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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 10662129" data-attributes="member: 218596">CONTINUEDXI. The Legacy of the Terrorist Crusaders     By launching their violent Christian wars against Islam and the Arabs, the Crusades in fact not only hastened the destruction of the Arab Abbasid civilization at the hands of the Mongols, but also indirectly helped bring about the emergence of Turkish power in Arab and Muslim lands with the exception of Arab Andalusia, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.     Also, thanks to the cruel Western Crusaders, many Arab Muslims have become weary of some Arab Christians. The relationship between the two brotherly Arab communities has since been somewhat strained. Before the arrival of the Crusaders in Arab lands, Arab Muslims throughout the entire Fertile Crescent used to join their Arab Christian brothers in celebrating Christmas, Epiphany (the Christian Feast of the Three Kings), Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday.     Although the Crusades were initially launched by the West to unite Western and Eastern European Christians, as well as to defeat the Arabs and Islam, they miserably failed on both accounts. The Crusaders' vicious wars on their "fellow" Greek Orthodox Christians of Byzantium and their barbaric destruction of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), brought an effective end to any serious reconciliation between the Western European and the Eastern European Christian Churches; seriously weakened the Byzantine Empire and made it an easy prey for the Muslim Turks; and discredited the Papacy by making it lose face among many of its followers.      Moreover, all of the Crusaders colonies in the Arab world were completely destroyed. Islam itself emerged from its defensive wars against the Crusaders to become an even stronger force under the Turks. The Muslim Turks expanded Islam farther into Eastern and Southeastern Europe at the expense of the European Christians in places like Albania and Bosnia. The final coup de grace came in 1453 when the Muslim Turks destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire itself, conquered its great capital city of Constantinople, renamed it Istanbul, and even made it their proud capital city for 470 years. In fact, nowadays Istanbul has some of the most magnificent mosques in the entire Muslim world, some of which used to be Byzantium churches such as the great Cathedral Hagia Sophia, which in 1935 was turned into a Turkish museum by the current Turkish secular republic.     Nonetheless, the dark-ages Crusaders - who were a group of savages with rough manners from the crude castles, fields, and tangled forests of West Europe - were amazed and dazzled by the great cultures and civilizations of both the Arabs and Byzantium that they had invaded. They had an opportunity to see and experience first hand many new things and ideas that in time they adopted and incorporated into their own daily lives. Through their long brutal crusading wars against Islam, Western Europeans learned a great deal from the Arabs. For example, they learned the art of raising and training carrier pigeons to send messages from town to town, the sport of falconry, and the Chinese art of papermaking. Also, Italians adopted the glass-making techniques of Tyre; French villagers learned the arts both of weaving lustrous fabrics and of cultivating silkworms; and farmers throughout Western Europe began to plant sugar cane from Tripoli and plum trees from Damascus. While West European men learned to enjoy the sensuous comfort of Muslim steam baths, their women started using glass mirrors instead of polished metal disks. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and other aromatic spices of the East began to find their way into the dull Western cookery. Also, many new items such as rugs, silk, ivory, camphor, musk, and pearls began to appear and to be appreciated in Europe for the first time after the Crusades had opened Western eyes to the riches and life style of the East. In fact, Arab sciences, ideas, crafts, and skills which reached West Europe - both as a result of the Crusaders' violent contacts with the Arabs of the east as well as from Europe's contact with Arab Andalusia in the west - hastened the West's climb from the depths of its dark ages.     In addition, many new Eastern political, economic, and cultural ideas reached Western Europe and began to change dramatically the face of the West. Among the most important of these changes was the emergence in West Europe of a new merchant class that was hungry for trading with the Arabs and the East. As this new business class grew in strength, it began to seriously rival European feudal lords, knights, and barons both in wealth and social status. Consequently, the old West European dictatorial feudal and manorial systems quickly came tumbling down, and West Europe was no longer backward. The well-known Italian explorer, Marco Polo - who made his famous journey to China (1271-1295) immediately after the Eighth Crusade - not only increased West Europe's interest in trading with the East, but also inspired other Western explorers like Christopher Columbus to search for a direct sea route to India.     As a result of the centuries of Western conflicts and contacts with the Arabs, the age of the greedy Western international capitalism and brutal colonialism/imperialism has emerged to the detriment and misery of the native peoples of North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Asia, Africa, and the Arab world. Hence, the most important legacy of the Crusaders has been the sanctification of Western violence against non-Europeans in pursuit of imperialist and capitalist ends. The underlying concept of European holy wars against the Arabs and Islam has outlived its religious origin and has been absorbed in the institutions of Western governments. When European kings, knights, and other rich upper classes grew stronger after the Crusades, they secularized the concept of justifiable violence and extended it into the politico-economic sphere. In effect, the Western State has since replaced the Western Church as a holy cause.     Finally, the savage Western Crusades against the Arabs were a starting point of a millennial bitter hostility between the Arabs and the West and its effects are still lingering on. The Crusaders' gory massacres and barbaric cannibalism in the Arab world created a great deal of hate for the imperialist West which has since been ingrained in the hearts and minds of most Arabs and Muslims. And since the 19th century new waves of Western aggression and wars against the Arabs have been taking place. Arab hatred for the West, because of the Crusades, has been painfully re-ignited by the vicious Western colonization and dismemberment of the Arab nation during the 19th and 20th centuries; by the American brutal imperialism and wars in Arab and Muslim lands; and by the violent creation of the Western Zionist state of Israel with the help of the imperialist West over the land of Palestine in 1948.      Instead of Western Christians, this time Western Zionist Jews have made a similar dubious claim on Palestine. Using far more sophisticated deadly weapons than the old Crusaders, the Zionist-Jews (or the new Western “crusaders”) have been committing Crusade-like bloody massacres since 1948 against innocent Palestinians and other Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. The West has always been obsessed with stealing the holy land from the Arabs, and so history repeats itself.</blockquote>

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