Who Invaded Whom?
The Muslim world jumped on President George W. Bush’s use of the word “crusade” as proof that America wants to wage war against Islam, not merely apprehend international terrorists. While indeed the word does refer to unsuccessful Christian attempts to recapture the Holy Land centuries ago, the word also means “a remedial enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm,” according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. As an example, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower told Allied troops on the eve of the Normandy invasion, “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade…†It is interesting to note that while Germany was non-Muslim, many Islamic nations and leaders, such as Iraq and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, actively supported the Nazi regime.
Today’s Islamic fascists claim there is an age-old conspiracy against their religion and that Christianity and Judaism have always tried to stifle their faith by force of arms.
History reveals an entirely different story.
When the Prophet Mohammed died in 632, the Holy Land was Christian-controlled and had been for centuries, as were what are now modern-day Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. The Byzantine Empire, which ruled the territory, became Christian shortly after the conversion of Emperor Constantine I in 324.
Jerusalem, sacred to Jews as the site of the Temple and to Christians as the place of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, is not even mentioned in the Koran.
From its very beginning, Islam set about spreading its faith at sword point. It conquered the nearby pagan territory, including Mecca, and then turned on the Byzantines in the west and north and the Persians in the east. The armies of Allah poured into Syria and the Holy Land, taking Jerusalem in 638, a full six years after Mohammed’s death.
While maintaining a constant pressure on the Byzantines and swallowing the Persian Empire, they pushed across North Africa, subjecting all of it by the end of the seventh century. Not content with these conquests, Islamic armies then swept north from Africa into Europe, the heart of Christianity. They landed in southern Spain in A.D. 711 and rapidly subdued the entire Iberian peninsula under the crescent banner. Still not satisfied, Islamic armies poured across the Pyrenees Mountains into France where a Christian army under Charles Martel finally stopped them at the Battle of Tours in A.D 732.
It took just 21 years for Islamic armies to sweep from Africa to France. It would be 781 years before they were finally driven out when Granada finally fell in to Spanish armies in 1492.
While Western Europe was fighting for its spiritual and political life, Islam kept up the pressure in the east against the Byzantines. Europe gradually realized the true scope of the Islamic threat to Christendom. Pope Urban II called for action at the Council of Clermont in late November 1095. He called on Christians to help support the beleaguered Byzantine Empire and for a crusade to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders.
At first, the efforts succeeded. Jerusalem came under Crusader control in 1099. But Christian control of the Holy Land was short lived. The Saracen armies of Saladin retook the city in 1187. Its Muslim overlords later ceded the city back to Christian control in 1229 and the city changed hands several times after that. The Crusader presence in the Holy Land was finally ended in 1244.
This victory was not enough for the Muslim world. Islamic armies pressed against Europe. A series of campaigns against the Byzantines finally succeeded when Constantinople fell to the invaders in 1453, bringing to an end a civilization that traced its roots back to the founding of Rome 2,000 years prior. Greece, the Balkans and parts of Central Europe soon fell. The year 1529 saw the armies of Suliman the Magnificent at the gates of Vienna. They were finally defeated following a long siege of the Austrian city. The Muslims tried again in 1683 and were again defeated.
Gradually, the tide of time turned against militant Islam. By the end of the First World War, only European Turkey remained Islamic and Jerusalem was under English control.
Today, Moslems live throughout the Western world. In most places, including Israel, they are free to worship and participate in government as they choose.
The same cannot be said of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus or others in the Muslim world, to which the concept of religious freedom is anathema.
There may well be a religious war being waged today, but it is an Islamic jihad, not a Christian crusade.
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Kip Allen is an award-winning broadcast and newspaper journalist currently residing in Southern California. He is a contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org, and you may read more of his work here.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:12 am
I feel sorry for the kids in schools today who have to put up with the “evil white euro-man” cause of the Crusades. That the NEA has bastardized history so repulsively is beyond comprehension, but it is now time to start re-educating people as to the true causes of the Crusades, namely, Islamic violence and warring.
An interesting sidelight: much of the history of the time is filled with Islamists making peace with superior forces just to gain time to regroup and conquer. I wonder: Is there a message there for us?
February 15th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Anyone even remotely familiar with the NEA knows that it is the most marvelous example of labor corruption today.
That the NEA is braindead about the Crusades is inherently obvious. You’ve hit on a sore point that I am personally pursuing against the “multiculuralist” mob of Stalino-Islamo-Fascist goons in this country. Go to the library and read for yourself. Read the works of Bat Yeor, John Wansborough, Ibn Warriq, Bernard Lewis, Ron Segal and others and form your own opinion. If you do that, you will find that the fragile edifice erected by the Noam Chomskys, the Karen Armstrongs, the John Espositos, and the Edward Saids comes crashing down in a million pieces of non-reassemblealbe nonsense.
February 16th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Middle Eastern Muslims have been Invaded,Pillaged,looted,Raped & Murdered by Europeans for over 2000 yrs. After all that we try to convert them to Christianity.How many reasons do we need to give them to hate us. We have used every modern weapon known to man on a people whose main defense is strapping explosives around their waist and blowing themselves up in the hope they will take some of us with them. They live in the middle of the desert, raise their families under Islam and try to stay alive.
They only have a bunch of Sand,a Pyramid or two, some Oil and a Canal. Pay them a fair price for their Oil, Exit their Lands and leave them alone!!!