Crusades is the forerunner of Jihadism

Submitted by Vishu Menon (China), Jan 8, 2016 at 22:22

Early spread of Islam was through a two-pronged form of conquest : political and theocratic. A force with a single leader, with a single God behind him was something new in the widely scattered tribes of nations on both side of the mediterranean. The force of faith was stronger than that in the predominently Christian Byzantine Empire. Having captured a land, Muslims encouraged pagans, Jews and Christians to join their faith and share the benefits, but allowed other faiths to survive, paying a small tax called Jizya. Thus in Spain as well as Palestine, Turkey and parts of Europe where Islam ruled, the rulers benefitted financially by allowing peaceful coexistence under the Quranic Laws mentioned in Chapter 109, Al Kafirun (The non-believers).

While the aim of the first crusade might have been to recapture what was meant to be Christian lands, others argue that it started with the ambition of Pope Urban II to unify the church under his Papacy (just as it is the aim of the modern Quraysh Al Baghdadi to bring all Islam under his thumb), the poorly organized and widely scattered but uniformly ruthless crusading forces (just like modern day Al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram) killed everyone in their wake - beginning with Jews, who were the first to be beheaded, burnt and mutilated though they had nothing to do with the struggle between Christianity and Islam at the time. The crusades that followed outdid the first one in sadistic brutality. (Interestingly though tragically, Jews, the beloved of God, have been the whipping boys through human history).

While Quran in its closing chapters say "you go your way, I will go mine' (109:6), Christianity offers no such middle grounds. 'Utterly destroy with the 'edge of the sword' maxim runs through the Holy Bible (Deuteronomy 13:15, 20:13, Exodus 17:13, Numbers 21:24, to name a few). How do you utterly destroy with the edge of the sword? Not by stabbing, not (normally) by cutting one at the hip, not by forced hara-kiri, but by beheading, just as David performed (after the kill) to the applause of God. Jesus made it clear that he had not come to change those commands of God delivered through Moses.

Nothing beats the Papal Bull of the 15th century - the "Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius" that gave European explorers open license "to invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ, or to put them into perpetual slavery, and to take away all their possessions and property." Nobody knows if this divine command had ever been revoked. Inquisitions in Spain and Goa went a step further in burning, torturing and splitting non-believers - even the believers who did not seem to have believed enough. As you progress further in history, you have witch burning, guillotine (not religious, but a derivative) as the markers of European civilization.

Muslim scholars say that what is happening under Daesh is not Jihad. It certainly is a replication of crusades.

Pope Francis happens to be one of the few exceptions.

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