Well, I guess Preznit Short-Pants got his crusade on. Looks like once again the Christians get to try and beseige the hapless (?) middle-eastern people at the Exhortation of their "Christian Leader", invoking the Almighty Hairy Thunderer as his justification no less. No wonder the Vatican-bound rodentia like him so much, he reminds them of a Pope O'Rome, ol' Urban II.
In the year 637 the armies of Islam lead by the Caliph Omar conquered the city of Jerusalem, the center of the Christian world and a magnet for Christian pilgrims. The city's Muslim masters exhibited a certain level of religious tolerance. No new churches were to be built and crosses could not be publicly displayed outside church buildings, but the pilgrims were allowed to continue their treks to the holiest shrines of Christendom (the pilgrims were charged a toll for access). The situation remained stable for over 400 years. Then, in the latter part of the 11th century, the Turks swarmed westward out of Central Asia overrunning all that lay in their path. Jerusalem fell to them in 1076. The atmosphere of tolerance practiced by the followers of Omar was replaced by vicious attacks on the Christian pilgrims and on their sacred shrines in the Holy City. Reports of robberies, beatings, killings, degradation of holy sites and the kidnapping for ransom of the city's patriarch made their way back to Europe. To the Europeans the Holy Land was now in the smothering grip of the Infidel and something must be done.
In response, Pope Urban II called a conference at the city of Clermont, France in 1095, concluding the eight days of deliberation with one of history's most influential speeches. Mounting a lofty scaffold, the Pope exhorted the assembled multitude to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the Infidel and assured them that God would absolve them from any sin associated with the venture. His words fell on receptive ears as the crowd responded with cries of "It is the will of God!", "It is the will of God!". The Crusades had begun.
Perched atop sandbags and peering through powerful binoculars, Marine officers manning front-line positions around this tense city can see the problem clearly enough, even through the swirling dust that gives Fallujah the sepia hue of a Wild West town: Military-age men in white robes swagger about with impunity, they say, hardening their defenses and resupplying their encampments.
The Marines say the men are Sunni Muslim guerrillas who have taken over this Euphrates River city and transformed it into a stronghold of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq.
But neither here, nor in the Baghdad palace that serves as the headquarters of the U.S. occupation administration, nor in the corridors of official Washington, is the solution to the Fallujah problem clear. Although American officials and Iraq's U.S.-backed leaders agree that the insurgents should be captured or killed, preferably before the Americans hand over limited sovereignty on June 30, no good options exist to accomplish that goal, according to U.S. officials familiar with the issue.
You know, you have to wonder how those Marines feel about being stuck out on the sharp tip of the spear by a guy too incurious to even understand the history of the region he so cavalierly invaded for no really good reason. Talk about a match and gasoline...these Marines are earning all their pay and should be getting more, while Fearless Leader is getting ready to go mis-manage something else, somewhere.
posted by Jo Fish on 04.29.04 at 12:20 AM
Comments:
I'd say that Christians and Muslims throughout the last 1000 years have been pretty equal in trying to conquer each other.
posted by: Lynne on 04.29.04 at 12:24 AM [permalink]
First off, the "center of the Christian world" in 637 was Constantinople (now known as "Istanbul"), not Jerusalem. That was the seat of the Eastern Emperor, head of the Church as well as of the State, and site of the then largest Church in Christendom, the Hagia Sophia (now known as "the Blue Mosque").
And, according to anger-management-challenged host of this site, Christendom was supposed to submit to conquest and conversion (which it very nearly was and is about to happen demographically to most of Continental Europe), but I digress...
As for the bit of moral equivalence in the response...
"...Christians and Muslims throughout the last 1000 years have been pretty equal in trying to conquer each other".
Oh, really? Lessee, start with the 700 year-long Moorish occupation of Spain (which would have extended to France if not for the Frankish victory at Poitiers), or the 400-year long Ottoman occupation of the Balkans, and the slaughter and enslavement of the Southern Slavs, or the Turkish conquest and occupation of Hungary, or the two epic Turkish sieges of Vienna, or...speaking of Constantinople...the siege, sack, and rape of one of the holiest cities in Christendom...or the 500 year-long brutish Turkish occupation of Greece (continued to this day on their half of Cyprus), or the Tatar butchery of Kievan Rus...
Or even in our own short history, the seizure of American ships and the enslavement of their crews by Barbary Pirates.
So, if you're capable of simple math, you'll see about 1,000 years of Muslim oppression and conquest of various parts of Christendom ended only by force of arms, followed by at most 200 years of Western Colonialism, most of whose (Algeria being an exception) possessions the European powers relinquished peacefully.
And the Jihad continues against Kufrenclaves around the world -- in Nigeria, in Sudan (where chattel slavery of Christians and animists is practiced), in Pakistan, in Aceh and Borneo, in the Philippines, in the Former East Timor against the Christian majority there (until the Aussies intervened to end it, which bought them the Bali massacre), in Macedonia and Kosovo, or on buses and in restaurants in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
So, no, you ignorant git, it's not "pretty much equal". Only a mind marinated in political correctness and moral equivalence, not to mention appallingly ignorant of history, would think so.
Remember, the next time some sanctimonious twit starts up about "the Crusades" remind them that it was the Mohammedans who attacked Christendom first, and, if not for some resolute Franks, Venetians, and Austrians and some doomed Greeks, Hungarians and Serbs, might very well have overrun it.
Christians were too busy burning each other over who was right to really focus on others.
Bush has solved that- his latest comments about "brown skinned people" will set the course straight on who are enemies are.
Nevermind that a majority of our men and women in service right now are brown skinned. Why let facts interfere with the codpiece cavorting of wars and morals on god's terms and turf,as it pertains to the war on terra?
posted by: Mr.Murder on 04.30.04 at 03:52 PM [permalink]
