Due to a public education system which now deliberately omits the truth regarding our religious history, a complicit entertainment industry that deliberately seeks to mislead the populace about such, and a church egregiously derelict in rectifying such ignorance, proper edification of those near me becomes incumbent upon my person. It is a common, fallacious assertion from secularists and Muslims, that the Crusades were a Christian war of aggression waged against Islamic victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the days of Muhammad, a murderer who raided caravans slaying and robbing those he found, Islam has been expanding through assiduous brutality.
Contrary to the Crusades being called to forcibly convert Muslim lands to Christianity (which is precisely what Islam had done to get them), it was a war of self-defense in response to centuries of Muslim aggression. The first time European Christians had any significant exposure to Islam was some three hundred years prior to the first Crusade; when Muslims invaded Christian Spain and France (about 711 A.D.). This was the true beginning of the war on terror, which has been ongoing ever since. They were halted in France, but Spain would spend many centuries (until 1492) repelling Muslim invaders.
Long before the first Crusade Muhammad had demanded conversion from the Christian Byzantine Empire (the eastern remnants of the Roman Empire) as the price of safety (i.e. not being attacked). The result of the Byzantine's declination was centuries of attack from Muslim armies (to compel conversion), until a beleaguered Byzantine Emperor finally appealed to the Pope for help. This, was the cause of the first Crusade; the first of numerous efforts to repel Muslim invaders and reclaim Christian lands lost to Islamic conquest.
"For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them." - Pope Urban II, Calling the first Crusade, 1095 A.D.
Notice Pope Urban states that the consequence of deference in the face of Islamic aggression is more Islamic aggression.
The whole notion that Christianity was the aggressor against Islam, which did not exist until well over 500 years after Christ walked the earth, is absurd. Damascus, a once mostly Christian city in Syria, to which Paul was heading when he encountered Christ, was conquered by Muslim invaders who demolished the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and built a mosque upon it. Damascus is unsafe for "infidels" like Paul today.
The whole notion that Christianity was the aggressor against Islam, which did not exist until well over 500 years after Christ walked the earth, is absurd. Damascus, a once mostly Christian city in Syria, to which Paul was heading when he encountered Christ, was conquered by Muslim invaders who demolished the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and built a mosque upon it. Damascus is unsafe for "infidels" like Paul today.
"The armed Islamist Opposition in Syria has murdered more than 200 Christians in the city of Homs, including entire families with young children. These Islamic gangs kidnapped Christians and demanded high ransoms. In two cases, after the ransoms were paid, the men's bodies were found." - Arabisouri.wordpress.com, Syria: Armed gangs of mercenaries kill Christians, February 9, 2012.
All the lands now held by Muslims in the middle east are lands they stole from other peoples, which they subsequently eradicated, if not by force, then by imposition of the "dhimmitude;" measures which render "kafirs" (non-Muslims) second class citizens, impose a tax upon kafirs, and enact rigid statutes which proscribe kafirs from disseminating their faith to others (even their own children). Intended to compel the conversion of conquered subjects, who ultimately acquiesce to escape the onerous conditions of life as a dhimmi, it gradually extirpates different faiths from lands conquered by Islam.
Getting back to Pope Urban's call to arms. The Byzantine Empire ultimately fell to Muslim forces, and the Hagia Sophia, a beautiful church in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (much like the Byzantine Basilica in Damascus), was converted into a mosque by the invading Muslims. (Supplanting a conquered peoples' houses of worship with mosques is an expression of dominance over the vanquished foe.) With this a large portion of once Christian land became Islamic; and is erroneously viewed, along with many others, as always having been such by most today.
Every Christian in America needs to understand some things.
• If not for the crusades which impeded islamic expansion across Europe, there would be no Europe, nor consequently America as we know it. Period. (One need simply observe the condition of islamic states, which are spectacles of barbarism and oppression, to see how much we owe to the Crusades.)
• Our conflict with Islam is not the result of any thing we do, per se, or any "foreign policy" we currently have. It is the result of Islamic dictum, from Muhammad, which states "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle,... so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me." (1)
• The only thing your well intended "civility" will accomplish is the facilitation of the Islamic conquest of the west, with far less trouble than those middle eastern lands they took only after violent resistance, and the negation of the sacrifice of countless lives lost in defense of Christian civilization against centuries of Islamic aggression.
The notion that groups like ISIS are something new, the worst manifestation of Islamic aggression or violence ever seen, or a byproduct of American foreign policy is a result of profound historical ignorance. The conduct of groups like ISIS literally stems back to Muhammad himself, and history is replete with similar examples of such from that time unto the present day. The town of Otranto (Italy) for example, was invaded and conquered by Muslims in 1480, and over 800 men were massacred for refusing to convert to Islam. The archbishop was decapitated at the alter, two Bishops were sawn in half while still alive, the hundreds of remaining men were likewise decapitated and the women and children enslaved. The remains of those murdered are ensconced within the walls of the town cathedral.
The notion that groups like ISIS are something new, the worst manifestation of Islamic aggression or violence ever seen, or a byproduct of American foreign policy is a result of profound historical ignorance. The conduct of groups like ISIS literally stems back to Muhammad himself, and history is replete with similar examples of such from that time unto the present day. The town of Otranto (Italy) for example, was invaded and conquered by Muslims in 1480, and over 800 men were massacred for refusing to convert to Islam. The archbishop was decapitated at the alter, two Bishops were sawn in half while still alive, the hundreds of remaining men were likewise decapitated and the women and children enslaved. The remains of those murdered are ensconced within the walls of the town cathedral.
Much like Islam began attacking the Christian Byzantine Empire without provocation, Muslims also began attacking the Untied States without provocation during the administration of its first president, when the still infant nation had no substantial foreign policy and long before it ever dropped bombs on or "invaded" Muslim lands. We didn't even have a navy at the time. George Washington laments our nation's inability to defend itself from this Islamic aggression in a letter to Lafayette.
"How is it possible the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? Would to heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence." - George Washington, to Marquis de Lafayette, August 15, 1786.
This Islamic aggression was a primary catalyst for the reestablishment of the United States Navy (which had been disbanded after the Revolutionary War) via the Naval Act of 1794.
The "annual tribute" to which Washington alludes was basically a system of widespread extortion being perpetrated by Muslim pirates operating under the auspices of Islamic states such as Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, et al., who were attacking European and eventually American vessels, and capturing the crews and selling them into slavery. The Islamic states demanded large sums of money, and various other forms of "tribute" (e.g., ships), to halt this practice. This was a very lucrative arrangement for the Muslim perpetrators. In 1795 at least 16% of the United States federal budget was allocated to extortion fees to Islamic terrorist states. By 1800 20% (one fifth) of the United States federal budget was dedicated to these extortion fees, which had no discernible point of cessation and would conceivably need to be paid forever, proving that peace with Islamic terrorist states is arguably more expensive than warfare.
It cannot be emphasized enough that people who believe and claim that Islamic aggression today is a result of invasive European and American foreign policy or military action are simply clueless. Indeed, these things are the only reason Islam didn't conquer the entire world. To allow Islam to subsume the west today is an abject betrayal of your faith and the sacrifice of your ancestors. So stop being manipulated into feeling guilty for your faith, and be grateful for those Christian warriors who saved the western world from Islamic tyranny. They're the only reason your way of life exists. And they're needed now as much as ever.
(Originally posted 2012.)
The "annual tribute" to which Washington alludes was basically a system of widespread extortion being perpetrated by Muslim pirates operating under the auspices of Islamic states such as Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, et al., who were attacking European and eventually American vessels, and capturing the crews and selling them into slavery. The Islamic states demanded large sums of money, and various other forms of "tribute" (e.g., ships), to halt this practice. This was a very lucrative arrangement for the Muslim perpetrators. In 1795 at least 16% of the United States federal budget was allocated to extortion fees to Islamic terrorist states. By 1800 20% (one fifth) of the United States federal budget was dedicated to these extortion fees, which had no discernible point of cessation and would conceivably need to be paid forever, proving that peace with Islamic terrorist states is arguably more expensive than warfare.
It cannot be emphasized enough that people who believe and claim that Islamic aggression today is a result of invasive European and American foreign policy or military action are simply clueless. Indeed, these things are the only reason Islam didn't conquer the entire world. To allow Islam to subsume the west today is an abject betrayal of your faith and the sacrifice of your ancestors. So stop being manipulated into feeling guilty for your faith, and be grateful for those Christian warriors who saved the western world from Islamic tyranny. They're the only reason your way of life exists. And they're needed now as much as ever.
(Originally posted 2012.)
1. Hadith
No comments:
Post a Comment