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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 10662147" data-attributes="member: 218596">II. The Crusades: A General OverviewOf 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.</blockquote>

Verification: Hath warak paha keeyada? (hatha wadikireema paha)

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