II. The Crusades: A General Overview
Of all the religious wars in human history waged by any religion, at any place, and at any time, none have been bloodier, more genocidal, more barbaric, and more protracted than the 200-year "holy wars" by the Western Crusades against the Arabs and Islam. The Western Crusaders horrifically soaked Asia Minor and the Eastern Arab Mediterranean coast with Arab blood (both Muslim and Jewish). The objective of the Crusades was simple, to destroy the Arabs (whether Muslim or Jew) in the Holy Land of Palestine and its environs "…on the ground that they had no right to inhabit their part of the earth, while for a Christian the whole world is his country." [1]
Unlike Muslims (Arab and non-Arab) who have always tolerated Christians and Jews (Arab and non-Arab), married into them, and lived and worked with them side by side in peace as "People of the Book" in all Arab and Muslim lands as well as in old Arab Andalusia (Spain and Portugal), the Christian West has had no desire to coexist with Islam and the Arabs. Also, unlike Muslims who revere Moses and Jesus as God’s prophets, most Christians and Jews in the “tolerant” West have no respect for Prophet Mohammad and are rudely contemptuous of him and Islam. In fact ever since its birth and its subsequent widespread expansion, Islam has been looked upon in the West as a mortal danger, both moral and military, to be strongly opposed or even destroyed. In his classic exposé of Christian violence worldwide, A History of Christianity, the Western Christian scholar Paul Johnson rejects the Western propaganda about Islam’s “violent” expansion by stating that: "The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature." [2]
Nevertheless, the Western Crusades' insane bloodbaths against the Arabs were triggered by the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army in 1071 at the hands of the Turkish Seljuk (Abbasid) army. Fearing that all of Asia Minor would be quickly overrun by the Abbasids, the defeated Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, quickly appealed to his Christian rivals and opponents in Western Europe, i.e., Pope Urban II and his other "fellow" Christian rulers, to come to the aid of Constantinople by undertaking a "pilgrimage" or Crusade to "free" Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine from Arab and Muslim rule.
Emperor Alexius' appeal provided Pope Urban II with his lifetime opportunity to gain more recognition and power for the papal authority and for its role in legitimizing the temporal actions of the West European kings. Presiding over an urgent Church Council meeting, at Piacenza, Italy, in March 1095, Pope Urban II - with the Byzantine ambassador sitting next to him - called upon all the Western European followers of Christ to do "God's will” by carrying arms to "liberate the Holy Land" and cleanse it from the desecration of the Arab and Muslim "infidels." The Pope's call to fight the Arabs was ironic because, as scholar Francis Peters observed "God may indeed have wished it, but there is certainly no evidence that the Christians of Jerusalem did, or that anything extraordinary was occurring to pilgrims there to prompt such a response at that moment in history." [3] Although Christian and Jewish pilgrims (Arab and non-Arab) were burdened by taxes; they were never barred or even restricted from their religious shrines in Jerusalem either by Muslim Arab or Turkish authorities, even during the few severe sporadic civil disturbances in Palestine. In fact, Arabs (Muslims, Jews, and Christians) as well as non-Arabs (also Muslims, Jews, and Christians) have all lived together in Palestine in peace under Islamic rule since the dawn of Islam.
In reality, however, the veritable rationale behind launching the Crusades went beyond religious impulses, which were mostly the concern of the common people. Western kings, knights, feudal lords, and merchants were driven primarily by political, military, and commercial ambitions as well as by the prospects of new lands and riches that would accompany the establishment of European colonies in the Arab world.
Nevertheless, to start a new general European massive movement, like the Crusades, the leadership of a central figure was needed. Pope Urban II was the only central figure at the time in the entire West with an authority that transcended all of Western Europe's national boundaries. On November 25, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered in Clermont, France, what was perhaps the single most effective speech in Western history - one that has influenced the West up to the present time. Not only did the Pope appeal to the Western masses through religious motives, but he also used what came to be known as the typical Western ideological argument in support of a colonialist and imperialist policy that eventually led Europe in later generations to brutally colonize the entire non-European world. In this historic speech, Pope Urban II reminded the Europeans that their lands were suffering from widespread economic problems:
"For this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth, and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage war, and that very many among you perish in civil strife." [4]
The Pope then quickly pointed out that the Arab land of Palestine to which they would be going for their Crusade "floweth with milk and honey ... like another paradise of delights." [5] Pope Urban II then passionately exhorted the faithful Westerners: "Set out on the road to the Holy Sepulcher, take that land from the wicked people and make it your own!" [6] After the Pope ended his fiery speech, the entire large European crowd responded jubilantly with a loud roar: "Dieu le veult!" (God wills it!).
In fact, the Western Crusaders were the first great wave of European colonialism since the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. The Crusades took the form of a series of brutal military invasions in the name of "Christianity" to the heart of Arab and Muslim lands in order to brutally colonize Arab Palestine and kill its people. There were at least nine major Western Crusades and many smaller ones launched against the Arabs between 1095 and 1290: The First (1095-1099); the Second (1147-1149); the Third (1189-1192); the Fourth (1198-1204); the Children's Crusade (1212); the Fifth (1217-1221); the Sixth (1228-1229); the Seventh (1248-1254); the Eighth (1270); and the Ninth (1290). Other ill-starred Western military expeditions against the Arabs continued up to the 15th century. Actually, Europe's hatred and fear of Arab and Muslim power were so intense that the idea of the Crusade persisted well into the 17th century, and the conviction that war might be just and legitimate has since become more deeply engraved in the conscience of the West.
The Crusaders came from all over Western Europe, but France was somehow their main bulwark (from which Pope Urban II himself came). A French monk described the First Crusade, which was launched from France, as Gesta Dei per Francos ("the Franks were presented as the chosen instruments of God"!). [7] Not to be outdone by the French in the service of God, however, many other Europeans joined in such as English, Scottish, Welch, Irish, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, Portuguese, Normans, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Swiss. In this mass Crusader army, all classes and segments of Western societies were represented. The Crusaders included kings, knights, aristocrats, feudal lords, priests, hermits, monks, dukes, military leaders, soldiers, zealots, pilgrims, workers, peasants, merchants, common people, and criminals. They also came from both sexes and all ages (see "The Children's Crusade" below).
The most prominent of all the participating fanatics and zealots among the Crusaders, however, was a strange Frenchman by the name of Pierre L'Ermit ("Peter the Hermit") from the city of Amiens. Pierre L'Ermit was one of history's most bizarre characters, especially for a religious leader. He looked like a madman; small and miserably thin; walked barefooted; rode a jackass for transportation; his wild unkempt hair tumbled over his neck and ears; his unshaven wild beard came down to his waist; his eyes rolled; his speech was torrential; and his dingy clothes consisted of only a woolen smock and a light cloak which also served him as a blanket at night. [8] Pierre L'Ermit was a powerful speaker, though. His fiery speeches hypnotized his Christian listeners who nicknamed him "Kiokio" (or "little Peter"). His followers used his jackass as an object of religious veneration, plucking hairs from its tail to keep as "holy relics"! [9] It was this strange, barefooted Pierre L'Ermit who led the first column in the First Crusade (known as the Peasants' Crusade) in 1096 against the Arabs and Islam.
In order to raise a large army to fight the Arabs and Islam, Pope Urban II promised that all Crusaders would be exempted from taxes; their debts would be forgiven; their sins would be washed away; and their special place in Paradise would be guaranteed. Consequently, the response to his call was extraordinary. All in all about 160,000, [10] heavily armed Europeans, an astounding figure for that time, formed the armies of the First Crusade. It seemed that the whole of Western Europe was marching east. It was the first time that Western Europe had come together for any cooperative act or cause since the fall of the Roman Empire. Nothing like it has ever happened in the history of the West. European unity was so clear and so purposeful.
The Crusaders came in a seemingly solid mass, some with all of their belongings, to join in this mad holy war to destroy Islam. Their objective was to kill Arabs and Turks whom Pope Urban II described as "an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God", urging his followers to "exterminate this vile race from our lands." [11] The Crusades took place during the Western dark ages when Europe was backward compared to the Arab/Muslim world and to the Christian Byzantine Empire of East Europe. Hence, the Crusaders' behavior during their vicious wars reflected their cruelty and primitive barbarism. They were extremely militant, and committed incredible mass violence. They acted like modern-day violent American Ku Klux Klan and other Western racist groups. They committed, both in Europe and the Arab/Muslim world, the worst conceivable horrible crimes and atrocities, not only against thousands of innocent Muslims and Jews of both sexes and of all ages, but also even against Christians. Their vicious crimes - all of which will be detailed shortly - against noncombatants and innocent peoples included the destruction of properties; pillaging; plundering; foraging; ravaging; stealing; setting houses on fire; torturing; murdering; executing; burning humans alive; raping women, including nuns; and even roasting and eating (with a great deal of relish) the human flesh of their victims and their children.
It must have seemed that even Mother Nature (or God) was angry with the Crusaders and was horrified by their sordid crimes. Violent earthquakes devastated the Syrian Arab region at various times during the Crusader’s 200-year presence in the Arab world. Although the 1157 tremor was the most spectacular, not even one single decade passed - during which the Crusaders were pillaging and killing Arabs - without some major cataclysm. [12] What follows is but a brief account of the Crusaders' vicious 200-year bloody assault on the Arabs and Islam.
