Thursday - February 04, 2010

CHRISTIANS … CRUSADES … RELIGION … HISTORY

I’m not even supposed to be here at the moment. I can’t begin to explain the work I’m involved in between passports (and an American Embassy that could be a bit more helpful. heaven forbid we can’t have that.) and computer stuff urgently needs doing, continue the precess of trying to clear out the house of unwanted items, the list is forever.  So I thought I’d try and get caught up on things. Or as caught up as I ever get which is hardly ever completely.  I caught this over breakfast and said to myself, self, you HAVE to post this interesting thing or you’ll lose it or forget it. In fact, this is only one of two stories, the other is one of those RCOBs.

A lot of this is already known to us, but .... well here.  See for yourself.  I’ve cut out a lot so see the link below for more.

Traditionally they’ve been painted as a noble mission. Now, two new books tell the gruesome reality of the Very Unholy Crusades

By WILLIAM NAPIER
Last updated at 10:03 AM on 04th February 2010

Jerusalum is lost! Fly, fly for your lives! July 15, 1099, and the Holiest City is at last in the hands of the Crusaders.

Piles of heads, hands and feet lay in the streets.’

The City of Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, was turned into a slaughterhouse.

‘There was so much killing that our men waded up to their ankles in enemy blood,’ boasted one warrior for Christ.

Another observer, less impressed, wrote of ‘the very great and cruel slaughter of Saracens.

‘They spared absolutely no one’.

The massacre was accompanied by voracious looting. Bloodshed, greed, gold and the Christian faith weren’t mutually contradictory to the medieval mind.

For many, it was a religion of unfathomable violence and mysticism.

Yet as historians point out, the Crusades are often subject to serious misrepresentation.

Left-liberals have shown themselves peculiarly eager to accept a standard Islamic view of the Crusades as episodes of unprovoked Western aggression against peaceful, tolerant and vastly more civilised Muslim lands.

Ex-Python Terry Jones’s television history of The Crusades was an outstanding example of this, as was Ridley Scott’s movie Kingdom Of Heaven. Bill Clinton even apologised for them. But does this make any sense?

(Hey wait. Clinton said sorry for Crusades? He did? When?  I don’t remember that. If he did, what an ass. Total jerk if true. Even he couldn’t be that stupid. Could he? Yeah generally I know the feeling being no fan myself but this seems like a new dumb low. Don’t know why I never heard about it. ??)

It is vital to understand that, before the Crusades were ever dreamed of, Islamic armies had struck many times at the heart of Europe.

Jerusalem itself was never ‘conquered’ initially by Christianity or the West, of course: Christianity simply grew there, spread by preaching.

But it was conquered by the armies of Islam in 638, erupting out of the Arabian peninsula armed with scimitar, shield and, above all, a fanatical new faith that urged them to perpetual jihad with all unbelievers.

By 715 they had conquered most of Spain, and soon they had got as far as Northern France, only stopping with their defeat at Tours by Charles Martel.

Shortly afterwards, the Caliphate of Jerusalem ordered all Jews and Christians to bear a special symbol on their hands - the first instance in history of such a measure.

Another Muslim army ravaged France in 848 two years after they had attacked Rome, sacked St Peter’s itself and extorted promises of tribute from the Pope.

In 850, Caliph al-Mutwakkil forced all Christians and Jews in his territory to affix wooden images of devils to their houses, and to wear only yellow garments to mark them out.

And a century later, Muslims went on a rampage through Jerusalem, plundering and destroying both the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection

In this same century before the Crusades, Muslim armies captured Crete, Cyprus and Sicily.

Under Caliph al-Hakim in the early 11th century, thousands of churches were destroyed throughout the ancient Christian heartland of the Middle East, and when the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem in 1077, just 22 years before it fell to the Crusaders, they too massacred some three thousand inhabitants.

All these Islamic attacks on the West occurred before the First Crusade. Some scholars even argue that the very idea of ‘holy war’ was learned from the example of Islam on the march.

Of course, nothing justifies the hellish atrocities of 1099.

And once the Crusades were raging, atrocities were common to both sides without distinction.

Indeed, the great Muslim leader Saladin still enjoys a reputation for chivalry, in contrast to the brutish Europeans - yet this wasn’t always the case.

After his great victory at Hattin in 1187, he followed to the letter the instructions of the Koran.

‘When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads.’

MORE ON THE SUBJECT AT THE SOURCE, HERE.

Posted by peiper     on 02/04/2010 at 09:04 AM   
Filed Under: • History • RoPMA •  
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