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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (177517)	11/4/2003 7:35:53 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574681

Brian, You are the one saying we're engaging in a crusade at the moment. He's saying it, but that's not what he necessarily believes. Instead, he's just echoing what many Middle Easterners think. Here's a wonderful editorial on the "Crusade Propaganda," written shortly after 9/11: Thanks for making my point.......although the Nat. Review gets a little excessive in their description of the original crusades. ted

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (177517)	11/4/2003 8:04:01 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574681

Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095. Despite modern laments about medieval colonialism, the crusade's real purpose was to turn back Muslim conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control. The entire history of the crusades is one of Western reaction to Muslim advances. The crusades were no more offensive than was the American invasion of Normandy. As it happened, the First Crusade was amazingly, almost miraculously, successful. The crusaders marched hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory and recaptured not only the lost cities of Nicaea and Antioch, but in 1099 Jerusalem itself. The above paragraph from the Nat. Review is, if anything, an exaggeration of the facts. The Islamic Empire stretched from S. Spain to India. In that empire, the only truly Christian area was S. Spain. Lebanon and Palestine were partly Christian but they were also partly Arab with a scattering of Jews. According to the text, The Middle East, written by an American and the one we are using in one of my classes, the Crusades started because a bonkers Caliph burnt down THE Christian church in Jerusalem. He later rebuilt it but the damage was done. Pope Urban complained of the travesty and recruited the crusaders who were primarily from France and England, and financed their journey to the ME. Over time, the Crusaders captured some of the Muslim territory including Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and held it for a number of years. They were brutal in their assault and killed many of the Muslims in Jerusalem. Eventually, the Muslims fought back and the Crusaders were pushed out of the ME. At that time, Bagdad was the center of the Islamic Empire. As I said, the only true Christian country of which a portion was a part of the Islamic Empire of that time was S. Spain. Cordoba was the capital of Spanish Islam; it was and is a beautiful city and reflects the architecture and beauty associated with that period of Islam. It flourished as a trade center and a place of education when the rest of Europe was still in the Dark Ages. As I said, Bagdad was the capital of this empire and was responsible for the development of many new concepts and innovations. Educated people from all over the world migrated there.......and developed the first numerical system; the concept of the hospital: keeping people separate by disease; learning to manufacture paper which permitted the development of the first books. There were doctors who understood the functioning of the lens of the eye and could remove cataracts. When Europe finally emerged from the Dark Ages, much of its direction was influenced by what the Muslims had learned centuries earlier. ted