13th Cruisade ?

[Shuckins]

One of the gods worshiped in Mecca during Muhammad's lifetime before he became a prophet was a moon god named Allah.  He mated with the sun god and sired two daughters.  His symbol was a crescent moon.  Allah was the favorite god of Muhammad's clan.  You can draw your own conclusions.

If you study history closely enough, you will find that Muslims have conducted a few military "crusades" of their own:  against Constantinople, Spain, Hungary, and in western Africa.  One can make the assertion that Muslim crusades were not as "brutal" as those carried out by Christians against the Seljuk Turks but the fact remains that they were military conquests that had two main goals;  the expansion of both empire and faith.  

The Muslim world has, indeed, been the victim of western expansion, but their history isn't exactly untainted.

Regards, Shuckins

[Glasses]

In Spain they held the south until the Reconquista where they were kicked out in the 1400s, although you can find influence in the southern Part in dance and music still. They went far north in France however and you can find traces of the Arab influence there still, according to the History books.


I bid thee adieu.

[UserName]

Originally posted by Jack55
I think they made it into France or close.

They did make it into France.

They were defeated by the French at Poitiers in 732 (battle of Tours iirc). By 759 they had been pushed out of France.

[N1kPaz]

havent ya'll heard "In God's Country" by U2???

[Rasker]

the Moors made it into France as far as Poitiers, where Charles Martel ("The Hammer) and his army of Frenchmen saved Western Civilization and turned them back

[blitz]

Originally posted by davidpt40
How about "God hates people who smash airplanes into buildings and people who build very dangerous weapons and try to sell them to said terrorists"

Time for Jesus to beat up Allah.

Time for Jesus to beat up whom?


of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.

"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."



Regards Blitz

[Dowding]

The Crusades were one big joke, unless you were a woman in one the cities the 'holy' entourage passed through. Inn keepers did quite well though.

Read up on Saladin and Richard the Lionheart and tell me who was more tolerant.

[straffo]

Originally posted by AKIron
It is and I will.

I don't have the memory I usta nor the facts at hand but it seems I've read that most of the Crusades were launched by Christians after much harrassment by Muslims. I'll go diggin' if anyone wants to discuss it.

you can dig a bit because I don't think it was so simple.

[Shuckins]

Dowding,

Richard was a salamander...so what's your point?  There were individual acts of gallantry and brutality on both sides of those conflicts.  

Many of the Muslim wars of conquest were unprovoked by their victims.  THOSE wars were launched to expand their empires and "spread" their faith.  Some of the invasions of Europe by Moors and other Muslims PRE-DATE the Crusades by nearly three centuries.

Most modern histories dwell on the "barbarity" of the Crusades without discussing the threat that militant Islam represented to the Byzantine Empire, eastern Europe, Spain, southern France, and Italy.  

Even though they try to give that impression, the Muslim world hasn't "always" been the victims of western imperialism.  They have had their own "imperialist" eras.

Regards, Shuckins

[AKIron]

Originally posted by straffo
you can dig a bit because I don't think it was so simple.

I don't know about simple but it I think the following is about how how it went: (borrowing most of this, correct me if it's wrong)

"Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem in 638, the city had been Christian for over 300 years. Soon after, the Prophet's disciples invaded and destroyed the glorious churches of Egypt, first, and then of North Africa, causing the extinction of Christianity in places that had had bishops like St Augustine."

"By the end of the 10th century, the spread of Islam had all but stopped and a comparatively stable state of affairs existed between Muslims, Jews and Christians with the latter able to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, which was at that stage under Muslim rule.

This state of affairs came to an end however, with the aggressive expansion of the Turks who were ambushing parties of Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. The various routes to Jerusalem had been relatively safe and these sudden attacks alarmed the European Christians for whom pilgrimages were very important."

Then we have some back and forth fighting, conquering, attrocities by both sides, etc.... However, some say that the Muslims were in all cases the aggressors as the Christians only fought to take back what had been taken from them and they never attacked Arabia while the Muslims did attempt to conquer foreign lands.

Anyhow, lot more to it than that but I don't believe that what I just presented is inaccurate. Of course, while I may be pretty old I can't give a first hand account.

[Dowding]

I don't disagree with any of that Schuckins, but all too often the Muslims are portrayed as barbarians, when in many ways they were the more civilised.