"The Year 8 textbook Humanities Alive 2 says that the Crusaders, like Muslim terrorists, "believed they were giving their lives for a religious cause"."

This relativism has gone unchallenged for far too long now.

I sincere;ly worry that all our established institutions that matter have been corrupted beyond repair. Our arts, movoies, textbooks, everything is so dhimmified, it defies belief.

I know for a fact that in India, where centuries old jihad is ingained in cultural DNA, people dont need to be told that islam is bad news, they inherently sense it. Thwe distrust goes back centuries. But the west probably has no memory of such conquest. And what memory therem is is sought to be revised in this atrocious manner.

We have to either build new intitutiions to replace the failed ones or suffer the consequences. Fox news (anything but ideal, but far less dhimmi than the others) is one example of market forces indulging in some corrective action.
What about academia and hollywood?

Posted by: voletti at March 8, 2006 7:58 AM

But Hey! nariz, kj, there's absolutley NO need to focus upon the schools or what they teach there, right? It has NO effect on young minds. But hey, if it helps your battle against Christianity, nariz, so much the better!

So when do we get to see the textbooks detailing Australia's helping imperialist America defeat those poor Japanese?

Posted by: Gary at March 8, 2006 7:58 AM

And you know, even when I was taking history courses in high school in the early 70s, things were already being left OUT of what they taught about- such as the white slavery muslims ran during the 15-to-1700s. Better to read for one's self...

Posted by: Gary at March 8, 2006 8:02 AM

As a Jew, there are many things that are left out, about the horrors that Jews underwent. The history of anti-semitism, from the time of Christ to the Court Jews- by Poliakov is a stunning and thorough history of that first 1200 yrs.

But the torments of the crusades were instigated essentially by the muslims, who taught the christians this art of jihad far more than they themselves had ever done.

And the eventual transformations of the Christian religion are no where in evidence in Islam. Those are enormously real and fundamental to the goodness within the concepts, of the the faith.

I'm not speaking of the liberal destruction of the beliefs but the changes within the beliefs, and the practices by traditional Christians. The inheritance of the federal republic here in America owes much of it's history to those changes and developments.

For people to peddle this 'colonialist' interpretation about the crusades, without looking at the conquerings of Islam, the homicidism within the beginnings of Islam, and the destruction of all in it's path, is beyond naive. It is purposeful denial.

And the current history is a record of that dissimulation by Islam, the marxists, and the appeasers within our own culture.

Posted by: mgoldberg at March 8, 2006 8:11 AM

What a bizarre conceit it truly is that Islam, which sprung not from ancient Judea, as did Judaism and Christianity, but rather from Arabia, is somehow "native" and natural to the Holy Land. And so, we are expected to see any effort by foreign Christians to come to the aid of the Christian remnant in the country in which Christ was born is seen as an invasion is just incredible.

Similarly, why is pan-Arabism seen as an exceptable expression of nationalism despite centuries of rapacious imperialism, but Zionism is racist and apartheidist, and anti-Zionists believe themselves to occupy the higher moral ground?

Posted by: waterdragon52 at March 8, 2006 8:14 AM

"Islam, which sprung not from ancient Judea, as did Judaism and Christianity, but rather from Arabia..."
-- from a posting above

The official Muslim view assigns the birth of Islam to the Hejaz, to Mecca and Medina (Yathrib). Western scholars of early Islam no longer are willing to accept the Received Muslim Version of Islam. See Wansbrough, see Cook, see Crone, see Hawting, see Puin, see Luxenberg. It may be that the ur-Qur'an was a Syriac Christian lectionary. It may be that Islam first arose among pagan Arabs who had been given, or somehow made use of, this admixture of pagan Arab lore from the time of the Jahiliya with Jewish and Christian themes and stories and even passages from sacred texts, not to mention the famous figures (Adam, Noah, David, Moses, Jesus, and thousands of others) enrolled as prior prophets, with their imperfect texts and miscomprehension from their followers -- Until the Real Thing Came Along.

Posted by: Hugh at March 8, 2006 9:24 AM

Crusaders were certainly not terrorists under the classic definitiion of terrorism. Crusaders didn't blow up innocent civilian targets to make a religious statement- as Muslim terrorists do today.

Crusaders were acting in self defense when they invaded Muslim armies throughout the Middle East. Their main objective was to protect oppressed Christians and Christian holy sites from Muslim tyranny.

This is a good resource about the crusades:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.htm

Posted by: Johnathan at March 8, 2006 10:35 AM

Consider the 2003 version of a high schoold textbook, World History by Spielvogel, published by Glencoe McGraw-Hill. Chapter 6 gives us a loving Islam. tells us that "Muslims must practice honesty and justice in dealing with others." (Which others?) Also, "the conquered people [around 656 ] were not forced to convert to Islam. Those who chose not to convert were required only to be loyal to Muslim rule and to pay taxes." (Even if that was true in 656, there is no mention of later cases or of the humiliations involved.) And there is this: "The Quran granted women spiritual and social equality with men." There seems no mention of dhimmis or the distinction between Meccan verses and the later, abrogating verses. Oh, and jihad is defensive warfare. No mention of how broad is the definition of "offensive" or of how the term explains the conquering of Persia and Spain, and so on.

Posted by: StillBreathing at March 8, 2006 10:35 AM

Some of the comments above lack balance. Yes, the Crusades were a long delayed defensive reaction against Islam as a military threat to Christendom. But the sack of Jerusalem in the first crusade violated Christian ethics, not because it was warfare (pacifism is not the authentic Christian response), but because noncombatants were directly attacked. Rivers of blood flowed as virtually all the Jews and Muslims in the city were killed, including women and children. Good Christians at the time knew that this was terribly wrong, including some of the perpetrators who entered monasteries to do penance for their sins. It was wrong for the same reason that acts of terrorism today are wrong - direct targeting of innocent non-combatants.

Other than this correction, it's true that the politically correct approach to the Crusades is very wrong headed. The Crusaders were primarily concerned with the defense of Christians, not the conversion of Muslims.

Posted by: Tom at March 8, 2006 11:18 AM

"this admixture of pagan Arab lore from the time of the Jahiliya with Jewish and Christian themes and stories and even passages from sacred texts"

There also seems to have been in early Islam a rich infusion of heterodox and heretical streams of what used to be called "Gnosticism": a loose affiliation of currents that flowed in and out of Judaism, Christianity and the thousands of quasi-philosophical religious sects that mingled during the Ecumenic Age.

For example, the orthodox Muslim belief in a mock crucifixion of Jesus as a divine deception is clearly an example of Docetism -- a heterodox Ism that withered early in Western history (after repeated condemnations as heresy) and became only a dry relic for historians of religion to catalogue, but has survived strongly and literally in Islam.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at March 8, 2006 12:32 PM

Hugh:

I'm not sure if I made my point clear or not from your post. I was trying to say that the reason people are prepared to swallow the concept of the Crusades as being a wrongful attack on the rightful "owners" of the Holy Land because there's a remarkably ignorant assumption that Arabs and Arab culture is native, whereas in fact it is a transplant, imposed by military might and colonialism on the local population. I didn't know any better myself, until, as a schoolgirl 40 years ago, I encountered both Coptic Christians from Egypt and Jews from the Middle East and Persia. Many adults don't know any better or than I did as a child or simply chose to ignore the obvious.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at March 8, 2006 12:44 PM

I only want to say that these are among the best of the good posts I've been privileged to read on Dhimmi Watch.

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 8, 2006 4:05 PM

Crusaders were 'terrorists'

Really....

this needs to be thrown into the 'bogus headlines' trash heap!!

Posted by: champ at March 8, 2006 4:57 PM

No matter what the Crusaders' motivation, the fact is that they slaughtered between 1/3 to 1/2 of the Jews of Europe on their way to the holy land (I guess they needed the practice), as well as any Christians who opposed their holy looting and banditry as they passed.
They were as much terrorists as the scum today, albeit with less developed weaponry.

Posted by: attycats at March 8, 2006 5:28 PM

Yes, it's true that Christendom has a a number of ugly chapters connected with Christian anti-Semitism. However, fortunately today both Catholic and Protestant leaders in the West acknowledge these dreadful chapters of past history (Lutherans denouncing Luther's anti-Semitism; Vatican II attacking the notion that Jews were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Christ). But Muslims today have the most egregious forms of anti-Semitism and are actually often proclaiming their opposition, not just to the state of Israel, but to Jews and Judaism as such. Muslims need to follow the path laid out by Christians who humbly acknowledge the great sins of the past and make serious efforts to befriend the Jewish people.

Posted by: Tom at March 8, 2006 6:41 PM

"great sins of the past"

Give us a break...

Take some pride in Western civilization...

The Westt is responsible for about 1,000,000,000,000,000 more creativity and productivity than the Islamic abomination.

For God's sake people, stop apologizing for our great heritage..by comparison, Islam is a pile of bullshit.

Posted by: Mike_W at March 8, 2006 11:24 PM

I beg to differ a bit on the Crusaders. Yes, they behaved badly not only against Jews but against Orthodox Christians, too. They attacked, captured and pillaged Constantinople, thus effectively destroying the Byzantine Empire, a natural shield of Europe against Islamic incursions. The Bulgarian Kingdom had to use a lot of resources and troops in order to put an end to evil Crusader presence in the Balkans.

Posted by: highbg at March 9, 2006 12:16 AM

Someone mentioned Luther and Lutherans above. If anyone wants to read a good contempory Lutheran writer read Marcus Borg, one of our spokespersons today.

Posted by: bobalharb at March 9, 2006 12:26 AM

Well, respect the sack of Constatinople, the sackers, received excomunion by the Pope and the Church have asked for forgiveness.
In that time crusaders were necessary but they have a lot of mistakes, that made the enterprise useless. But the damage made to islam, added, to the impressionant destruction made by mongols, produced the beginning of the decadence.
Sadly free-masons in England and in France, spreaded, that the Church killed muslims in XIX century and many mulims in the colonisation age refused to make christians, for these things. Now, the things are different.

Posted by: Franze at March 9, 2006 2:58 PM

You gotta hand it to these Muslims, everybody's evil except THEM!!!!!!!

Posted by: pythagoras at March 9, 2006 3:18 PM

Now I'm confused. These are the same people who are always telling us that terrorists are people too. (along with chickens, fish, cows, mass murderers, etc.)

So why so hard on the "Crusaders"? Using the logic of the leftist moral relativists -- aren't Crusaders people too? And shouldn't we work hard to find out what oligarchical socio-economic paternalistic forces made them do what they did? Where's the context, after all?

Posted by: jsla at March 10, 2006 11:26 AM

dr pepper,
the notion that Jesus was crucified but did not die on the cross belongs, I believe, to the Donatist Christian heresy [according to Bernard Lewis], not the docetist, although maybe I'm wrong.

Posted by: Eliyahu at March 13, 2006 7:40 AM