but many intelligent people do. not, i think, because they truly believe it... but because they want to believe it.
Oh, please, come up with something better than that. If you want examples of how bad religious extremists CAN be, I'll match you on both sides. How's Jim Jones and his cult doing, then?
The point is, there are extremists from both beliefs, but the governments of our respective nations aren't bowing down to those extremists, and they never will.
"Did" is past tense. Looking at the present world and the rise in attacks in christians worldwide by muslims would seem to indicate there is very little to debate if we only consider the present.
Yeah, a few Muslim bandits really justified the Crusades :roll: The fact is, there had been so serious Muslim threat to Western Europe since the Battle of Tours in 732.
Why, oh why, would anyone be an apologist for the Crusades? You realize that's what you're doing, right? Think that over.
The Crusades were a series of wars of aggression that were directly motivated by the Christian religion. You want to defend that?
I am constantly amazed at how anti-Christians continually misrepresent historical events such as The Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition...
Historically? The Crusades and Inquisition are often mentioned, but less commonly spoken of is the Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim invasion of Eastern Europe, the Moors invasion of Spain.
Modern Christianity does not expand by the sword, or execute "heretics".
Modern Islam does.
/thread
How is modern Islam spreading with war? If you mean terrorists, I highly doubt the terrorists are attracting people to the religion... it's have the reverse effect
Depends on what area you live in, depends on what time period your talking about. There are alot of variables
Nigeria and Thailand are examples.
Do you suppose 9/11 was less pushy than Jim Jones's cult?
You could not be more incorrect in your implication that I am anti-Christian. I could not be more in favor of the Church. And it is in line with the Church's mission to repent for its own sins. The Crusades were a war of aggression, no bones about it, and would certainly be considered a war crime today. The Church has committed all manner of atrocities. To acknowledge it and make the Church account for it is hardly anti-Christian, it is healthy and necessary for the Church to account for its transgressions. Indeed, I would argue that to sweep it under the rug and be an apologist for the Church's bad behavior, as you are doing, is truly anti-Christian, because it is against the spirit of Christ's message of penitence and humility.
The Crusades were not a series of wars of aggression, they were a RESPONSE to centuries of Islamic aggression. You DO know that the areas that Islam conquered in the 7th century were largely CHRISTIAN at the time of Conquest and were part of the Roman Empire, and had been for CENTURIES. You ARE aware of this, right? I presume you are also aware of the fact that in the late 11th century, the Great Seljuk Empire was marching through Asia Minor and threatening the capital of the Roman Empire, namely Constantinople? I presume you know these things.
Is the Church perfect? Of course not. Humans are ALL fallable. However, at the same time, let's try to be somewhat objective about the matter at hand and look at HISTORY, not at anti-Catholic revisionism common in the English language.
Christianity is older than Islam... so Christianity was aggressive before Islam was
Christianity is older than Islam... so Christianity was aggressive before Islam was
Christians want to convert you and Muslims want to kill you... Christianity is more pushy... Islam is more destructive.
Stay on topic please...
Christians want to convert you and Muslims want to kill you... Christianity is more pushy... Islam is more destructive.
Please go and learn a little bit of history before commenting on historical threads.
The Crusades were not a series of wars of aggression, they were a RESPONSE to centuries of Islamic aggression. You DO know that the areas that Islam conquered in the 7th century were largely CHRISTIAN at the time of Conquest and were part of the Roman Empire, and had been for CENTURIES. You ARE aware of this, right? I presume you are also aware of the fact that in the late 11th century, the Great Seljuk Empire was marching through Asia Minor and threatening the capital of the Roman Empire, namely Constantinople? I presume you know these things.
Is the Church perfect? Of course not. Humans are ALL fallable. However, at the same time, let's try to be somewhat objective about the matter at hand and look at HISTORY, not at anti-Catholic revisionism common in the English language.
About the Crusades and their legacy of hatred:
The mid 7th century to the mid 10th century CE saw the gradual expansion of Islam. Half of the Christian world was conquered by Arab armies; this included countries in which Christianity had been established for centuries, such as Egypt, southern France, southern Italy, Sicily, Spain, Syria, Turkey, etc. 4
By the late 10th century, Europe and the Middle East were divided into Christian and Muslim spheres of influence. Christian pilgrims from Europe regularly visited Muslim-controlled Jerusalem in reasonable safety. Such pilgrimages were very popular. The were believed to be one of the major acts by which a person could reduce their exposure to the tortures of purgatory after their death.
By the middle of the 11th century, Christianity had formally split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Byzantine Empire: The Emperor/Bishop of Constantinople and the Bishop of Rome had mutually excommunicated each other. In 1071, the Turks defeated the latter at the Battle of Manzikert. This left Constantinople exposed to attack from Muslims. Meanwhile, Christians were being ambushed during their pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
Emperor Alexius asked Pope Urban II for assistance. On 1095-NOV-27, the Pope called on Europeans to go on a crusade to liberate Jerusalem from its Muslim rulers. "The first and second wave of Crusaders murdered, raped and plundered their way up the Rhine and down the Danube as they headed for Jerusalem." 1 The "army" was primarily composed of untrained peasants with their families, with a core of trained soldiers. On the way to the Middle East, they decided that only one of their goals was to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Muslims. A secondary task was to rid the world of as many non-Christians as possible - both Muslims and Jews. The Crusaders gave the Jews two choices in their slogan: "Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!" 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed as the first Crusade passed through. Some Jewish writers refer to these events as the "first holocaust." Once the army reached Jerusalem and broke through the city walls, they slaughtered all the inhabitants that they could find (men, women, children, newborns). After locating about 6,000 Jews holed up in the synagogue, they set the building on fire; the Jews were burned alive. The Crusaders found that about 30,000 Muslims had fled to the al Aqsa Mosque. The Muslim were also slaughtered without mercy.
The Roman Catholic church taught that going to war against the "Infidels" was an act of Christian penance. If a believer was killed during a crusade, he would bypass purgatory, and be taken directly to heaven. By eliminating what might be many millennia of torture in Purgatory, many Christians were strongly motivated to volunteer for the crusades. "After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cross from the hands of the pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the Church." 3
These mass killings were repeated during each of the 8 additional crusades until the final, 9th, crusade in 1272 CE. Both Christians and Muslims believed that they were fighting on God's side against Satan; they believed that if they died on the battlefield they would be given preferential treatment in the Christian Heaven or the Muslim Paradise. Battles were fought with a terrible fierceness and a massive loss of life. Over a 200 year period, perhaps 200,000 people were killed. The Muslim warrior Salah a-Din subsequently recaptured Jerusalem from the Christians.
By the end of the crusades, most European Christians believed the unfounded blood-libel myths -- the rumor that Jews engaged in human sacrifice of Christian children. A long series of Christian persecutions of the Jews continued in Europe and Russia into the 20th century. They laid the foundation for the Nazi Holocaust.
The result of centuries of conflict among followers of the three main Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) was a "deep mutual hatred" and mistrust among the three faiths. Memories of these genocides still influence relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims to the present time.
Among many Jews and Muslims, the term crusade evokes visions of genocide, mass murder, and mass extermination of innocent people. However, among many Christians it has become a positive term, frequently used to refer to mass rallies and campaigns to win converts - as in the Billy Graham Crusades.
Professor Israel Jacob Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article in 1993 that argues that blood libel may have originated in the 12th century from Christian views of Jewish behavior during the First Crusade. Some Jews committed suicide and killed their own children rather than be subjected to forced conversions. Yuval investigated Christian reports of these events and found that they were greatly distorted with claims that if Jews could kill their own children they could also kill Christian children. Yuval rejects the blood libel story as a fantasy of some Christians which could not contain any elements of truth because of the precarious nature of the Jewish minority's existence in Christian Europe.