time and tend not to be so skewed as the two chronicles.

The details behind these narratives can all be found in several secondary historical sources, including Robert Chazan's God, Humanity, and History and Shlomo Eidelberg's The Jews and the Crusades, each of which gives background to the narratives and discusses their effects on European Jewry and Christianity.

Robert Chazan's In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews provides details as to the changes made in Jewish/Christian relations as a result of the First Crusade. He focuses on whether or not the Crusades really had a salient impact on the Jews of the time and in the future, pointing out that persecution was nothing new to them, yet also talking about the importance of their being made extremely distinct within the European community by the Crusades. They were no longer part of it to any great extent, but rather were made out to be part of the “others” as many in Europe already had been, such as atheists and pagans.

Christian sources for information on general feelings after the First Crusade all focus on their acquisition of Jerusalem. William of Tyre, Fulcher of Chartres, the Venetian Treaty, the Travels of Saewulf, and John of Wurzburg's Pilgrim Guide all detail Jerusalem but have little, if anything, to say of Europe and the Jews. However, in the midst of the First Crusade there were several Christian documents on the Crusaders attacks of Jewish communities and the basis of those attacks. One such document is Albert of Aachen on the Peasant's Crusade, which focuses on the disorganized peasant Crusades that occurred along with the organized Crusades that went on to take Jerusalem. It provides the personal experiences of Aachen, who was in one of these peasant Crusades, and provides accounts of the slaughter of several groups of Jews. He describes it as being either “judgement of the Lord” or “some error of mind,” and the killings as not only being indiscriminatory, but also with no exception. His account also shows the Church being able to achieve little in its attempts to prevent these massacres.

Much of the focus of Christian writings of the time, however, was on the efforts to get to Jerusalem, though some accounts talk of the Crusaders' distrust of the Byzantine Empire, accounts that show some of the reasoning for the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople. The Deeds of the Franks, which has an unknown author, is such an account, and has a clear bias against the Byzantines. Many of the writings on later Crusades continue to focus on Jerusalem as well, until near the end of the Crusades when Jerusalem stops being their focus and the return to stability in Europe does.

Many of the secondary sources on this time period question how important the impact of the Crusades was on both the Jewish and Christian communities. Robert Chazan's belief is that the effect was minimal in the end – both cultures were, in many ways, used to the persecution that was being enacted, and that this was just another step. R. I. Moore, within his novel The Formation of a Persecuting Society, argues that the effect on Christians was huge, with their entire society gaining feelings of the need for separation from their Jewish neighbors, which allowed them to persecute further in the Future. Ivan G. Marcus in his article The Culture of the Early Ashkenaz argues that the Jews pulled away from the Christians community physically, mentally, and spiritually due to the sheer ferocity and shocking nature of the Crusades. All of these and more provide differing opinions on the results of the Crusades, but all agree that the Crusades caused a separation to occur between the two religions.

[edit] References

1. ^ The Church and the Jews in the Middle Ages
2. ^ Katz, Shmuel. Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine. Taylor Productions Ltd., 1974 (ISBN 0-929093-13-5), pg. 97
3. ^ Carmel, Alex. The History of Haifa Under Turkish Rule. Haifa: Pardes, 2002 (ISBN 965-7171-05-9), pp. 16-17
4. ^ Brown, Michael L. Our Hands Are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the "Church" and the Jewish People. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1992 (ISBN 1560430680)
5. ^ CROSS PURPOSES: The Crusades (Hoover Institute television show). The entire episode can be viewed with Realplayer or Window’s Media player. The website includes the corresponding transcription of the dialogue between the host and two guests.
6. ^ Gibb, H. A. R. The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades: Extracted and Translated from the Chronicle of Ibn Al-Qalanisi. Dover Publications, 2003 (ISBN 0486425193), pg. 48
7. ^ Rausch, David. Legacy of Hatred: Why Christians Must Not Forget the Holocaust. Baker Pub Group, 1990 (ISBN 0801077583), pg. 27
8. ^ Kedar, Benjamin Z. "The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades." The Crusades. Vol. 3 (2004) (ISBN 075464099X), pp. 15-76, pg. 64
9. ^ a b Kedar: pg. 63



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades

[DFCRFB]

moved this to the history section mate.

[quirk]

RSF-Fianoglach there was no need to start another thread about the crusades when there already was one on which you were posting. I merged both.

[Hessian Peel]

well ciaran this quote further highlights your ignorence to historical facts,such as there would have been no need for a "crusade" if the islamic armys had not marched on christian lands,the crusades were a defensive measure

What makes a piece of land Christian and since when is genocide a 'defensive measure'?

[QuinnP]

Ciaran knows all!!! And he wonders why I have a crush on him:bow::bow::bow::bow::bow::bow::bow:


no wars have ever been fought in the name of atheism.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

yours is an opinion based sight mine is facts taken out of history books. and can you explain how an "islamic armie" consisted of jews and arabs?

CX would your facts be from the canadian history books,no jews fought with muslims against christians,jews and arabs hateted each other,if they claimed to be jew they were lying,please show proof,plus even if there were jews fighting with muslims so what?that still oesnt deny the fact the muslims initiated the aggression while trying to propagate islam,your realy uneducated CX.its almost funny.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

What makes a piece of land Christian and since when is genocide a 'defensive measure'?

genocide,are realy that uneducated enver,i know your a marxist but that mean you have to realy invent your own version of history/ it is FACT that the muslims,were the aggressors.by christian lands i mean the vast majority of people living happily there at the time were christian.untill the muslims came along,also the muslims believe if they conqeur a land then that land will alway remain a part of the muslim community and it is the duty of every muslim to fight to keep it that way,this is what is happening in europe at the moment,its a silent invasion,europe will be called eurabia soon.say goodbye to your diddly die because the mohammadites are here and they want to take over.

[OCoinnigh]

genocide,are realy that uneducated enver,i know your a marxist but that mean you have to realy invent your own version of history/ it is FACT that the muslims,were the aggressors.by christian lands i mean the vast majority of people living happily there at the time were christian.untill the muslims came along,also the muslims believe if they conqeur a land then that land will alway remain a part of the muslim community and it is the duty of every muslim to fight to keep it that way,this is what is happening in europe at the moment,its a silent invasion,europe will be called eurabia soon.say goodbye to your diddly die because the mohammadites are here and they want to take over.

i'm glad somebody around here makes sense.

[ciaranxavier]

CX would your facts be from the canadian history books,no jews fought with muslims against christians,jews and arabs hateted each other,if they claimed to be jew they were lying,please show proof,plus even if there were jews fighting with muslims so what?that still oesnt deny the fact the muslims initiated the aggression while trying to propagate islam,your realy uneducated CX.its almost funny.

my informations a book but if you go to wikipedia and look up the crusades your bound to find out loads of information you seem to have left out of your little mind.

[ciaranxavier]

genocide,are realy that uneducated enver,i know your a marxist but that mean you have to realy invent your own version of history/ it is FACT that the muslims,were the aggressors.by christian lands i mean the vast majority of people living happily there at the time were christian.untill the muslims came along,also the muslims believe if they conqeur a land then that land will alway remain a part of the muslim community and it is the duty of every muslim to fight to keep it that way,this is what is happening in europe at the moment,its a silent invasion,europe will be called eurabia soon.say goodbye to your diddly die because the mohammadites are here and they want to take over.

how about you show some links to the part where muslims were slaughtering christians when it was the turks who started it? not muslims as a whole. and if you go to wikipedia it wont be one of your largely biased sources.

[ciaranxavier]

i'm glad somebody around here makes sense.

if bigotry makes sense to you. how can you deny the facts that have been recorded?

[RSF-Fianoglach]

my informations a book but if you go to wikipedia and look up the crusades your bound to find out loads of information you seem to have left out of your little mind.

wkipedia hahahahahaha the fact you think wiki is reliable says it all realy.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

how about you show some links to the part where muslims were slaughtering christians when it was the turks who started it? not muslims as a whole. and if you go to wikipedia it wont be one of your largely biased sources.

eh firstly your wrong it was not the turks who started it,it was islamic calphes from the arabian peninsula,secondly turky is a country with a population of 98 percent muslims,so either way it was the muslims who started it.

[quirk]

eh firstly your wrong it was not the turks who started it,it was islamic calphes from the arabian peninsula,secondly turky is a country with a population of 98 percent muslims,so either way it was the muslims who started it.

By the same logic then it was the Christians who carried out the holocaust as the vast majority of Germans and Nazis were Christian.

[Emiliano Zapata]

eh firstly your wrong it was not the turks who started it,it was islamic calphes from the arabian peninsula,secondly turky is a country with a population of 98 percent muslims,so either way it was the muslims who started it.

Well if you examine these conflicts they are rarely about religion but more about economy. Before there was nationalism and patriotism the powers that be used religion as a rallying point for the masses.

[East Tyrone]

By the same logic then it was the Christians who carried out the holocaust as the vast majority of Germans and Nazis were Christian.

Absolutely; Hitler, Himmler, Heinrich Muller and the majority of the Gestapo heirarchy were all Catholics and senior Lutheran figures were ardent Nazis supporters. There have been many other holocausts in human history; such as the decimation of native populations in central and south America, by Catholic conquistadors and Jesuits who spread their religion at sword-point, and an gorta mor, inflicted on Christian Irish by Christian British and Anglo-Irish.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

By the same logic then it was the Christians who carried out the holocaust as the vast majority of Germans and Nazis were Christian.

your completly wrong quirk,christianity does not teach we are to kill others in the name of the faith.so when hitler and the rest of the nazi goons knowingly went against christianity they ceased to be christian,muslims on the other hand can justify religious war by quoting the koran and there prophet of doom mohammed.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Absolutely; Hitler, Himmler, Heinrich Muller and the majority of the Gestapo heirarchy were all Catholics and senior Lutheran figures were ardent Nazis supporters. There have been many other holocausts in human history; such as the decimation of native populations in central and south America, by Catholic conquistadors and Jesuits who spread their religion at sword-point, and an gorta mor, inflicted on Christian Irish by Christian British and Anglo-Irish.

just like british ministers claiming to be republican,evile nationalist socialist claiming to be christian is just nonsense,christianity teaches love for your enemy,so if someone purposely goes against the teachings of christ they are no longer christian.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Well if you examine these conflicts they are rarely about religion but more about economy. Before there was nationalism and patriotism the powers that be used religion as a rallying point for the masses.

did the rsm tell you this,that is completly untrue,the propagation of islam was the reason for conflict and it is happening again these days,islam is a political religion.

[East Tyrone]

just like british ministers claiming to be republican,evile nationalist socialist claiming to be christian is just nonsense,christianity teaches love for your enemy,so if someone purposely goes against the teachings of christ they are no longer christian.

But you give poor auld Mohammed an awful hard time. Just like Jesus, none of his teachings were written down in his time (unless you count the coptic gospels), so he would be just as liable to being taken out of context or misrepresented. Jihaadists probably bear little resemblance to the original Muslims, just like most Christians bear little resemblance to the historical Christ (if there was one). All Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion is about social control and motivation, very important factors for any regime in a region that controlled lucrative trade routes. Jesus and Mohammed are little different to Odin, Lugh and Zoraster; they've just had better PR.

[quirk]

your completly wrong quirk,christianity does not teach we are to kill others in the name of the faith.so when hitler and the rest of the nazi goons knowingly went against christianity they ceased to be christian,muslims on the other hand can justify religious war by quoting the koran and there prophet of doom mohammed.

Strange the last time I read the first commandment in the Bible the punishment for worshipping other Gods was death.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

But you give poor auld Mohammed an awful hard time. Just like Jesus, none of his teachings were written down in his time (unless you count the coptic gospels), so he would be just as liable to being taken out of context or misrepresented. Jihaadists probably bear little resemblance to the original Muslims, just like most Christians bear little resemblance to the historical Christ (if there was one). All Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion is about social control and motivation, very important factors for any regime in a region that controlled lucrative trade routes. Jesus and Mohammed are little different to Odin, Lugh and Zoraster; they've just had better PR.

ET you obviously dont know the jews had an oral tradition were everything of religious importance was memorised,it was put down on paper whitin 60 years of the messiahs death.backed up by the oral tradition.jesus was the fulfilment of all the prphecys of the bible his life testifies to this,also jesus said he was the last to come and anybody else who came after him with a different messege would be from the devil,aka mohammed.there is no comparison between the warlord mohammed and the peaceful man jesus who died so that we may have eternal salvation when he never commited any sin himself.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Strange the last time I read the first commandment in the Bible the punishment for worshipping other Gods was death.

yes it is death,real christians will pass on to eternal life,non christians or people who worship a false god will not pass on to life,but will pass on to death eternaly.

you need to look at spiritual matters in a spiritual sense.

[quirk]

ET you obviously dont know the jews had an oral tradition were everything of religious importance was memorised,it was put down on paper whitin 60 years of the messiahs death.backed up by the oral tradition.jesus was the fulfilment of all the prphecys of the bible his life testifies to this,also jesus said he was the last to come and anybody else who came after him with a different messege would be from the devil,aka mohammed.there is no comparison between the warlord mohammed and the peaceful man jesus who died so that we may have eternal salvation when he never commited any sin himself.

If Islam is from the devil then how come it calls on people to do good things such as give to the poor and worship one God. Surely according to your Bible it this would not be possible as:

If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?
Luke 11:18

[quirk]

yes it is death,real christians will pass on to eternal life,non christians or people who worship a false god will not pass on to life,but will pass on to death eternaly.

you need to look at spiritual matters in a spiritual sense.

No it says to literally kill non believers. You wrongly claimed the bible doesn't justify such behaviour.

[Emiliano Zapata]

it is happening again these days,islam is a political religion.

Just because the bombers invoke the name 'Allah' doesn't mean what they're doing is for religious reasons. Rather they use religious phrases and aesthetics to better validate political action. What they're doing is political, not religious.

As for Islam itself some people interpret it for peaceful means while others invoke it for not so peaceful means. It's quite silly lumping every single Muslim on the planet and calling them "violent".

[RSF-Fianoglach]

If Islam is from the devil then how come it calls on people to do good things such as give to the poor and worship one God. Surely according to your Bible it this would not be possible as:

If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?
Luke 11:18

quirk the bible teaches one of the devils greatest tricks is mixing truth with lies,and this is what the koran does,could you give quotes of what good things the koran teaches,the koran is full of blatant contradictions.do good but dont take christians or jews as friends,kill all non believers wherever you find them.slay the infidels.all from the koran,also the koran claims woman have half the intelligence of men,it also claims men can have 4 wives but woman only 1 husband.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

No it says to literally kill non believers. You wrongly claimed the bible doesn't justify such behaviour.

the first commandment does not say kill non believers that is a lie quirk.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Just because the bombers invoke the name 'Allah' doesn't mean what they're doing is for religious reasons. Rather they use religious phrases and aesthetics to better validate political action. What they're doing is political, not religious.

As for Islam itself some people interpret it for peaceful means while others invoke it for not so peaceful means. It's quite silly lumping every single Muslim on the planet and calling them "violent".

but you see RS i never said every muslim on the planet is a terrorist,only the muslims that actualy follow the koran to the word are fanatical,the rest of the muslims are largly unaware of the true teachings of the koran.the koran clearly states any muslim who dies fighting unbelievers will go to heaven and have virgins wait on him hand and foot.you will never find such justification whitin christianity.

there is a saying,good muslim=bad person bad muslim=good person,it is shockingly true.

[quirk]

the first commandment does not say kill non believers that is a lie quirk.

If there arise among you a prophet [or your brother, son, daughter, wife, friend or neighbor, verses 16-18] … saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them ... that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from Yahweh your God … to thrust thee out of the way which Yahweh thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)

If there be found among you … man or woman, that hath … gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven … and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)

[East Tyrone]

ET you obviously dont know the jews had an oral tradition were everything of religious importance was memorised,it was put down on paper whitin 60 years of the messiahs death.backed up by the oral tradition.jesus was the fulfilment of all the prphecys of the bible his life testifies to this,also jesus said he was the last to come and anybody else who came after him with a different messege would be from the devil,aka mohammed.there is no comparison between the warlord mohammed and the peaceful man jesus who died so that we may have eternal salvation when he never commited any sin himself.

Tomas, you're a great man for the assumptions; I know all about the Torah and the Rabbinic traditions. Indeed, I had a good friend in the states who was a Jewish Rabbi. Your argument conveniently ignores the glaring inconsistensies in the Gospels and the fact that they have been revised and added to on numerous occassions, centuries after the alleged events. What about the Gospels of Judas, Thomas and Mary?

[Hessian Peel]

genocide,are realy that uneducated enver,i know your a marxist but that mean you have to realy invent your own version of history/ it is FACT that the muslims,were the aggressors.by christian lands i mean the vast majority of people living happily there at the time were christian.untill the muslims came along,also the muslims believe if they conqeur a land then that land will alway remain a part of the muslim community and it is the duty of every muslim to fight to keep it that way,this is what is happening in europe at the moment,its a silent invasion,europe will be called eurabia soon.say goodbye to your diddly die because the mohammadites are here and they want to take over.

Could you be anymore of a clown?

[Hessian Peel]

Tomas, you're a great man for the assumptions; I know all about the Torah and the Rabbinic traditions. Indeed, I had a good friend in the states who was a Jewish Rabbi. Your argument conveniently ignores the glaring inconsistensies in the Gospels and the fact that they have been revised and added to on numerous occassions, centuries after the alleged events. What about the Gospels of Judas, Thomas and Mary?

The Gospel of Thomas claims Jesus had magical powers akin to a fairy from a young age, and use to play tricks on the local folk. Another invention of the Catholic Church is the concept of the Immaculate Conception, which only became Church law and the official biblical account of what happened in the 6 century.

[East Tyrone]

The Gospel of Thomas claims Jesus had magical powers akin to a fairy from a young age, and use to play tricks on the local folk. Another invention of the Catholic Church is the concept of the Immaculate Conception, which only became Church law and the official biblical account of what happened in the 6 century.

Did you know that confession was a product of the Celtic Christian church, they had to fight Rome to get it included in cannon law at a conferance in England around the 1200s

[Hessian Peel]

Did you know that confession was a product of the Celtic Christian church, they had to fight Rome to get it included in cannon law at a conferance in England around the 1200s

I didn't. :icon_lol:

[RSF-Fianoglach]

If there arise among you a prophet [or your brother, son, daughter, wife, friend or neighbor, verses 16-18] … saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them ... that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from Yahweh your God … to thrust thee out of the way which Yahweh thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)

If there be found among you … man or woman, that hath … gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven … and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)


quirk that is not the first commandment you said it was the first commandment that said that so you lied,also the old testement laws do not apply to christianity if you knew anyhting about christianity you would know that,deuteronomy is old testement laew,it doesnt apply to christians.because jesus was the perfect fulfilment of the law he was sinless.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Tomas, you're a great man for the assumptions; I know all about the Torah and the Rabbinic traditions. Indeed, I had a good friend in the states who was a Jewish Rabbi. Your argument conveniently ignores the glaring inconsistensies in the Gospels and the fact that they have been revised and added to on numerous occassions, centuries after the alleged events. What about the Gospels of Judas, Thomas and Mary?

ET you are so wrong,the original copys of the gospels still exist today,the greek manuscripts the gospels have not been added to,the only changes are made when there is a better translation of the original gospels.but always go back to the originals to verify.as for the other gospels they have been proven to be false gospels,its an old trick the gnostics and the muslims used to do the spread confusion.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

The Gospel of Thomas claims Jesus had magical powers akin to a fairy from a young age, and use to play tricks on the local folk. Another invention of the Catholic Church is the concept of the Immaculate Conception, which only became Church law and the official biblical account of what happened in the 6 century.

in fact your wrong again enver,the immaculate conception only became part of catholic law in the 1950s,the catholic church is corrupt and void of the true christian faith i have left catholicism because of its many errors,such as priests not being allowed marry when the bible clearly states priests should be the husband of one wife,also other false beliefs such as the assumption of mary and purgotery there is no teaching in the bible for these beliefs.

oh and the gospel of thomas has been proven to be a fraus.

[East Tyrone]

ET you are so wrong,the original copys of the gospels still exist today,the greek manuscripts the gospels have not been added to,the only changes are made when there is a better translation of the original gospels.but always go back to the originals to verify.as for the other gospels they have been proven to be false gospels,its an old trick the gnostics and the muslims used to do the spread confusion.

Are those the authentic ones, autographed by Jesus with shroud of turin tour tee-shirt holograms?

[quirk]

quirk that is not the first commandment you said it was the first commandment that said that so you lied,also the old testement laws do not apply to christianity if you knew anyhting about christianity you would know that,deuteronomy is old testement laew,it doesnt apply to christians.because jesus was the perfect fulfilment of the law he was sinless.

That is the punishment for obeying the first commandment. The first Commandment says not to worship any other God and the paragraphs I quoted are the punishment for worshipping another God.

Now you are telling me the 10 commandments don't apply to Christians however I would think most of them would disagree with you.

[ciaranxavier]

wkipedia hahahahahaha the fact you think wiki is reliable says it all realy.

i said go look there i didnt say thats where i get mine are you daft and ignorant? i read books. my informations not on here.

[ciaranxavier]

your completly wrong quirk,christianity does not teach we are to kill others in the name of the faith.so when hitler and the rest of the nazi goons knowingly went against christianity they ceased to be christian,muslims on the other hand can justify religious war by quoting the koran and there prophet of doom mohammed.

what about the inquisitions. you were encouraged by the church to weed out the "sinners"

[ciaranxavier]

just like british ministers claiming to be republican,evile nationalist socialist claiming to be christian is just nonsense,christianity teaches love for your enemy,so if someone purposely goes against the teachings of christ they are no longer christian.

if the christians were all about peace why did the pope order a crusade on ireland? what was the reason behind that. was it full of "islamic warriors"?

[ciaranxavier]

ET you obviously dont know the jews had an oral tradition were everything of religious importance was memorised,it was put down on paper whitin 60 years of the messiahs death.backed up by the oral tradition.jesus was the fulfilment of all the prphecys of the bible his life testifies to this,also jesus said he was the last to come and anybody else who came after him with a different messege would be from the devil,aka mohammed.there is no comparison between the warlord mohammed and the peaceful man jesus who died so that we may have eternal salvation when he never commited any sin himself.

where is the DNA evidence that this "messiah" of your ever existed? oh there isnt any. meaning you cant prove ****.

[ciaranxavier]

Could you be anymore of a clown?

:eusa_clap::eusa_clap::eusa_clap:

[ciaranxavier]

quirk that is not the first commandment you said it was the first commandment that said that so you lied,also the old testement laws do not apply to christianity if you knew anyhting about christianity you would know that,deuteronomy is old testement laew,it doesnt apply to christians.because jesus was the perfect fulfilment of the law he was sinless.

he was sinless? mary magdelene might say otherwise.:whip:

[ciaranxavier]

ET you are so wrong,the original copys of the gospels still exist today,the greek manuscripts the gospels have not been added to,the only changes are made when there is a better translation of the original gospels.but always go back to the originals to verify.as for the other gospels they have been proven to be false gospels,its an old trick the gnostics and the muslims used to do the spread confusion.

im glad your happy that your novel made it through all those years to get gullible idiots like you to follow it blindly and ignore all scientific fact.

[Hessian Peel]

in fact your wrong again enver,the immaculate conception only became part of catholic law in the 1950s,the catholic church is corrupt and void of the true christian faith i have left catholicism because of its many errors,such as priests not being allowed marry when the bible clearly states priests should be the husband of one wife,also other false beliefs such as the assumption of mary and purgotery there is no teaching in the bible for these beliefs.

oh and the gospel of thomas has been proven to be a fraus.

The concept first arose in the 6 century AD and the feast day was established in 1476 by Pope Sixtus IV.

How convenient that one of the Gospels that is a little sillier than the others happens to be a fake.

Maybe, just maybe, they're all fakes?

[Red Revolutionary]

Tomas alot of religious laws were built into Religions for practical reasons.

Look at Jews and Muslims not allowed to eat pork.
This Kosher tradition stems from the unhygenic preperation of Pork at the time, not because Pork was in fact 'unholy'.
This leads me to my point, that there is a practical reason why Muslims are allowed to have 4 wives.
During the middle ages many many Muslim men were dying, and the Islamic population was dropping significantly because of the unequal distribution of men to women. And so they permitted Muslim men to have 4 wives so as to increase the population that was waneing.

Your inability to differntiate between Muslims and their Ethnicity shows shocking ignorance and a really sad lack of respect. This ethnicity breaks down into further categorys of nationalitys. Its not just a case of us against 'them'.

BTW the Islamic world during the middle ages was far more tolerant of other religions than the Christian World. Also the worst attrocities this world has seen carried out in the name of religion has been perpetrated in the name of Christianity. Look at the disgusting and shamefull actions in 'the conversion' of South America, Africa and Asia.

[OCoinnigh]

I just wondered what IRISHREPUBLICAN.NET aims to accomplish???
this socialist/communist crap doesn't represent Ireland. I'll agree with you guys that modern republicans tend to be socialist, but not atheist. this will alienate most people I think. we need a political plat form that is void of religion. Religion is silly and should be left out of politics. you socialist guys talk about socialism more than RSF-Fianoglach talks about Christianity. so its like socialism is like your religion. lets just unite Ireland than sort out all this silly sh-t.

[East Tyrone]

I just wondered what IRISHREPUBLICAN.NET aims to accomplish???
this socialist/communist crap doesn't represent Ireland. I'll agree with you guys that modern republicans tend to be socialist, but not atheist. this will alienate most people I think. we need a political plat form that is void of religion. Religion is silly and should be left out of politics. you socialist guys talk about socialism more than RSF-Fianoglach talks about Christianity. so its like socialism is like your religion. lets just unite Ireland than sort out all this silly sh-t.

The anti-Semitism that you have expressed on numerous occasions has no place in Irish, or any other society.

[ciaranxavier]

I just wondered what IRISHREPUBLICAN.NET aims to accomplish???
this socialist/communist crap doesn't represent Ireland. I'll agree with you guys that modern republicans tend to be socialist, but not atheist. this will alienate most people I think. we need a political plat form that is void of religion. Religion is silly and should be left out of politics. you socialist guys talk about socialism more than RSF-Fianoglach talks about Christianity. so its like socialism is like your religion. lets just unite Ireland than sort out all this silly sh-t.

how is socialism a religion?

[East Tyrone]

how is socialism a religion?

They all used to line up for bread in Soviet Russia, not unlike communion :icon_lol:

[Red Revolutionary]

I just wondered what IRISHREPUBLICAN.NET aims to accomplish???
this socialist/communist crap doesn't represent Ireland. I'll agree with you guys that modern republicans tend to be socialist, but not atheist. this will alienate most people I think. we need a political plat form that is void of religion. Religion is silly and should be left out of politics. you socialist guys talk about socialism more than RSF-Fianoglach talks about Christianity. so its like socialism is like your religion. lets just unite Ireland than sort out all this silly sh-t.

Either does Republicanism, the majority of Irish people are more worried about a 1% tax hike or the implementing of water charges than getting a Unifed Ireland.
I believe Republicanism and Socialism are inseparable, the two are intwined. You cannot have one without the other, mainly because you cannot have Socialism under the British Empire. And if we just have a 32 county Republic without Socialism, then as Connolly said all that will change is the accents of the powerfull. The mechanisms of explotation of the Irish people will remain, but run by our very own Irish elite.
As for yor atheist remark, I am not atheist. I believe in God but not Religion. Religions have done more harm than good to humanity.

[ciaranxavier]

Either does Republicanism, the majority of Irish people are more worried about a 1% tax hike or the implementing of water charges than getting a Unifed Ireland.
I believe Republicanism and Socialism are inseparable, the two are intwined. You cannot have one without the other, mainly because you cannot have Socialism under the British Empire. And if we just have a 32 county Republic without Socialism, then as Connolly said all that will change is the accents of the powerfull. The mechanisms of explotation of the Irish people will remain, but run by our very own Irish elite.
As for yor atheist remark, I am not atheist. I believe in God but not Religion. Religions have done more harm than good to humanity.

ya i cant call myself a total atheist either as i believe in some higher being i just havent figured out whos right yet or if im believing in nothing. its research in progress.

[RSF-Fianoglach]

Tomas alot of religious laws were built into Religions for practical reasons.

Look at Jews and Muslims not allowed to eat pork.
This Kosher tradition stems from the unhygenic preperation of Pork at the time, not because Pork was in fact 'unholy'.
This leads me to my point, that there is a practical reason why Muslims are allowed to have 4 wives.
During the middle ages many many Muslim men were dying, and the Islamic population was dropping significantly because of the unequal distribution of men to women. And so they permitted Muslim men to have 4 wives so as to increase the population that was waneing.

Your inability to differntiate between Muslims and their Ethnicity shows shocking ignorance and a really sad lack of respect. This ethnicity breaks down into further categorys of nationalitys. Its not just a case of us against 'them'.

BTW the Islamic world during the middle ages was far more tolerant of other religions than the Christian World. Also the worst attrocities this world has seen carried out in the name of religion has been perpetrated in the name of Christianity. Look at the disgusting and shamefull actions in 'the conversion' of South America, Africa and Asia.


well do you not realise the total number of people killed in religious conflicts since the dawn of time is estimated to be around 11 million
With the passing of communism into history as an ideological alternative to democracy it is time to do some accounting of its human costs.

Few would deny any longer that communism--Marxism-Leninism and its variants--meant in practice bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal gulags and forced labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial executions and show trials, and genocide. It is also widely known that as a result millions of innocent people have been murdered in cold blood. Yet there has been virtually no concentrated statistical work on what this total might be.

For about eight years I have been sifting through thousands of sources trying to determine the extent of democide (genocide and mass murder) in this century. As a result of that effort** I am able to give some conservative figures on what is an unrivaled communist hecatomb, and to compare this to overall world totals.

First, however, I should clarify the term democide. It means for governments what murder means for an individual under municipal law. It is the premeditated killing of a person in cold blood, or causing the death of a person through reckless and wanton disregard for their life. Thus, a government incarcerating people in a prison under such deadly conditions that they die in a few years is murder by the state--democide--as would parents letting a child die from malnutrition and exposure be murder. So would government forced labor that kills a person within months or a couple of years be murder. So would government created famines that then are ignored or knowingly aggravated by government action be murder of those who starve to death. And obviously, extrajudicial executions, death by torture, government massacres, and all genocidal killing be murder. However, judicial executions for crimes that internationally would be considered capital offenses, such as for murder or treason (as long as it is clear that these are not fabricated for the purpose of executing the accused, as in communist show trials), are not democide. Nor is democide the killing of enemy soldiers in combat or of armed rebels, nor of noncombatants as a result of military action against military targets.

With this understanding of democide, Table 1 lists all communist governments that have committed any form of democide and gives their estimated total domestic and foreign democide and its annual rate (the percent of a government's domestic population murdered per year). It also shows the total for communist guerrillas (including quasi-governments, as of the Mao soviets in China prior to the communist victory in 1949) and the world total for all governments and guerillas (including such quasi-governments as of the White Armies during the Russian civil war in 1917-1922). Figure 1 graphs the communist megamurderers and compares this to the communist and world totals.

Of course, eventhough systematically determined and calculated, all these figures and their graph are only rough approximations. Even were we to have total access to all communist archives we still would not be able to calculate precisely how many the communists murdered. Consider that even in spite of the archival statistics and detailed reports of survivors, the best experts still disagree by over 40 percent on the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis. We cannot expect near this accuracy for the victims of communism. We can, however, get a probable order of magnitude and a relative approximation of these deaths within a most likely range. And that is what the figures in Table 1 are meant to be. Their apparent precision is only due to the total for most communist governments being the summation of dozens of subtotals (as of forced labor deaths each year) and calculations (as in extrapolating scholarly estimates of executions or massacres).

With this understood, the Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.

Obviously the population that is available to kill will make a big difference in the total democide, and thus the annual percentage rate of democide is revealing. By far, the most deadly of all communist countries and, indeed, in this century by far, has been Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his crew likely killed some 2,000,000 Cambodians from April 1975 through December 1978 out of a population of around 7,000,000. This is an annual rate of over 8 percent of the population murdered, or odds of an average Cambodian surviving Pol Pot's rule of slightly over just over 2 to 1.

In sum the communist probably have murdered something like 110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course, the world total itself it shocking. It is several times the 38,000,000 battle-dead that have been killed in all this century's international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone--one communist country-- well surpasses this cost of war. And those murders of communist China almost equal it.

Figure 2 shows the major sources of death for those murdered under communism and compares this to world totals for each source for this century. A few of these sources require some clarification. Deaths through government terrorism means the killing of specific individuals by assassination, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and such. Massacre, on the other hand, means the indiscriminate mass killing of people, as in soldiers machine gunning demonstrators, or entering a village and killing all of its inhabitants. As used here, genocide is the killing of people because of their ethnicity, race, religion, or language. And democide through deportation is the killing of people during their forced mass transportation to distant regions and their death as a direct result, such as through starvation or exposure. Democidal famine is that which is purposely caused or aggravated by government or which is knowingly ignored and aid to its victims is withheld.

As can be seen in the figure, communist forced labor was particularly deadly. It not only accounts for most deaths under communism, but is close to the world total, which also includes colonial forced labor deaths (as in German, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies). Communists also committed genocide, to be sure, but only near half of the world total. Communists are much less disposed to massacre then were many other noncommunist governments (such as the Japanese military during World War II, or the Nationalist Chinese government from 1928 to 1949). As can be seen from the comparative total for terrorism, communists were much more discriminating in their killing overall, even to the extent in the Soviet Union, communist China, and Vietnam, at least, of using a quota system. Top officials would order local officials to kill a certain number of "enemies of the people," "rightists", or "tyrants".

How can we understand all this killing by communists? It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with the absolute power. Communists believed that they knew the truth, absolutely. They believed that they knew through Marxism what would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and rebuild society and culture to realize this utopia. Nothing must stand in the way of its achievement. Government--the Communist Party--was thus above any law. All institutions, cultural norms, traditions, and sentiments were expendable. And the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building the new world.

Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths. The irony of this is that communism in practice, even after decades of total control, did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made their living conditions worse than before the revolution. It is not by chance that the greatest famines have occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61). In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine. This is as though the total population of Turkey, Iran, or Thailand had been completely wiped out. And that something like 35,000,000 people fled communist countries as refugees, as though the countries of Argentina or Columbia had been totally emptied of all their people, was an unparalleled vote against the utopian pretensions of Marxism-Leninism.

But communists could not be wrong. After all, their knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism, an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature. Marx has shown empirically where society has been and why, and he and his interpreters proved that it was destined for a communist end. No one could prevent this, but only stand in the way and delay it at the cost of more human misery. Those who disagreed with this world view and even with some of the proper interpretations of Marx and Lenin were, without a scintilla of doubt, wrong. After all, did not Marx or Lenin or Stalin or Mao say that. . . . In other words, communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusade against nonbelievers.

What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state's instrument of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family. The result is what we see in Table 1.

But communism does not stand alone in such mass murder. We do have the example of Nazi Germany, which may have itself murdered some 20,000,000 Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Yugoslaves, Frenchmen, and other nationalities. Then there is the Nationalist government of China under Chiang Kai-shek, which murdered near 10,000,000 Chinese from 1928 to 1949, and the Japanese militarists who murdered almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Indochinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and oth