Were The Christian Crusades Christian.

[Bikeemikey]

They were conducted by Christians... They are not however in keeping with the current doctrinal underpinnings of Christianity.

[Nemesis]

When I pressed Post to start this new thread, a very nearly nude woman appeared on the screen for a moment. Should I tell someone?

Check your cache on you browser, it more than likely did not originate from this board. If the board had an element that happened to have the same name as something in your cache it could have substituted it instead of the element.

Nemesis

[thesometimesaint]

I would submit that the world is still in the Crusades. But just by a different name.

[Tacenda]

Everywhere.

I hope the new program (?) you installed didn't give you a virus, this sounds like it could be the case.

[Questing Beast]

I didn't see Jesus Christ advocating any wars, or fighting in any. According to some, the Crusades started because the Ottoman Turks cut off access to Jerusalem to all but Muslims. So, they were fighting over the Holy Land.

Isn't there some thought that the Holy Land is in our hearts? What about Matt 10:7?

I haven't read the responses yet, so if I repeat something, sorry, time presses, as always:

The Ottoman empire came long after the Crusades. It was the fragmented Islamic powers of the Middle East that faced the First Crusade in 1096-99; first, the Seldjukid Sultanate and Caliphate of Baghdad, the emirates of Syria and Palestine (a mixture of Seldjukid and Fatimid), and the Fatimid Sultanate and Caliphate of Egypt. The Caliph of Baghdad was Sunni back then, the Caliph of Egypt/Cairo was Shiite. Asia Minor ("Anatolia") was a feudal patchwork nominally owning allegiance to the Sultan in Baghdad. Internecine warfare had been going on for generations between the various Muslim powers. For instance, Jerusalem on the eve of the First Crusade was in Egyptian hands, was taken by the Turks, and retaken by the Fatimids just before the Crusaders arrived in the "Holy Land". The first Muslim army to oppose the "Franj" (Franks, i.e. European Christans, the Crusaders) was drawn from Anatolia, led by their Sultan Kilij Arslan, a young king living in the area that later would be occupied by Othman, a Turk who founded the Ottoman dynasty: Kilij Arslan called upon his neighboring fellow emirs, and the Sultan of Baghdad, to join him in defending his lands; he got little response and had to face the Crusaders almost alone. He was defeated. The Crusaders then arrived in northern Syria and laid siege to Antioch. After defeating first one and then repeated relieving armies, the city fell through treachery to the Franj and they occupied it for most of two hundred years. By then, the Muslim world was finally aware of the danger, and tried to unite, but failed for more than two generations. Under Saladin, in the late 12th century, the entire Middle East was for the first time in centuries under the rule of one man. He drove the Franj out of all their strongholds but a few inland castles, recaptured Jerusalem and reduced the coast to one Christian city, Tyre; from that one holdout, the Third Crusade under (mainly) Richard the Lionheart (king of England) retook Acre, Jaffa, Arsuf and several more strongholds, just missed retaking Jerusalem, and obtained a truce with Saladin. His successors relapsed into fractured acrimony again until the middle of the 13th century, when the Mameluk Sultanate of Cairo finally retook the remainder of the "Holy Land" and kicked the Franj out of it forever (as it turned out; many subsequent crusades failed to retake even so much as a single city, and most of them were scams to raise money which was used for ulterior political purposes; this went on for another c. two hundred years).

In 1999, a ceremonial occasion took place in Jerusalem where descendants of the Frankish kings of Jerusalem and descendants of Saladin hugged and kissed each other in peaceful solidarity, while the Christian men apologized for what Christians had done in Jerusalem in July of 1099, when the First Crusade had massacred virtually every Muslim (and Jewish) man, woman and child in the city. I did not notice any Islamic apologies for taking Jerusalem and the Middle East from its Christian occupiers, the Byzantine empire, or for persecuting and even killing, enslaving, Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land in subsequent generations leading up to the First Crusade, or for occupying Christian land in North Africa and Spain, or for repeated assaults on the city of Constantinople and even Southern France, for occupying Southern Italy and Sicily, for taking over all of Asia Minor, etc and etc. The historical memory of Islam is all one-sided, and "happened yesterday" in their psyche. That is why any reference to the Crusades whatsoever incites an irrational response in many Muslims: the outrages of crusading Christianity are kept fresh by the Imams in the minds of each Muslim generation.

But it was the Muslims who did the last "holy wars" against Christianized Europe: the Ottoman empire took over all of Asia Minor, conquered Egypt from its Muslim occupiers, took Constantinople from the last Byzantine emperor, and made repeated assaults and inroads upon South-eastern Europe in the Balkans, right up to the gates of Vienna. That is as far as the Ottoman "jihads" got, and the last invasion was as late as the 17th century, though the threat of another was present much, much longer. Only the decrepitude of the Ottoman system, the corruption in the gov't, prevented further aggression, and for centuries, until Turkey arose on the ashes of Ottoman dissolution in the early 1920's, the Ottomans languished in obscurity, a sort of "dark ages" of their own making, while Christianity occupied much of the world through imperialistic expansionism. Because of European/Christian excesses in exploiting their "colonies" (many of which contained millions of Muslims), Islamic thought holds this undying grudge against the slights of Christian oppressors that must be redressed. And so, here we are today....

Edited March 29, 2013 by Questing Beast

[Questing Beast]

I've noticed some other strange things but thought it was some new advertising strategy. Lots of word are underlined like they are a link and the link takes me to ads. Is this just happening to me?

Yes, unless someone else is using a "tainted" computer. Somehow your machine has obtained an OS interface with the Net that includes these "tools" to facilitate Web searches. I suspect that you've got Spyware (and hopefully NOT viruses) operating on your machine....

[EllenMaksoud]

I haven't read the responses yet, so if I repeat something, sorry, time presses, as always:

The Ottoman empire came long after the Crusades. It was the fragmented Islamic powers of the Middle East that faced the First Crusade in 1096-99; first, the Seldjukid Sultanate and Caliphate of Baghdad, the emirates of Syria and Palestine (a mixture of Seldjukid and Fatimid), and the Fatimid Sultanate and Caliphate of Egypt. The Caliph of Baghdad was Sunni back then, the Caliph of Egypt/Cairo was Shiite. Asia Minor ("Anatolia") was a feudal patchwork nominally owning allegiance to the Sultan in Baghdad. Internecine warfare had been going on for generations between the various Muslim powers. For instance, Jerusalem on the eve of the First Crusade was in Egyptian hands, was taken by the Turks, and retaken by the Fatimids just before the Crusaders arrived in the "Holy Land". The first Muslim army to oppose the "Franj" (Franks, i.e. European Christans, the Crusaders) was drawn from Anatolia, led by their Sultan Kilij Arslan, a young king living in the area that later would be occupied by Othman, a Turk who founded the Ottoman dynasty: Kilij Arslan called upon his neighboring fellow emirs, and the Sultan of Baghdad, to join him in defending his lands; he got little response and had to face the Crusaders almost alone. He was defeated. The Crusaders then arrived in northern Syria and laid siege to Antioch. After defeating first one and then repeated relieving armies, the city fell through treachery to the Franj and they occupied it for most of two hundred years. By then, the Muslim world was finally aware of the danger, and tried to unite, but failed for more than two generations. Under Saladin, in the late 12th century, the entire Middle East was for the first time in centuries under the rule of one man. He drove the Franj out of all their strongholds but a few inland castles, recaptured Jerusalem and reduced the coast to one Christian city, Tyre; from that one holdout, the Third Crusade under (mainly) Richard the Lionheart (king of England) retook Acre, Jaffa, Arsuf and several more strongholds, just missed retaking Jerusalem, and obtained a truce with Saladin. His successors relapsed into fractured acrimony again until the middle of the 13th century, when the Mameluk Sultanate of Cairo finally retook the remainder of the "Holy Land" and kicked the Franj out of it forever (as it turned out; many subsequent crusades failed to retake even so much as a single city, and most of them were scams to raise money which was used for ulterior political purposes; this went on for another c. two hundred years).

In 1999, a ceremonial occasion took place in Jerusalem where descendants of the Frankish kings of Jerusalem and descendants of Saladin hugged and kissed each other in peaceful solidarity, while the Christian men apologized for what Christians had done in Jerusalem in July of 1099, when the First Crusade had massacred virtually every Muslim (and Jewish) man, woman and child in the city. I did not notice any Islamic apologies for taking Jerusalem and the Middle East from its Christian occupiers, the Byzantine empire, or for persecuting and even killing, enslaving, Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land in subsequent generations leading up to the First Crusade, or for occupying Christian land in North Africa and Spain, or for repeated assaults on the city of Constantinople and even Southern France, for occupying Southern Italy and Sicily, for taking over all of Asia Minor, etc and etc. The historical memory of Islam is all one-sided, and "happened yesterday" in their psyche. That is why any reference to the Crusades whatsoever incites an irrational response in many Muslims: the outrages of crusading Christianity are kept fresh by the Imams in the minds of each Muslim generation.

But it was the Muslims who did the last "holy wars" against Christianized Europe: the Ottoman empire took over all of Asia Minor, conquered Egypt from its Muslim occupiers, took Constantinople from the last Byzantine emperor, and made repeated assaults and inroads upon South-eastern Europe in the Balkans, right up to the gates of Vienna. That is as far as the Ottoman "jihads" got, and the last invasion was as late as the 17th century, though the threat of another was present much, much longer. Only the decrepitude of the Ottoman system, the corruption in the gov't, prevented further aggression, and for centuries, until Turkey arose on the ashes of Ottoman dissolution in the early 1920's, the Ottomans languished in obscurity, a sort of "dark ages" of their own making, while Christianity occupied much of the world through imperialistic expansionism. Because of European/Christian excesses in exploiting their "colonies" (many of which contained millions of Muslims), Islamic thought holds this undying grudge against the slights of Christian oppressors that must be redressed. And so, here we are today....

Yes, from having been Muslim, I can confirm what you say in my own experiences. Oddly, any one who searches Islamic history gets yelled at, and in some cases called an "inovator" or heretic. Further, Islamic history is very one sided. One thing that frustrated me is that they say they believe in "The Book" (Mainly the Old Testament) but few know what it says, and they seem to have their own version. When I quoted the King James to them some would get very uncomfortable.

I was in contact mainly with Sisters, and it was very rare to speak with Brothers. The Sunni love to hate the Shia and they have a ruction going within the culture that is hard to stop. Fortunately, in the time I was Muslim, I did not see this. I knew many Sisters whose family name was "Khan" and all that I knew were very nice, though I notice in arrest records and in the news quite a few of them get into mischief. I worry that I thought I learned a lot about Muslims, but actually knew little.

[thesometimesaint]

It has always amazed me how all the good Christian oil got underneath all that good Muslim sand. Religion has been used as a pretext for wars for natural resources since the beginning. Cain slew Able to get gain.

Edited March 29, 2013 by thesometimesaint

[USU78]

tss, yet again, loves to doubt the bona fides of anything European or American, yet ignores the mala fides of the Jihad.

Iberia and Anatolia and Egypt and Cyprus and Sicily and Sardinia and Corsica and Malta had all fallen to the Jihad. Constantinople's hegemony had dwindled to mighty few hectares in Europe, and the Jihad's pirates were running wild along the Riveria and, Heaven forfend, Italia herself when Charles Martel made his famous stand, throwing them out of Gaul, leading to an uneasy ceasefire honored in the breach . . . and Mediterranean trade was at all but a standstill with all the Jihadist pirates blocking it from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules.

This is the situation that faced the Pope and the rest of the European princes in 1095-1096 (a scant 30 years after Norwegian pirates, occupiers of Northwest Gaul, took Britain). What to do? Hit Hassan where it'll hurt him most, halting the incursions into Western Europe, while whittling away at the Jihadist strongholds in the West . . . a task that took until 1492 a date of both celebration and shame for the Visigoths of the Reconquista.

Sure, they sold the geo-political plan to the Franks and Normans and Imperials by having the fighters take the cross, promising them both booty, lands and salvation, but the aims were political and economic. The politics of defense made into offensive war . . . and the politics of economics used as a seriously deadly weapon.

And the plan worked. Brilliantly. Only the unexpected fall of Byzantium in 1453, removing the bullwark protecting the Empire's Southeastern flank, was a serious threat to the plan.

Europe fought for salvation, political and economic and spiritual.

So of course, she won.

The Jihad sought slaves. Got 'em. Much good though it did 'em.

[thesometimesaint]

tss, yet again, loves to doubt the bona fides of anything European or American, yet ignores the mala fides of the Jihad.

Iberia and Anatolia and Egypt and Cyprus and Sicily and Sardinia and Corsica and Malta had all fallen to the Jihad. Constantinople's hegemony had dwindled to mighty few hectares in Europe, and the Jihad's pirates were running wild along the Riveria and, Heaven forfend, Italia herself when Charles Martel made his famous stand, throwing them out of Gaul, leading to an uneasy ceasefire honored in the breach . . . and Mediterranean trade was at all but a standstill with all the Jihadist pirates blocking it from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules.

This is the situation that faced the Pope and the rest of the European princes in 1095-1096 (a scant 30 years after Norwegian pirates, occupiers of Northwest Gaul, took Britain). What to do? Hit Hassan where it'll hurt him most, halting the incursions into Western Europe, while whittling away at the Jihadist strongholds in the West . . . a task that took until 1492 a date of both celebration and shame for the Visigoths of the Reconquista.

Sure, they sold the geo-political plan to the Franks and Normans and Imperials by having the fighters take the cross, promising them both booty, lands and salvation, but the aims were political and economic. The politics of defense made into offensive war . . . and the politics of economics used as a seriously deadly weapon.

And the plan worked. Brilliantly. Only the unexpected fall of Byzantium in 1453, removing the bullwark protecting the Empire's Southeastern flank, was a serious threat to the plan.

Europe fought for salvation, political and economic and spiritual.

So of course, she won.

The Jihad sought slaves. Got 'em. Much good though it did 'em.

I've questioned the bona fides of both. FWIW Most Muslims believe that Jihad means the personal struggle to improve oneself.

You gave me a good laugh at "Europe fought for salvation, political and economic and spiritual".

They fought, sailed, for cheaper trade routes to the goodies of Asia. Particularly Silk and Pepper.

The so called Christian Kings of Europe were every bit as bloody ruthless at consolidating political and economic power as any Sultan.

Heck the reason Christianity exists today is that pagan worshiping Constantine convened his bloody Christian Counsels to settle theological disagreements among the equally so called Christian Bishops.

[volgadon]

http://smidgensonreligion.blogspot.com/2012/09/probably-as-many-middle-easterners.html

[CASteinman]

FWIW Most Muslims believe that Jihad means the personal struggle to improve oneself.

Not in my experience. I lived with a member of the PLO for about 4 months. Maybe his views were not as most -- on the other hand, I never ever in my life knew a person who hated war more than he did. I would say he was more anti-war than a Quaker or a Code Pink lady.

[Ron Beron]

Heck the reason Christianity exists today is that pagan worshiping Constantine convened his bloody Christian Counsels to settle theological disagreements among the equally so called Christian Bishops.

That is a bit of a stretch. While Constantine was instrumental in Christian manipulation his conversion started long before his ultimate baptism. The underground church would have survived until another ruler came about, perhaps Theodosius. Edited March 30, 2013 by Ron Beron

[Stargazer]

I discuss this with you in private if I can. Apparently you have picked up a browser hijacker.

Yep, that's definite. I got something like that a few months ago after I installed what I thought was a legitimate program from off the web.

What have you installed lately that came from the web? If nothing, then possibly you have a virus or something from visiting an infected website.