http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2005/02/the_crusades_ji.php
February 18, 2005 The Crusades: Jihad's Pale Shadow (weekly column-stuck to top of page for the day) In the Arab/Muslim world, no historical event is more eagerly taken up to be wielded against the West as proof of its innate cruelty and imperialistic designs than the Christian Crusades. In addition to Muslims, the West's self-hating sons and daughters are also quick to use the Crusades as proof for their spurious claims that Christianity is equivalent to Islam in the area of holy war and its attendant massacre, rapine, and conquest. To be sure, there is ample blame to be laid at the doorstep of Christendom in those fierce and tempestuous times. Before Christianity underwent the reform which has made it into the great faith it is today, all manner of base deeds were carried out in its name (although in the interest of honesty, we must acknowledge that Christ never called for the violent, systematic expansion of Christian territories at the cost of the unbeliever's blood). But what of Islam? Were Muslims really the aggrieved victims of undeserved, offensive Christian wars of conquest? This is how the story is often told, and Muslims certainly view it as such. In a reversal of Kipling's White Man's Burden, multiculturalists and other factions on the Western left uncritically forgive or overlook the episodes of shameful behavior in the history of non-European peoples, sometimes even blaming this behavior on Europeans/Americans. This blanket policy of self-abnegation is, of course, foolish, however well-meaning its proponents may be. In register with the smug, self-serving pretense that passes for virtue in many leftist circles, this sort of condescension is quite fashionable. However, all men commit unconscionable, reprehensible acts. It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and everything to do with culture and simply being a human being. To do good and evil is universal in mankind. In the matter of who has done more killing in God's name between Christians and Muslims, though, Muslims are way out ahead. Almost 500 years before European Christians began riding into the Holy Land under the standards of Christendom, Muhammad's hordes had already embarked upon their bloody holy war, which has been carried on, in one form or another, to this day. Islam's sacred literature is replete with sanction, incentive, and glorification of the violent spread of Islam and the subjugation of the infidels. Whether or not the infidels become Muslims is of secondary importance, so long as they acknowledge Islam's supremacy. The Crusades lasted for 200 years, were largely focalized in Palestine, and were a response to a centuries-long aggressive Muslim encroachment into Europe, ranging from Spain and Portugal in the west, through Sicily, and to Hungary and the Balkans in the east, and were also meant to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslim infidel who had occupied it. The Bible does not exhort the Christian to conquest in Christ's name. The Islamic jihad, on the other hand, has lasted since the time of Muhammad and continues today, has been diffuse and widespread in scope, and is a pious act of offensive fighting in the way of God, as prescribed in the Qur'an and elaborated upon in the sunnah. The young Arab Muslims were, presented with a win/win proposition in jihad. If you lived, you would enjoy prestige, carnal pleasures with beautiful women, plunder, and God's grace. If you died, you got the same thing, only better. You would receive the fast-pass plan into heaven where sensual desires galore awaited you. Once there, you enjoy the favors of seventy-two doe-eyed, eternally virginal houris who give you thousand year-long orgasms on carpets and silk cushions. There is wine (non-alcoholic, though), delectable food, and sweet waters. You are one of God's elite homies. Plus, you are allowed to hook up seventy of your favorite friends and family with a guarantee to join you there. Is it any wonder that young religious men who buy into this fantasy of heavenly debauchery are ready to die for Allah? Oh, and in case you're wondering, the big prize for the devout Muslima who makes it to heaven is to be by the side of her husband (and his 72... companions) for all eternity. The insertion of the holy <http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2004/10/what_is_jihad.php> duty of jihad into Islamic dogma, along with its earthly and heavenly rewards, helped to fuel the the truly staggering success with which Islam conquered half of the civilized world in its heyday. Long before and long after the European Christian Crusades, the Islamic jihad ravaged far-flung nations and cultures with devout fidelity to Allah's command to "fight them, that there may be no aberration in religion, and all religion belongs to Almighty God." (-Qur'an 2.193) But we Westerners rarely reflect upon the legion jihad campaigns into Europe which terrorized, enslaved, and killed so many, as we bludgeon ourselves with the disproportionate events of the Crusades. After their prophet's death, the mujahideen swept out of the Arabian peninsula to spread Islam's dominion through the sword. They defeated the Byzantine and Persian empires, who had been worn down fighting each other. They cut a bloody path through Syria to Jerusalem and into Egypt, northern Africa, and Morocco, and stood poised to move into Europe. In the other direction, India, Afghanistan, and outlying areas of China fell to the holy warriors. To the north, Mesopotamia and parts of the Caucasus were taken. This was just the beginning. At the start of the eighth century C.E., much of Spain had already been seized in the Islamic jihad. Muslims today still refer to Spain as Al-Andalus, mistakenly named "the land of the Vandals," when it was actually the land of the Visigoths. Much of Spain remained under Islamic rule for the next five centuries afterward, with Islam's last dying Spanish breath coming in 1492. Greece wasn't much of a challenge at all. Forays were made into France, including the French Riviera. The Serbs were defeated by the rising Ottoman Turks at "the Field of Blackbirds" where the decapitated heads of the vanquished Christian warriors were stacked into pyramids as the ravens (the blackbirds) picked at their corpses. The gallant French knights and their Hungarian allies were beaten at Nicopolis, partly due to the Kosovar vassals now conscripted into the Turkish ranks. Constantinople held out against repeated Muslim sieges until 1453 when at last it was taken by the Ottoman Mahomet after much slaughter. That was a dark day for Christianity indeed. The Muslim conquests in the Balkans created history-shaking reverberations which are still felt today. Suleiman "the Magnificent" made the Danube run red with Christian blood and, as he took Budapest, sent hundreds of thousands of Hungarian men, women, and children to the slave markets in the Balkans, Anatolia, Egypt, and Syria. The barbarian Muslim hordes made it all the way to the gates of Vienna (but never took it) and into Poland before the territories of the Islamic jihad in Europe were finally stretched to their utmost. This is but a brief encapsulation of the long, ruthless, and homicidal jihad in Europe. I don't have the space to enumerate the many lurid tales of massacre, rape, slavery, torture, and suffering visited upon the European Christians who were crushed by the mujahideen. This is not to diminish any dishonorable behavior or crimes on the part of Christians, but rather to put things into perspective. When compared to the spectacular devastation and conquest that Allah's soldiers inflicted upon so much of the European map (and beyond), the Christian Crusades look like a young kid in the Little Leagues pitching against the powerhouses of the 1927 New York Yankees' Murderer's Row. Christianity left the backward and violent practice of holy war far in the past where it belongs. The Church has even acknowledged and apologized on the record for all its past excesses-including those of the Crusades-and has asked for forgiveness. For Muslims, the jihad has always been a source of pride, an obligation to God, and an affirmation of their religion's superiority. In the Muslim psyche, it is only right that great infidel empires should fall to God's true religion. The sanctity of the Islamic jihad, unlike its (false) Christian analogue, is still intact and the mujahideen are still quite active. Muslims are proud of their history and have not felt compelled to offer atonement for the atrocities committed in the commission of jihad. We ignore this history at our own peril, as Muslims have not forgotten how they once held such sway over Europe's affairs. And in Islamic shari'ah law, land conquered in jihad becomes waqf (an endowment), which is property owned by Allah for the benefit of all Muslims, in perpetuity. This is at the core of why Israel will always know especial enmity from Muslims. The Crusades are long, long gone in time and spirit. In our rush to prove how good we aspire to be now by pointing out how bad we were before, we have allowed Muslims to associate so much of our Western culture with actions and ideas that our forebears have already abandoned. Today in Iraq our soldiers are called Crusaders. It's such a joke, but it's not really funny because the mujahideen are stuck in the twelfth century, operating with an absurd medieval mindset, and in possession of modern weaponry. And the last I heard, General John Abizaid still isn't invoking the name of Christ to get the troops fired up to spread the gospel through war with the Muslim infidels. The jihad lives on. Islam's bloody borders can be found in Chechnya, Thailand, India, the Phillipines, the Balkans, Indonesia, and elsewhere. It's in the news every day, and even if its merciless savagery is watered down by politically correct media coverage, its reality cannot be denied. The mujahideen are still out there, faithfully carrying out Allah's writ as they always have. Killing school kids in Russia, beheading elderly farmers in the Phillipines, slaughtering Europeans in the streets, assassinating politicians in Iraq, Bangladesh, and Lebanon, blowing Holocaust survivors to pieces in Israel, sending death threats to members of the Dutch parliament, incinerating tourists in a disco in Bali, and cutting down Americans by the thousands on a single day in Manhattan and D.C. When heard against the protracted, murderous, and ongoing bellow of the Islamic jihad's Allahu akbar! all around the world, the Crusades are scarcely a whimpering ghost. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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