Middle East Bloodbath: DeJavu All Over Again
Overrunning towns, pillaging, plundering, setting fire, torture, burning at the stake, rape, burning children alive, enslaving, beheadings, sacking places of worship, taking body parts for trophies, destroying libraries, cannibalism, crucifixions, opening bodies for swallowed treasure. A special place in paradise for warriors. Justice for infidels. Slaughter of their own. Robbing and keeping the riches.
These heinous acts committed by 50-100,000 fighters saying prayers before battle on middle eastern soil in such places as Nicaea, Urfa, Aantakya, Aleppo, Ma’ Arrak, Ascalon, Antioch, Edessa, Caesarea, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Tyre, Sayda and countless other towns. Mass slaughtering of innocents numbering 2,700, 100,000, 7,000 and tens of thousands of nameless others.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. Sounds like ISIL.
Only, it isn’t. This is narrative from historical research on the 13 crusades perpetrated by Christians, in the middle east alone, targeting mostly Muslims over a two hundred year period. Also targeting Jews and other Christians who did not swear allegiance to Rome. Hundreds of thousands slaughtered. Whole cities laid to waste. Middle easterners are thought to have long memories and a huge appreciation for history.
All the atrocities endorsed by Pope Urban II and several successors over this horrific period during the european dark ages and the middle east’s period of enlightenment. Soldier recruits, led by kings and nobility, were granted huge financial favors and tax exemptions, the right to pillage and guaranteed a special place in heaven by the reigning Popes. That sounds familiar too, doesn’t it? And led in prayer before battle by clerics. Familiar too? Much of it taking place in what is now Iraq, Syria and the “holy lands”.
Not much of a battle plan needed by ISIL. It is all pretty well laid out in the tragic historical documentation of this region and period between 1095 and 1298. For a detailed account, check out the writings of U.S. professor Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi, a middle east authority and historian.
What goes around comes around.
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And so it goes.
Very thought provoking. I sit and puzzle through thoughts of what purpose this post serves. Parallels in history? The Christians started it, so karma? People in the Middle East have long memories (700 years long?) even though many are uneducated? It’s ok because you know the Christians did the same thing?
Man’s inhumanity to man would be a better explanation. Tribalism even better. But you seemed to boiled down the continual inhumane situation to ….because the Crusades. Is that it?
You nailed it, Dave. Intended to be thought provoking, with the idea that the current media hysteria about beheadings and implied message from them that we must “do something” in retaliation is indeed ironic….ISIL may be retaliation, albeit quite delayed.
If we had developed a full blown renewable energy program after the 73 oil embargo, these people would be irrelevant now.
I’m loathe to defend Christianity, (actually I simply won’t do it) but the crusades were about the spread of Christendom. Notice that the idea of a Christian empire is dead and has been for quite bit. I think the idea of resentment about the crusades has some statute of limitations, no? The Holy Roman Empire is no longer anybody’s colonial overlord, so far as I know. Historical context is fine, but I’m troubled by the last sentence…
Are we forbidden from asking Muslim intellectuals to start allowing some serious academic scrutiny of their own house? …or since Christians did it 800 years ago we just through up our hands and say there is nothing new under the sun?
The theme of this post doesn’t seem very progressive.
I saw Frank Fukiyama speak the other night and he talked about this ISIS business as one more eruption of a Sunni-Shia Civil War. Which makes alot more sense if you can think ISIS not really being pointed at the US. Which — right now — they really are not. The beheadings are meant to be warnings to get out of their way. The Crusades were not civil war and ISIS’ primary target are Shia. If you think about it, this is the only reason why both the Saudis AND the Iranians support pushing back on ISIS. Neither can tolerate the destablization that a full scale Sunni-Shia civil war would cause in the region.
Did Fukiyama speak near here & I missed it?
Makes sense. We need out of there. It’s a black hole of debt and death for us
He was at the Free Library of Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Damn. Well it probably wouldn’t have worked for me anyway. I went to Philly last night and saw Neil Young. Next week I’m going for a David Sedaris book reading. Too many midweek trips to Philadelphia wear me out. I’m old and breaking down. 🙂
dorian gray: that picture in the attic not doing its job?
DG, the crusades were also about purging Christendom domestically (europe) of both Muslims in Spain and parts of France and Jews throughout the HR Empire, except where their help with usury laws were needed locally. This intensified after the early successes of slaughter in the middle east. This of course included the the inquisition, a shared cleansing strategy with Islam regarding the purging of infidels. Later, the reformation became the preoccupation of the Holy See, which was sadly not about their cleaning up their own house, but building a new series of houses by protestants, since Rome was not at all about reform on any front. The point is, Rome did not reform itself; it splintered. Thus the expectation that Islam might reform itself has no precedence from Christianity.