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A consideration of the recent request from Al-Azhar that the Vatican apologize for the Crusades, from Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer at FP:
Ever mindful of keeping the West on the defensive and portraying it as the guilty party in today’s global jihad, Al-Azhar (the highest ranking religious authority in Egypt and most respected Sunni Muslim authority in the world), has asked the Vatican for an official apology for the Crusades. Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf, President of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar, explained that “Al-Azhar is only asking for a similar treatment” following Vatican apologies to other groups. According to the Vatican ambassador to Egypt, the Holy See is thinking it over.This is just the latest indication that the Crusades have grown into a myth that little resembles reality, and remain politically charged over three years after President Bush was roundly criticized for labeling the war on terror a “Crusade.” Bill Clinton even explained 9/11 as fallout from the Crusades: “Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound…. I can tell you that that story is still being told to today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”[1]
The West has questioned the Crusades — something probably not possible if the shoe were on the Islamic foot — almost since they took place. Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades, but less noted is the fact that the Crusades have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware. Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain spoke for many Westerners in Tom Sawyer Abroad when he has Tom explain to Huck Finn that he wants to go to the Holy Land to liberate it from the Muslims.
“How,” Huck asks, “did we come to let them git holt of it?”
“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it,” Tom explains. “They always had it.”
“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”
“Why of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”[2]
Historical fact says it didn’t. As it happens, I am these days working on a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, which will out from Regnery Publishing in a few months. In it, I am clearing away propaganda and telling what really happened. Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century. At that time Egypt, Libya, and all of North Africa were Christian, and had been so for hundreds of years. So were Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Asia Minor. The churches that St. Paul addressed in his letters collected in the New Testament are located in Asia Minor, modern Turkey, as well as modern Greece. North of Greece, in a buffer zone between Eastern and Western Europe, were lands that would become the Christian domains of the Slavs. Antioch and Constantinople (Istanbul), in modern Turkey, and Alexandria, in modern Egypt, were three of the most important Christian centers of the first millennium.
But then Muhammad and his Muslim armies arose out of the desert, and — as most modern textbooks would put it — these lands became Muslim. But in fact the transition was cataclysmic. Muslims won these lands by conquest and, in obedience to the words of the Qur’an and the Prophet, put to the sword the infidels therein who refused to submit to the new Islamic regime. Those who remained alive lived in humiliating second-class status. Conversion to Islam became the only way to live a decent life. And lo and behold, the Christian populations of these areas steadily diminished.
Conventional wisdom has it that these Christians welcomed the invaders, preferring the yoke of Islam to that of Byzantium. Clinton may be right that Muslims still seethe about the sack of Jerusalem, but he and they are strangely silent about similar behavior on the Muslim side. Here is a contemporary account of the Muslims’ arrival in Nikiou, an Egyptian town, in the 640’s:Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiou. There was not one single soldier to resist them. They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches — men, women and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found. . . .But let us now say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed when they occupied the island of Nikiou. . . .Not only did this involve massacres, but exile and enslavement — all based on a broken treaty:
Amr oppressed Egypt. He sent its inhabitants to fight the inhabitants of the Pentapolis [Tripolitania] and, after gaining a victory, he did not allow them to stay there. He took considerable booty from this country and a large number of prisoners. . . .The Muslims returned to their country with booty and captives. The patriarch Cyrus felt deep grief at the calamities in Egypt, because Amr, who was of barbarian origin, showed no mercy in his treatment of the Egyptians and did not fulfill the covenants which had been agreed with him.Once the Muslims were entrenched in power, they began to levy the jizya, the tax on non-Muslims:
. . . Amr’s position became stronger from day to day. He levied the tax that had been stipulated . . . But it is impossible to describe the lamentable position of the inhabitants of this town, who came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month, finding no one to help them because God had abandoned them and had delivered the Christians into the hands of their enemies.[3]An eyewitness of the Muslim conquest of Armenia in 642 tells what happened when they took the town of Dvin: “The enemy’s army rushed in and butchered the inhabitants of the town by the sword. . . . After a few days’ rest, the Ismaelites [Arabs] went back whence they had come, dragging after them a host of captives, numbering thirty-five thousand.”[4]
On the island of Cos a few years later, the Muslim general Abu l-A’war, according to another contemporary account, “laid waste and pillaged all its riches, slaughtered the population and led the remnant into captivity, and destroyed its citadel.”[5]
According to the Syrian Orthodox patriarch, Michael the Syrian (1126–1199), Muslims conquered Cilicia and Caesarea of Cappadocia in the year 650 in this way:
They [the Taiyaye, or Muslim Arabs] moved into Cilicia and took prisoners . . . and when Mu’awiya arrived he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye led everyone into slavery — men and women, boys and girls — and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town; they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches.[6]Muslim chroniclers of the time make no secret of this. The Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), in his world history entitled The Complete History, includes this account of eighth and ninth century Muslim incursions into Spain and France:
In 177 [17 April 793], Hisham, [Muslim] prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda [Gerona]. . . . For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God knows how much booty.In Amorium in Asia Minor in 838, says Michael the Syrian, “there were so many women’s convents and monasteries that over a thousand virgins were led into captivity, not counting those that had been slaughtered. They were given to the Moorish slaves, so as to assuage their lust . . .”[7]
Much later, when Muslim armies resumed their expansion in Europe after a period of relative decline (which most notoriously included the loss of Sicily in 1091, the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, and the steady erosion of their power in Spain), they held true to this pattern of behavior. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople, the jewel of Christendom, finally fell to an overwhelming Muslim force after weeks of resistance by a small band of valiant Greeks. According to the great historian of the Crusades Steven Runciman, the Muslim soldiers “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit.”[8]
The circumstances of the first Crusade were these: Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being molested by Muslims and prevented from reaching the holy places. Some were killed. This was finally the impetus that moved Western Christianity to try to take back just one small portion of the Christian lands that had fallen to the Muslim sword over the last centuries. “The Crusade,” noted historian Bernard Lewis, “was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war — to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”[9]
Whatever undeniable sins Christians committed during their course, the Crusades were essentially a defensive action: a belated and insufficient attempt by Western Christians to turn back the tide of Islam that had engulfed the Eastern Church. “When accusing the West of imperialism,” says the historian of jihad Paul Fregosi, “Muslims are obsessed with the Christian Crusades but have forgotten their own, much grander Jihad.” The lands in dispute during each Crusade were the ancient lands of Christendom, where Christians had flourished for centuries before Muhammad’s armies called them idolaters and enslaved and killed them. If Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim lands, then Muslims had no right to take them in the first place.
Thus if Al-Azhar wants to demand an apology for the Crusades, it should be ready to apologize for the conquest of the Middle East and North Africa. But the most disturbing element of this sorry exercise of historical revision is that their “request” may well be granted by the Vatican. And if it is, it would be just one more link on a long chain of double standards by which Western authorities seem ready to bend over backwards to grant concessions to the Islamic world, while asking for and receiving nothing in return. For example, Al-Azhar itself has praised suicide bombers as martyrs[10] and declared that Islamic states have a religious obligation to acquire nuclear weapons.[11] Yet no one in the West is demanding an apology from them for these approvals of very contemporary menaces. It figures.
Notes:
[1] Bill Clinton, “Remarks as delivered by President William Jefferson Clinton, Georgetown University, November 7, 2001.” Georgetown University Office of Protocol and Events, www.georgetown.edu.
[2] Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, University of California Press, 1982, p. 7.
[3] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996, pp. 271-272.
[4] Ibid., p. 275.
[5] Ibid., p. 276.
[6] Ibid., pp. 276-277.
[7] Ibid., p. 283.
[8] Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.
[9] Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History , Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 163-4.
[10] “Egyptian grand shaykh: Islamic law sees suicide-bombers as martyrs,” Independent Media Review Analysis, November 3, 2003.
[11] “New Islamic Ruling Calls for Nuclear Weapon Armament,” Independent Media Review Analysis, December 24, 2002.
Posted by Robert at March 22, 2005 7:21 AM
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Allow me to be the first to apologize to the Muslims about the Crusades.
I hereby apologize that we didn't finish every one of you off back then, so we wouldn't have to deal with your ridiculous antics now.
Apology accepted?
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at March 22, 2005 8:13 AM
Watson is tellin' it like it is over at faith freedom.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/DCWatson50323.htm
at March 22, 2005 8:15 AM
we may apologize to mooslims only after they apologize for 1400 years of brutal, barbaric jihad against jews, christians and zoroastrians since muhammad invented islam.
at March 22, 2005 8:22 AM
The world upside down... apology for the Crusades as Western aggression...historical revisionism for the furtherance of Islam.
Say a lie often enough and some will begin to believe it... Islam has has perpetrated more murder and mayhem than any culture in history.
Posted by: epg at March 22, 2005 8:46 AM
It didn't stop with the Crusades. My new book titled, "Saracens at the Gates", will contain a chapter devoted to the depredations of the Barbary navies in the Mediterranean in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The creation of the United States Navy by Congress was directly prompted by the jihad on American merchant shipping. The first use of the power of Congress to declare war under the infant Constitution for the United States was to dispatch a naval force to the coast of Barbary to subdue the unprovoked attacks on American commerce. Shall the West be condemned at every turn for defending itself against the scourge of jihad that has afflicted the peace of its people for more than a thousand years?
Posted by: DrMack at March 22, 2005 8:48 AM
DrMack
Maybe it wont be out of order for Congress to apologize to Al-Azhar for creating the United States Navy
the freekin of ignorance/arrogance of the muslim
Posted by: shiva at March 22, 2005 9:37 AM
The neutron bomb reprisal/genocide option is starting to look better all the time. Something like a MIRV neutron bomblet approach would work the best.
What would be the biggest downfall of such a plan?
Most likely a short term spike in oil prices. After we took Saudi Arabia and mandated oil prices of $5/barrel or whatever the production cost is plus a small profit, we would likely see an economic boom the likes the world has never seen.
And international opinion. The biggest question is: will they still buy US products? While you can always cancel your subscription to The Guardian or Der Spiegel, but it would suck quite a bit more if they stopped buying Ford or Windows.
Since the Muslim nations don't really have much in the way of exports/imports, I don't imagine that will hurt things much.
Posted by: 2468 at March 22, 2005 9:42 AM
I want an apology from the Church for not finishing off those jihading monsters!
Posted by: Jakester at March 22, 2005 9:58 AM
One word on Palestine (a toponym supplied by the Romans, who wished to efface, by sleight of word, the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. Though the land was Christian-ruled (by the Byzantines, though intermittently the Persians would appear), its population remained predominately Jewish (and Samaritan), and was so at the time of the Muslim invasion in 634. See Moshe Gil, "A History of Palestine."
And another on North Africa, conquered by Muslims soon after they had seized Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, Syrikra. One forgets that that area had two periods of relative civilization. The first was when it was a civilization of Christianized peoples, including Berbers. Tertullian and St. Augustine were both born in North Africa (St. Augustine's mother Monica was a Berber). That Christian civlization was completely destroyed by the islamization (and slow arabization) of North Africa. It was not until 1830, when the French came in, that a major part of North Africa again enjoyed, for 130 years, the possibliity of civilization -- before its relapse under Arab Muslim rule, with the consequences we all see. No wonder those Arabs greeting Chirac on his visit a year ago to Algeria shouted hysterically: "Visa, visa."
And one more on the apposite quotation from Tom Sawyer. Tom, of course, was a naif, but Mark Twain was not. Twain's travels in the East deserve to be republished, and re-read today. They do not date, or disappoint. He visited the Holy Land in 1867, and his observations ought to be recalled today:
"Desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent mournful expanse...A desolation is here that not even iimagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely....We never saw a human being on the whole route...."
and:
"There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."
and his conclusion:
"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely....Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition. It is dreamland."
In this empty land, the backwater of the Ottoman Empire, things changed as Jews began to come back, and buy what land they could (90% of the land remained, always, in the hands of the Ottoman state, and later passed to the Mandatory Authority, and then to the State of Israel as the successor to the Mandate).
But the desertification -- literal and figurative -- that the expansion of Muslim rule brought with it to the rest of the Middle East, including what was once a Fertile Crescent (and may be again, if Texas A & M experts help revive the agriculture of Mesopotamia) did not change, for Christians have not moved back, as Jews did, to the Middle East or to Turkey. In fact, their numbers have dwindled constantly. In 1914, Constantinople was more than 50% non-Muslim; it is now 1-2% non-Muslim. Alexandria (and to a lesser extent Cairo) had a large and thriving non-Muslim population during the Golden Age of Modern Egpt (roughly, 1885-1940); both Ungaretti and Seferis were born there. Greeks, Italians, Jews, Armenians, all had their properties, accumulated over many generations, nationalized by Nasser (a new "jizyah"), and they were expelled, in many cases overnight. Although, in the full blaze of the media's klieg lights, one whould have thought that islamization would halt, it has revived in Turkey itself, has in Iran driven out (or driven underground, or murdered) the various Christian and Jewish communities that continued to exist up to Khomeini's resistible rise.
Which brings me to one final point. Not only to Christians and Jews not ask for an apology for the massive seizure of their lands, their wealth, but others too have not done so. Why should not the remaining Zoroastrians in Persia (like the Jews, some Zoroastrians went into exile -- and were known, in the closest non-Muslim land, Hindustan, as the "Persians" or Parsis) demand from the Muslims who seized Sassanian Persia, an apology?
Or the Hindus put on the agenda of the U.N. the 60-70 million Hindus massacred by Muslims over 250 years of rule? Or the Buddhists demand recompense for the incredible havoc wreaked on the Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan?
Everywhere Islam went, people were taught to ignore, or even to despise, their own pre-Islamic history. The Muslims destroyed whatever was non-Islamic, except in a very few cases. In the earliest period of conquest, Christian structures were taken over by the Muslims and given a new identity. That famous "Umayyad Mosque" in Damascus is simply the Church of St. John. That Dome of the Rock is a Byzantine martyrium, claimed by, or assigned to, Islam because on the inside there is writing in Arabic. But was it originally built by Muslims (not all Arabs were Muslims, then or now), or was it originally constructed for another purpose? This question remains open to Western scholars; for Muslim scholars, it is undiscussable.
Invoking Mark Twain's creation was inspired. For it puts us in mind of Tom Sawyer's most famous exploit. Tom just wanted to whitewash a fence. Al-Azhar, and the serried ranks of apologists for Islam (both Muslim and non-Muslim) want a bit more: they want the non-Muslim world, beginning with the Vatican (which of course cannot speak for Jews exiled from their country, or for Hindus, or for Buddhists, or for Confucians) to whitewash the entire history, of Jihad-conquest, over 1350 years, from the Iberian Peninsula to the East Indies.
We non-Muslims of the world would rather stick to whitewashing just the fence.
Posted by: Hugh at March 22, 2005 10:28 AM
Here is a link to an excellent article in "La Civiltā Cattolica". To quote from the introduction to the article:
"La Civiltā Cattolica," edited by a group of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special magazine. Every one of its articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.
In its October 18 edition, "La Civiltā Cattolica" published a strikingly severe article on the condition of Christians in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the article is that "in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering face"; that "for almost a thousand years, Europe lived under its constant threat"; and that what remains of the Christian population in Islamic countries is still subjected to "perpetual discrimination," with episodes of bloody persecution."
One can only hope this will be the Vatican's new position. Here is the article:
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=6985&eng=y
at March 22, 2005 10:34 AM
DrMack.When is your book coming out?
Posted by: RED at March 22, 2005 12:48 PM
2468,
>The neutron bomb reprisal/genocide option is >starting to look better all the time.
The stores are depleted of missiles, bombs, and other weapons of mass destruction that we like to keep handy. We are no doubt, replenishing those right now however. Also, tank mechanics are in high demand and are working day and night because the fine sand in Iraq eats motors and other moving parts for breakfast.
We need our noble scientists and engineers building orbital neutron radiological weapons platforms. Irradiating a battlefield or the odd urban conflict arena from orbit with neutron radiation kills off the pesky biological elements but leaves the infrastructure intact for future occupation. More efficient weaponry reduces the cost of military expansionism and increases our intimation factor while promoting our economy. It's all good.
"Say Achmed, what was that green flash? Achmed?"
f.g.
P.S. For the humor imparied, all of that was a joke. I have come to believe that the Muslim female population are the biggest victims of Islam and lighting up the Middle East in a big way would kill those innocent victims as well. They need to be rescued not irradiated.
at March 22, 2005 2:00 PM
For decades, our schools have taught that the Crusades were a culmination of the evil practices of a megalomaniacal church. Therefore, is it any wonder that many, and not just Muslims, are clamoring for an apology? I fear that the average person doesn't see through the historical revisionism propagated by our schools and the media. Does the Pope?
The above aside, the Crusades are over! Stop wallowing in the past, sons of Allah!
Posted by: WatchfulEye at March 22, 2005 4:52 PM
Maybe they are trying to devirt the att. from all the children they raped??
I mean one rapist defends another [Iran marrys off 9 yr old little girls]like the one who just kill that baby in Fla. and his family covered up for him and bought him a bus ticket Maybe this is what the church is doing we see the pope has lost it think about it, said his suffering was the same as Jesus??? Don't know how you can call old age and sickness the same as bing torchered and nailed to a cross by the Roman Army??
No the pope has lost it??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength, Wisdom, Sight, and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL Islamic terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat let not the World be Decieved by them Amen
PS
Europe has diecided to not sell arms to China??
at March 22, 2005 7:01 PM
A great article. I very much look forward to the book. I've posted praise of this article, with some additional thoughts, on my site.
Posted by: Vik Rubenfeld at March 22, 2005 8:49 PM
A Note to Robert Spencer:
We do not agree that Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century! Although Islam clearly appeared in its present incarnation for the first time in Arabia during the seventh century, to claim that this is where and when Islam originated is to ignore Islam's elements of worship of the moon god (note the crescent moon sitting atop thousands of mosque spires across the globe) and religious homicide (which may well have evolved from human sacrifice practices once prevalent in the Middle East). Rituals practiced by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago are believed to be the same as those practiced in mosques today.
We feel strongly that Islam RESURFACED in Arabia during the seventh century, in the process incorporating many elements of Middle Eastern paganism that predate it (but are essentially the core of what is now recognized as Islam, but wrapped under a mantle of counterfeit Judeo-Christian elements).
As for the crusades I am a westerner, a Christian, and I MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR THE CRUSADES WHATEVER--the pope bedizened!!!
I believe that no explanation is needed for my feelings on the Crusades either.
Posted by: pythagoras at March 22, 2005 9:01 PM
A Note to Robert Spencer:
We do not agree that Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century! Although Islam clearly appeared in its present incarnation for the first time in Arabia during the seventh century, to claim that this is where and when Islam originated is to ignore Islam's elements of worship of the moon god (note the crescent moon sitting atop thousands of mosque spires across the globe) and religious homicide (which may well have evolved from human sacrifice practices once prevalent in the Middle East). Rituals practiced by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago are believed to be the same as those practiced in mosques today.
We feel strongly that Islam RESURFACED in Arabia during the seventh century, in the process incorporating many elements of Middle Eastern paganism that predate it (but are essentially the core of what is now recognized as Islam, but wrapped under a mantle of counterfeit Judeo-Christian elements).
As for the crusades I am a westerner, a Christian, and I MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR THE CRUSADES WHATEVER--the pope bedizened!!!
I believe that no explanation is needed for my feelings on the Crusades either.
p.s.--A mosque-like structure was unearthed in the 1950s at Hazor, Palestine. The age of this edifice was estimated at over 3000 years. In addition, this mosque-like structure housed statues bearing the Islamic crescent moon on their chests, leading archaeologists to suspect that they were representations of Al-lah and his three daughters. I take this as physical proof that Islam does NOT originate in Arabia in the 600s.
at March 22, 2005 9:08 PM
Pythagoras above writes above that he does "not agree that Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century!" He has a point, or two. Islam may actually have begun a century later than the received version of events would have it; certainly the Qur'an as it is known today may date from the 8th century. And some Arabs had been filtering out of Arabia and already lived, in separate colonies of pagan Arabs, among the Jews and Christians of Mesopotamia and southern Syria and present-day Jordan. Patricia Crone has expressed doubts about the existence of Mecca in the early 7th century (but where she stands now, or dares to say, I do not know).
But one thing is certain: for intrepid non-Muslim scholars of early Islam, exhilarating areas of research are wide open. Muslim scholars will have none of it, won't go near it, will pretend that there is nothing to study. So be it.
Posted by: Hugh at March 22, 2005 9:09 PM
The Pope should apologize for the Fourth Crusade and the Albigensian Crusade, and to the Jews. Both crusades were directed at other Christians. All the crusades killed innocent Jews.
Other than that, I think the Pope should propose another crusade, this time with laser-like precision. Hopefully the draconian age requirements of the U.S. military could be circumvented by someone like myself, just wishing the Pope would grow a pair before it's too late for him.
Give up on gay marriage and birth control, John Paul II. Open your eyes to the real dangers facing your church.
Posted by: Beagle at March 22, 2005 9:21 PM
Pythagoras,
Excellent points in your post! I believe that you are correct about the similarities between the ancient Sumerians and the Muslim Arabs. It seems to me that Islam is a blend of various tribal religions, which were very divisive and kept the tribes and clans in a constant state of feud, with certain elements of Judaism and Christianity--in part, because of the trade centers with which Mohammad had contact.
Beagle,
Your last sentence is exactly right! Too many people seem blissfully ignorant as the the real danger. Any apology from the Vatican would serve ontly to obscure matters.
Addendum: I am not Roman Catholic. The Pope doesn't speak for me, anyway, but he is an important figure in Christendom. An apology from the Vatican would serve only to inflame the islamists.
Posted by: WatchfulEye at March 22, 2005 9:44 PM
No apology.
When the next Pope is chosen, after the present beautiful person leaves us ( not that i am Catholic, nor that i agree with some his understandings, but what a truly beautiful person the present Pope is ), the Catholic church will hopefully chose for their leader a person with a full understanding of the danger that all of civilization is in from the followers of the antithesis of the present Pope.
Posted by: dby at March 23, 2005 2:59 AM
The fact that al-Azhar's request could be seriously considered--and it was, given 1400 years of history, a monstrous act of chutzpah--only shows that our modern, liberal Western culture is still hopelessly mired in its own navel-gazing, and can't grant others the dignity of having a history that presents both attractive and repellent faces.
However, as I look at what appears to be an official Roman Catholic capitulation in the making, I'd urge all Christians, whether Roman Catholic or not (and I am Protestant), "What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?" (Matthew 22:41).
It reminds me of how, ages ago in a far away land, our High School World History class talked about the Congress of Vienna (1815), and how the Emperor of Austria, the Tsar of Russia, and King of Prussia wished to form a "Holy Alliance", involving the committment to rule as "Christian Princes". One classmate innocently asked, "Why didn't the Pope go along with it?" I facetiously suggested to my teacher that "Maybe the Pope wasn't a Christian" (it caused a lot of laughter, including from Catholic kids who knew me well). Well, I'm starting to fear that what I said as an obnoxious teenager who couldn't resist the temptation to make a funny might not have been better said in earnest!
Posted by: Kepha at March 23, 2005 4:04 AM
The Pope have apologised by the christiansī sins in the last millenium, and have apologised for the crusades against Constatinople, although the catholic gentleman that made this crusade were excomunated for robbing this, and is the Pope that has the best relationships with jews, the radical sedevancastists and lefvebrists criticise the Pope for being mason and jew for the respect and love to jews, respect muslims I think that he donīt apologise because the Pope have apologise all the sins, and in addition muslims arenīt,all days we see, very peaceful, the slaveness to many europeans in XVI, XVII, century, the slaveness of the Oranto italian city with 12 thousand slaves and the killing of bishop, the invasions of Spain with all their martyrs, the destruction of christian, zoroatrist and hinduist lands, the islamic terrorism that are respected and encouraged, Al-Azhar university in 2002, said that suicides are allowed in Islam, in addition I see in conservator and progressist sectors that the criticising to islam is rising and the next Pope have to speak a lot about this, in Africa many muslims converts to catholics, in Europe, no because in Europe the people have forgotten their roots but now in Africa is the hope of the church, and there the conflict between christianism and islam is very great.
I am optimistic, there are people that wake up
at March 23, 2005 6:30 AM
The Pope have apologised by the christiansī sins in the last millenium, and have apologised for the crusades against Constatinople, although the catholic gentleman that made this crusade were excomunated for robbing this, and is the Pope that has the best relationships with jews, the radical sedevancastists and lefvebrists criticise the Pope for being mason and jew for the respect and love to jews, respect muslims I think that he donīt apologise because the Pope have apologise all the sins, and in addition muslims arenīt,all days we see, very peaceful, the slaveness to many europeans in XVI, XVII, century, the slaveness of the Oranto italian city with 12 thousand slaves and the killing of bishop, the invasions of Spain with all their martyrs, the destruction of christian, zoroatrist and hinduist lands, the islamic terrorism that are respected and encouraged, Al-Azhar university in 2002, said that suicides are allowed in Islam, in addition I see in conservator and progressist sectors that the criticising to islam is rising and the next Pope have to speak a lot about this, in Africa many muslims converts to catholics, in Europe, no because in Europe the people have forgotten their roots but now in Africa is the hope of the church, and there the conflict between christianism and islam is very great.
I am optimistic, there are people that wake up
at March 23, 2005 6:31 AM
Why do people continue to live in the past? I know I will NOT apologize for something my ancestors did nor should I as I had nothing to do with it. We are responsable for our own actions and no one else's.
Besides it was the Muslums that took the land first from everyone by the sword. Guess they need to learn proper history.
at March 23, 2005 7:52 AM
I do believe that it was Nebacdnezer's(please forgive my spelling)son, who after conquering Arabia brought in the pratice of worshiping his god, the Moon god Lah into the Northern portions of Arabia which trickled down into the South. This is for anyone who loves prophecy, in Revelation it is said that Rome(Babylon the Whore) will burn in the end, the merchants will weep from their ships for they will have no one to trade with. It is a lesser known minor prophecy in Islamic teaching that Mecca will burn in the end times.
Now, that means that Arabia was in fact part of Babylon the Empire, and logically fits the bill, on top of that they worship the same god as did the Babylonians perhaps revised by Mahound but never the less the same. And the city of Mecca has stricking similarities with the Rome in the scriptures as do a few other places(America does as well). I have this written out much more in depth at home, but unfortunatly I had to write this quickly and with out sources, I don't propose that this is with out doubt the truth, but I myself find their similarities striking.
Posted by: KentuckyGentry at March 23, 2005 2:10 PM
Pythagoras, it's my understanding that Islam didn't use the crescent moon as a symbol until they conquered Constantinople and adopted the old Byzantine symbol.
Posted by: Kepha at March 24, 2005 6:55 AM
Devil, Baal, allah, by whatever name is the same.
Posted by: Carolyn2 at March 24, 2005 8:07 PM
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