Gentlemen,
When I pressed reply just now, I was of two minds, my initial and much stronger inclination was to essentially post a "farewell, I've had it" message, as nothing I say seems to do much more than stir the already seething pot. And if you truly view me and the vast majority of my sincere brothers and sisters in Christ with such utter contempt that you regard us as at best on par with men and women who saw off heads and blow up children and more likely far worse, then what really is the point of continuing on in this venue?
Then I thought back to how I would have treated me, and indeed how I did treat Christians with contempt and disdain, and how I exalted Islam and indeed most non-Christian religions, and I was truly humbled.
So I'll try again, although I have to admit to still being more than a little discouraged, especially because most of these are points that have already been made.
First off, let's deal with the Crusades issue in this post.
The Crusades
The first Crusade was launched in 1096 and the last one occurred in 1248. That is a span of 152 years. The first Crusade was launched when the Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) Emperor appealed to the Pope as the Byzantines were being overrun by the Seljuks (Turkic Muslims) and had already lost the majority of their domain east of the Bosporus. While the reasons they were launched were ostensibly "religious" - pilgrims to the holy land came back spreading tales of abuse, interference, and robbery at the hands of the Seljuks who had taken Jerusalem and now controlled the pilgrimage routes, but were in large measure political, Europeans were afraid that the fall of the Byzantines would mean that the whole of Eastern Europe would be open to the Seljuks. The total death toll from the Crusades has been estimated as between 1 and 3 million (it is impossible to say).
The "theology" of the Crusades
The Crusades took place at perhaps the lowest point in the history of Christian theology. They were launched at the behest of the Pope, a man who had come to fill the political vacuum in the West created by the loss of the Roman emperors and so he fulfilled both a political and a religious role styling himself "the head of the church on earth" a title rejected as unbiblical by all non Roman Catholic Christians including the very Eastern Orthodox church that appealled to him for help.
Regarding the biblical basis for the Crusades as well as their causes in the West. There is no biblical warrant for the leaders of the church to assume the duties of the civil magistrate, neither are the pilgrimages that exascerbated tensions called for in the bible, nor are any blessings promised to those who go on pilgrimage, neither are they a good work (as would be the case for say the Hajj in Islam). Christians have no bilbical calling to wage violent religious wars of vengeance. The bible accepts and teaches that the civil magistrate has the power to use the sword to defend his people against evil-doers but the powers of the leaders of the church are strictly ministerial and declarative and the power of physical coercion has never been granted to them. The last God authorized offensive religious war was the conquest of Canaan, which we are told came after the Lord had given the occupants of the land many years to repent. The next authorized religious war will not be so much a war as a final judgment, and that is not scheduled to occur until the return of Christ.
Therefore, all attempts at calling for and waging religious war in the name of Christ, are explicitly denied in the Bible. In the New Testament, Christ's followers are explicitly told to be willing to die for their faith, but never to kill for it.
This is even more the case because the bible teaches that the conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and therefore cannot be coerced or forced by the sword. At the time of the Crusades however, biblical theology was at a very low ebb, and many simply considered baptism sufficient to count someone as a Christian. Therefore, the possibility of "forced conversion" was considered possible.
The Legitimacy of Appealing to the Crusades as evidence that Christianity is just as prone to violence as Modern Islam
When one asserts that the Crusades are "proof" of the equally violent nature of Christianity one is essentially comparing Modern Islam with Early Middle Ages Christianity. One is reaching back over 800 years to a period of Christian history that is decisively over and has been repudiated and excoriated by the Christian community. Additionally, few credible Christian theologians today attempt to create any biblical justification for these actions. The Crusades are considered contrary to biblical doctrine. Even the Vatican has formally apologized for them.
But let us quickly compare the Crusades to the Jihad.
The Quran teaches that conversion to Islam is a mental assent or "surrender" to the teachings of Allah as taught by his messenger the Prophet Muhammad. It is the duty of all men everywhere to surrender to Islam and only when this happens will the whole world be at peace. Until that time, the world is inevitably divided into the Dar-El-Islam (nation of surrender and therefore peace) and the Dar-El-Harb (the nation of war or rebellion against the will of Allah). It is the duty of all faithful Muslims to ensure that Dar-El-Islam continues to spread, both via teaching and when necessary force.
This first religious wars against those who refused to surrender to the message of Allah were lead directly by the prophet, and involved him personally leading the armies of Islam and fighting against the unbelievers. This involved for instance the massacre of the last Jewish tribe in Medinah, the Banu-Qurayza in 627 AD. When they refused to submit (surrender) to Islam the 900 or so males of the tribe were lined up before a trench, forced to kneel, and one by one their heads were cut off and their bodies were kicked into the trench. Muhammad personally oversaw the executions and took one of the new widows, Raihana Bint Amr who had just witnessed the brutal execution of her father and her husband, as his "wife."
The Jihad has continued since the 7th century (see the timeline in the next post), and indeed always must until the Dar-El-Islam fills the world and all antions are all at peace, observe Muslim (Sha'ria) law, and submit to the rule of the one Caliph (the inheritor of the mantle of the Prophet), liberal Muslims have attempted to revise the concept of Jihad, but as many have pointed out, the example of the prophet in how Muslims are to regard Jihad must be considered normative. Therefore this duty of Jihad by word and sword is fundamental to the charters of groups like Hamas and is to be found throughout the Islamic teaching material disseminated by Saudi Arabia (the primary producer of Arabic language Quranic teaching material worldwide) to masjids (Mosques) worldwide.
Therefore while "Crusading" was a foul and anti-Christian aberration, long since repudiated by Christians, and with no basis in Christian theology. The Jihad was started by the prophet, is fundamental to Islamic theology, is widely taught and endorsed in the Islamic world, and continues in the present day.
There simply is no contemporary Christian parallel to the pan-Islamic Jihad.
- SEAGOOON
PS: And yes, Karnak, I have read the Quran rather than simply googling it. I have a copy sitting on the lower shelf directly behind me in my office. For the sake of future discussions, I have also read most of the Hadiths, and many of the major religious works of other religions including the Talmud, the Vedas, the Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, and the Book of Mormon, as well as various commentaries on these works by proponents of the religions they teach. This of course doesn't prove that I understand them, but I have tried to do so, and that from the point of view of those who believe them and regard them as true and authentic. Much of my study of Islam was done prior to becoming a Christian and included courses at University. I read Muslim blogs and theological works and watch Al-Jazeera on a regular basis.
