The Truth About The Crusades
You mean we've been lied to? Imagine my surprise...
The Truth About the Crusades
From our friends at Terror-Watch.net, this is a fascinating piece by Professor Thomas McFadden explaining the truth about the Crusades that the Main Stream Media and the politically correct of the world don't want us to know about. Professor McFadden is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is the author of numerous works, including A Concise History of the Crusades, and co-author, with Donald Queller, of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. So I say he's qualified to write about this...
I've never really been a student of the Crusades. I think it was my Freshmen year in high school that I studied it. And sadly, my Freshman year is all but a blur now. But with the event of the last four years, 9/11 in particular, the Crusades have come up in the media as well in discussions. Unfortunately, I've always been sadly misinformed and have bought into the generally accepted idea that the Crusades were the result of Christianity trying to spread throughout the Middle East by force. The idea that Christians in that time period were trying to conquer the Middle East to spread Christianity. (You know those evil Christians...) But I'm seeing things a little differently after reading this piece. Here's a snippet of the lengthy piece:
"With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammeds death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt once the most heavily Christian areas in the world quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense."
Hmm, never heard that version before... Take the time to read the entire piece linked above. It will change your perspective a bit and it is quite relevant in today's world.
The Truth About the Crusades
From our friends at Terror-Watch.net, this is a fascinating piece by Professor Thomas McFadden explaining the truth about the Crusades that the Main Stream Media and the politically correct of the world don't want us to know about. Professor McFadden is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is the author of numerous works, including A Concise History of the Crusades, and co-author, with Donald Queller, of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. So I say he's qualified to write about this...
I've never really been a student of the Crusades. I think it was my Freshmen year in high school that I studied it. And sadly, my Freshman year is all but a blur now. But with the event of the last four years, 9/11 in particular, the Crusades have come up in the media as well in discussions. Unfortunately, I've always been sadly misinformed and have bought into the generally accepted idea that the Crusades were the result of Christianity trying to spread throughout the Middle East by force. The idea that Christians in that time period were trying to conquer the Middle East to spread Christianity. (You know those evil Christians...) But I'm seeing things a little differently after reading this piece. Here's a snippet of the lengthy piece:
"With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammeds death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt once the most heavily Christian areas in the world quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense."
Hmm, never heard that version before... Take the time to read the entire piece linked above. It will change your perspective a bit and it is quite relevant in today's world.
posted by Goose at 10:34
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