We here a lot about oppression of muslims, the attacks on the muslim world and well they never seem to forget about the crusades, I am sure that we all remember Osama banging on about Crusader troops in Iraq and on muslim holy ground.(for those not wise to what holy ground is as far as moslems are concerned - that can be defined as any ground that moslems own/owned/want to own/looked at once or think it might be theres one day.)
So anyway next time you here some moslem going on about the bloody crusades and how the Christians started it all remind them of this...
The first Crusade began in 1095…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade some 460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies(Christian at that time), 443 after Muslims first plundered Italy.
- Ok lets pause on this one. Yes moslem armies raided Italy and that the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome, with its floors of silver and its walls of gold, was sacked by the Muslims in the ninth century, 46 years after Charlemagne was crowned emperor there? Did you know that in the same century Brindisi and other Italian cities were conquered and controlled by the Muslims for decades, that Naples and Capua were attacked several times, that the Muslims burned the abbey at Monte Cassino and that Muslims crossed the Alps from Spain into Italy? http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/printDettaglio.jsp?id=44479&eng=y
- Another point of trivia is that during the late middle ages, many rich moslems travelled to Florence/Milan and other Renaissance cities and had their portraits put on display something that many muslims say is against Islam. In fact in the Duomo in Milan(Il Duomo di Milano) many portraits of powerful muslims can be seen gracing the walls, guess the old saying of when in Rome(or is that Florence?)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_di_Milano
Pope Urban was the man who started off all this islamic whining, Urban the II's main achievement was convoking the Council of Clermont, November 1095, which called the First Crusade. The Byzantine Emperor, Alexius Commenus, had sent a desperate appeal to Urban for armed knights to defend Christianity against the Moslem enemy. When the Pope laid the Emperor's pleas before the knights in Clermont, the main concern of the noblemen there was not so much the defense of Byzantium as the rescue of the Holy land from Moslem domination. Palestine had been under Moslem control since the days of the Caliph Omar, but at least the Arab Moslems had allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the places made sacred by the life of Christ. The SeIjuk Turks, now the dominant Moslem power, had, on the other hand, closed off the Holy Land. More: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0010.html
Part of the reason for this call to arms was the long history of losing territories to a religious enemy which in turn created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands, starting at Jerusalem. In earlier centuries Christian lands of Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon had fallen to moslem armies.
And the Crusades took place some 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople, some 380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies.
- Oh and 363 years after France was first attacked by Moslem armies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Al_Ghafiqi and of course they would have taken over all of France had it not been for a certain battle where they got their islamic buts kicked back across the Pyrenees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours and lets not forget that this was after moslem forces had crossed the Pyrenees, entered Gascony and reached as far as the gates of Toulouse, it is widely believed they planned on taking over the whole of France. Still Charles The Hammer had something to say about that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel and well I shall link to a rather amusing joke related to this: http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2005/10/hammer_time.php
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.
Europe had been harassed by Muslims since the first few years following Muhammad’s death. As early as 652, Muhammad’s followers launched raids on the island of Sicily, waging a full-scale occupation 200 years later that lasted well over two centuries and was punctuated by massacres, such as that at the town of Castrogiovanni(859 AD), in which 8,000 Christians were put to death.
Sicily was occupied in a full scale invasion in 827 and was completely under their control of moslem forces by 965, it became eventually the Emirate of Sicily until finally being liberated by the Normans who finally won in 1072: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily
In 1084, ten years before the first crusade, Muslims staged another devastating Sicilian raid, burning churches in Reggio, enslaving monks and raping an abbey of nuns before carrying them into captivity. Then we have the invasions of Malta in 869 AD and their capture of Syracuse in 870 AD. Add to this that in 909AD moslem forces controlled the passes in the Alps between France and Italy – cutting off passage between the two countries.
In theory, the Crusades were provoked by the harassment of Christian pilgrims from Europe to the Holy Land, in which many were kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to Islam or even killed. (Compare this to Islam’s justification for slaughter on the basis of Muslims being denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage in Muhammad’s time).
The Crusaders only invaded lands that were Christian. They never attacked Saudi Arabia or sacked Mecca as the Muslims had done (and continued doing) to Italy and Constantinople.
The period of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land) was stretched over less than two centuries. The Muslim occupation is in its 1,372nd year.
The period of Crusader “aggression” compresses to about 20 years of actual military campaign, much of which was spent on organization and travel. (They were from 1098-1099, 1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and 1248-1250). By comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily alone lasted 75 grinding years. Not that moslems ever let facts get in the way of a good ol whine about how hard done by they are by the infidels.
Unlike Jihad, the Crusades were never justified on the basis of New Testament teachings. This is why they are an anomaly, the punctuation of fourteen centuries of relentless Jihad that began long before the Crusades and continued well after they were over.
The greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of Jerusalem, in which 30,000 people were said to have been massacred. This number is dwarfed by the number of Jihad victims, from India to Constantinople and Narbonne, but Muslims have never apologized for their crimes and never will. Some more details on Islamic expension can be found here: http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/trackbacks/1849/
Thanks to many people for links/date etc etc,
Tags: Crusades, Islam, Jihad
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