self-serving history

Submitted by Rikk (United States), Feb 24, 2006 at 16:12

Nasr, are you really so simple-minded that you read large-scale plots and conspiracies into the use of a simple word like "crusade"? Neither George Bush nor the Crusaders invented the word, and it does NOT specifcally mean "holy war" or anything like it. Even if he did mean it that way, how would that amount to some overall plot agaisnt Islam? How on earth does one plot against a religion practiced by 20-25% of the world's population? Bush will be out of office in a couple of years. Then who will you blame things on? The "Zionists"?

Stop acting like some persecuted minority. Muslims are a major force in the world, but you make it sound like you are some tiny fragile group of people at the mercy of those mean old westerners. What a joke. Muslims rule over an area larger than the USA and are over a billion strong. You really are paranoid. There may be conflict between westerners and Muslim, but it is Muslims who make the issue about Islam itself. Just because I have a conflict with someone does not mean it's because he has a different religion. Most westerners couldn't care less what your religion is as long as you're not blowing things up and burning down embassies because you think your religion mandates it. Just because we don't want Islam imposed on us does not mean we are trying to destroy Islam. How exactly does one destroy a religion anyway? Actually, the last world religion I can think of that has been virtually exterminated was Zoroasrianism. Who all but destroyed it, except for about 100,000 Perisan refugees living in India? Your fellow Muslims, that's who. And the Taliban certainly exhibited such tolerance for Buddhism, didn't they?

As for the Crusades, your memory is a bit faulty. The behavior of the Crusaders was horrifically brutal and savage, no doubt. But the only "Muslim" land they invaded was "Palestine", which really hadn't been Muslim for very long, had it? To begin with it was the Jewish homeland. But after most of them had been driven out by the Romans it became part of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Do you remember the Byzantine Empire? Probably not - because it was destroyed by Muslims. It's capital used to Constantinople, which became Istanbul when it was invaded by Muslims along with the rest of Turkey. The same Muslims who went on to invade and rule over mush od eastern Europe for centuries.

So is eastern Europe "Muslim land as well"? How about Sicily? Spain? The Muslim invasion of Spain, and therfore Christian Europe, happened centuries before the Crusades. So if there was war between Muslims and Christians, it was certainly Muslims who fired the first shot. As for the Crusades themselves, exactly how did Palestine become Muslim? Because it was invaded by Muslim Arabs in the year 640, that's how! So apparently it was fine for Muslim armies to invade the lands of another, hmm? Palestine had been a Christian land for centuries, and the Jewish national homeland for 1500 years before that. So how do figure it was rightfully a "Muslim" land? Muslims took it from Christians by force, but have the nerve to complain that other Christians later came and took it from them. How is it that Muslims ALWAYS forget that fact when they talk about the Crusades?

You see yourselves as victims, but ignore how you have victimized others. Unlike the Crusaders, however, Muslim conquest did not stop with Palestine. Egypt, Syria, and eventually the whole Middle east as well as places like Pakistan all soon fell to Muslim swords. Islam was at one point the greatest imperial power on earth, so spare us the sob stories about the Crusaders. It was Islamic imperialism that provoked the Crusades to begin with.

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