Once again someone out there is trying to rehabilitate the crusades as entirely acceptable, this time I noticed it via Craig Carter who quotes Rodney Stark approvingly:
“the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places.”
Well, it was nice of the religious and political hierarchy of Christian Europe to look up from their burning of witches, putting of Jews in ghettos, and holding of inquisitions for the Cathars just long enough to remove the mote of religious persecution from their neighbour’s eye. As far as “bloody attempts” to colonize the West are concerned, if step back further, the West under the guise of Rome and Greece colonized Western and Central Asia long before Mohammed’s armies got their start. Before them, Xerxes tried to colonize the West for Persia. So taken in the wide-angle view, this is just a part of the ongoing struggles between various groups for control of each other’s territory. To play a game of whether Central Asia or Europe started invading the other first is a bit silly. The crusades were a poorly conceived waste of blood and treasure in a Quixotic quest to control the Holy Land for the followers of one who promised the destruction of its holiest sites and who explicitly said that he wouldn’t always be worshipped in Jerusalem anyway.
Question: Will you be finally happy once Muslims finally succeed in taking over western Europe? If one thing is just as bad as the other than there is no point in ever resisting evil. Why should Westerners have anymore right over the West than followers of Islam? As for me, I feel that it will be a great tragedy when Europe becomes a part of Dar es Islam. Do you feel it would be better that Europe be Muslim or what it is today?
You have a long list of Western sins and not a single example of the transgressions of Muslims? Or is it wrong historically to list their faults: genocide, religious persecution, death by jihad, terrorism, slavery, oppression of women and militant expansionism, because after 9-11 such lists could potentially lead to Islamaphobia? Why is there always a need to whitewash what these people do?
There is no revisionism in saying quite historically that the Crusades were a counter attack against a very real threat that continues into our own time. Let me see, was the Battle at Tours before or after the First Crusade?
Is it necessary to mention every crime of every side every time? It really has no bearing on whether there will ever be some kind of Muslim majority in Europe or not if we try to honest and clear-eyed about the past. Covering up the transgressions of the medieval church will do nothing to alter birthrates or immigration policies. Not that the numbers on such things are as threatening as, say, Mark Steyn makes them out to be.