The Next Crusade
The Next Crusade
The Bush administration's rhetoric is plainly directed at drawing evangelical Christians - and others looking for a good holy war - to their crusading banner. Make no mistake about it - this is the next war between Christendom and Islam. There is a terrifying lesson to be learned from history. The ignorance of our nation, our electorate and our elected officials to the dark history of holy war between Christendom and Islam is particularly alarming.
Forgive me for not pulling out my notes and nailing down the dates and proper numbers for each Crusade, but consider some of the basic history. Muslims in the holy land during the early part of the second millenium bc were accustomed over hundreds of years to minor incursions from the Byzantine empire, the capital of which was Byzantium/Constantinople - which today is Istanbul, Turkey for anyone not up on ancient geography. The Byzantines occassionally raided as far south as Lebanon, but primarily they made cross-border raids to gather booty. The Muslims in modern Syria and Lebanon generally beat back these attacks and they rarely if ever escalated into full scale conflict.
At the time, within what we now call the Middle East, Muslims were mostly divided. The Sunni and Shia each had also become somewhat lax in their following of the Koran, and Islamic fundamentalism essentially did not exist as we know it today. There was a significant amount of disunity amongst different Muslim factions, and the arguments over who was the true successor to Muhammad continued to split Muslims between Sunni and Shia. But many of what we call the fundamentalist ideals of the Koran itself had faded into the background. Islam had succeeded in stopping the blood feuds that threatened generations of Arabs, and an extensive period of relative peace and prosperity, including a fortunate avoidance of the death plagues that struck Europe, put the Muslims at a relative level of comfort that made excessive religiosity somewhat unnecessary.
Muslim society was far more sophisticated in terms of art, science, architecture, mathematics and high culture - none of which caught on in Europe until the Renaissance hundreds of years later. When the first Crusaders came from the West they seized the holy lands rapidly and slaughtered many "Moors." The Muslims were taken by surprise. They thought when the white man showed up to fight, it was another Byzantine raid. The Crusaders attacked with a ferocity they had never before witnessed, committing atrocities Muslims had never experienced. The European invaders were, essentially, viewed as barbarians who utterly lacked morality (sound familar?). Indeed, Muslim scholars tried to learn about and understand these strange white men, but often were put to the sword because they were leaders.
After Jerusalem fell, Muslims all over the middle east took notice. They began to unite. It wasn't long before the concept of Jihad - long since forgotten - was revived by a man who's name I cannot recall, but who was Saladin's (Salah al-din), Uncle. Jihad united the Muslim world against Christendom and paved the way for Saladin to raise a massive army, take back the holy lands, and kick the Crusaders back to Byzantium (it wasn't until much later that the Ottomans took Constantinople and later attempted to march west, take Vienna and invade western Europe, which they ultimately failed to do). The idea that dying for Islam would guarantee paradise was powerful, and it drew Muslims from everywhere into the fight for the holy land (sound familar?). Ironically, the Pope in Rome at the time caught wind of the concept and started spreading the word across Europe that anyone that joined a Crusade would be forgiven all of their sins and guaranteed entry into heaven. Young men flocked to the Pope's banner and the Crusades escalated, but the Europeans never again took and held Jerusalem for very long (if at all).
In the end, there were more than 15 serious Crusades, one of which resulted in the infamous capture of King Richard the Lionheart of England (think Sean Connery in Robin Hood), and another of which resulted in the death of one King Louis of France. The Crusades succeeded in doing absolutely nothing other than uniting Islam against the west. They resulted mostly in thousands of young Europeans dying in a strange place, far from home. In fact, the only thing that ultimately saved the west from being conquered by the Ottomans was Mother Nature. If not for a harsh winter, short campaign season, and the long march from Istanbul to Vienna, the Ottomans likely would have taken the west, and we'd all be Muslims. They failed, however, which in a sense opened the door to the later European colonialism that put the middle east square in the middle of the shit sandwich it's in today.
In short, we have re-elected a group of Crusaders who have walked ignorantly and self-righteously into a conflict they cannot possibly win. They are fighting neither terrorism nor oppression. They are fighting against Islam and a thousand years of distrust and resentment on the part of a people who are perfectly aware of how beautiful their society and culture were before the west intervened and destroyed it. Muslims have every right - given history - to want to see western culture similarly destroyed. To them, it would simply be a matter of getting even. America's leaders can't be entirely ignorant to this history. More likely they understand exactly that they are pursuing a religious Crusade. In doing so they have defiled the very concepts of liberty and democracy on which our nation was supposedly founded. Given this back drop, it is no surprise that Bush won by raising a Christian banner and saying, "follow me, kill the evildoers, surpress the gays, and G-d will love you." Welcome indeed to our new theocracy and the next Crusade.
The Bush administration's rhetoric is plainly directed at drawing evangelical Christians - and others looking for a good holy war - to their crusading banner. Make no mistake about it - this is the next war between Christendom and Islam. There is a terrifying lesson to be learned from history. The ignorance of our nation, our electorate and our elected officials to the dark history of holy war between Christendom and Islam is particularly alarming.
Forgive me for not pulling out my notes and nailing down the dates and proper numbers for each Crusade, but consider some of the basic history. Muslims in the holy land during the early part of the second millenium bc were accustomed over hundreds of years to minor incursions from the Byzantine empire, the capital of which was Byzantium/Constantinople - which today is Istanbul, Turkey for anyone not up on ancient geography. The Byzantines occassionally raided as far south as Lebanon, but primarily they made cross-border raids to gather booty. The Muslims in modern Syria and Lebanon generally beat back these attacks and they rarely if ever escalated into full scale conflict.
At the time, within what we now call the Middle East, Muslims were mostly divided. The Sunni and Shia each had also become somewhat lax in their following of the Koran, and Islamic fundamentalism essentially did not exist as we know it today. There was a significant amount of disunity amongst different Muslim factions, and the arguments over who was the true successor to Muhammad continued to split Muslims between Sunni and Shia. But many of what we call the fundamentalist ideals of the Koran itself had faded into the background. Islam had succeeded in stopping the blood feuds that threatened generations of Arabs, and an extensive period of relative peace and prosperity, including a fortunate avoidance of the death plagues that struck Europe, put the Muslims at a relative level of comfort that made excessive religiosity somewhat unnecessary.
Muslim society was far more sophisticated in terms of art, science, architecture, mathematics and high culture - none of which caught on in Europe until the Renaissance hundreds of years later. When the first Crusaders came from the West they seized the holy lands rapidly and slaughtered many "Moors." The Muslims were taken by surprise. They thought when the white man showed up to fight, it was another Byzantine raid. The Crusaders attacked with a ferocity they had never before witnessed, committing atrocities Muslims had never experienced. The European invaders were, essentially, viewed as barbarians who utterly lacked morality (sound familar?). Indeed, Muslim scholars tried to learn about and understand these strange white men, but often were put to the sword because they were leaders.
After Jerusalem fell, Muslims all over the middle east took notice. They began to unite. It wasn't long before the concept of Jihad - long since forgotten - was revived by a man who's name I cannot recall, but who was Saladin's (Salah al-din), Uncle. Jihad united the Muslim world against Christendom and paved the way for Saladin to raise a massive army, take back the holy lands, and kick the Crusaders back to Byzantium (it wasn't until much later that the Ottomans took Constantinople and later attempted to march west, take Vienna and invade western Europe, which they ultimately failed to do). The idea that dying for Islam would guarantee paradise was powerful, and it drew Muslims from everywhere into the fight for the holy land (sound familar?). Ironically, the Pope in Rome at the time caught wind of the concept and started spreading the word across Europe that anyone that joined a Crusade would be forgiven all of their sins and guaranteed entry into heaven. Young men flocked to the Pope's banner and the Crusades escalated, but the Europeans never again took and held Jerusalem for very long (if at all).
In the end, there were more than 15 serious Crusades, one of which resulted in the infamous capture of King Richard the Lionheart of England (think Sean Connery in Robin Hood), and another of which resulted in the death of one King Louis of France. The Crusades succeeded in doing absolutely nothing other than uniting Islam against the west. They resulted mostly in thousands of young Europeans dying in a strange place, far from home. In fact, the only thing that ultimately saved the west from being conquered by the Ottomans was Mother Nature. If not for a harsh winter, short campaign season, and the long march from Istanbul to Vienna, the Ottomans likely would have taken the west, and we'd all be Muslims. They failed, however, which in a sense opened the door to the later European colonialism that put the middle east square in the middle of the shit sandwich it's in today.
In short, we have re-elected a group of Crusaders who have walked ignorantly and self-righteously into a conflict they cannot possibly win. They are fighting neither terrorism nor oppression. They are fighting against Islam and a thousand years of distrust and resentment on the part of a people who are perfectly aware of how beautiful their society and culture were before the west intervened and destroyed it. Muslims have every right - given history - to want to see western culture similarly destroyed. To them, it would simply be a matter of getting even. America's leaders can't be entirely ignorant to this history. More likely they understand exactly that they are pursuing a religious Crusade. In doing so they have defiled the very concepts of liberty and democracy on which our nation was supposedly founded. Given this back drop, it is no surprise that Bush won by raising a Christian banner and saying, "follow me, kill the evildoers, surpress the gays, and G-d will love you." Welcome indeed to our new theocracy and the next Crusade.
posted by Edward at 3:05 PM
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