By: Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi*
(Ph.D. International Relations)
I. Introduction
It is in these lawless and dangerous times when Prophet Mohammad is
being viciously attacked as a “terrorist” in Western caricatures, and
when Arabs and Muslims are being reviled throughout the West as
“terrorists”, “fanatics”, “fascists”, and “intolerant”, that it becomes
necessary (lest we forget) to recall the past Western Christian
terrorism of the Crusades against the Arabs. This well-documented record
of the cannibalistic and barbaric Crusaders, which is well known in the
Arab world, is rather obscure to most Westerners because it is either
conveniently concealed or deeply buried in some unnoticed specialized
books.
When US President George W. Bush (who speaks to God) said in 2001 - in
response to the terrorist attacks of 9-11 - that the US was waging a
“Crusade” on Arab and Muslim “terrorism”, he was actually conjuring up
the old nightmarish horrors of the Western terrorist Crusades against
the Arabs. However, because of widespread angry reactions across the
Arab and Muslim worlds to Bush’s use of the word “Crusade”, the American
Government was forced to replace it with the word “war”. Regardless,
the current American illegal and brutal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are
indeed very similar to the past Western terrorist Crusades. Apparently
when it comes to Western dealings with Arabs and Muslims the old saying
still stands: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
II. The Crusades: A General Overview
Of all the religious wars in human history waged by any religion, at any
place, and at any time, none have been bloodier, more genocidal, more
barbaric, and more protracted than the 200-year "holy wars" by the
Western Crusades against the Arabs and Islam. The Western Crusaders
horrifically soaked Asia Minor and the Eastern Arab Mediterranean coast
with Arab blood (both Muslim and Jewish). The objective of the Crusades
was simple, to destroy the Arabs (whether Muslim or Jew) in the Holy
Land of Palestine and its environs "…on the ground that they had no
right to inhabit their part of the earth, while for a Christian the
whole world is his country." [1]
Unlike Muslims (Arab and non-Arab) who have always tolerated Christians
and Jews (Arab and non-Arab), married into them, and lived and worked
with them side by side in peace as "People of the Book" in all Arab and
Muslim lands as well as in old Arab Andalusia (Spain and Portugal), the
Christian West has had no desire to coexist with Islam and the Arabs.
Also, unlike Muslims who revere Moses and Jesus as God’s prophets, most
Christians and Jews in the “tolerant” West have no respect for Prophet
Mohammad and are rudely contemptuous of him and Islam. In fact ever
since its birth and its subsequent widespread expansion, Islam has been
looked upon in the West as a mortal danger, both moral and military, to
be strongly opposed or even destroyed. In his classic exposé of
Christian violence worldwide, A History of Christianity, the Western
Christian scholar Paul Johnson rejects the Western propaganda about
Islam’s “violent” expansion by stating that: "The success of Islam
sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve
the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature." [2]
Nevertheless, the Western Crusades' insane bloodbaths against the Arabs
were triggered by the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army in 1071 at
the hands of the Turkish Seljuk (Abbasid) army. Fearing that all of Asia
Minor would be quickly overrun by the Abbasids, the defeated Byzantine
emperor, Alexius I, quickly appealed to his Christian rivals and
opponents in Western Europe, i.e., Pope Urban II and his other "fellow"
Christian rulers, to come to the aid of Constantinople by undertaking a
"pilgrimage" or Crusade to "free" Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine
from Arab and Muslim rule.
Emperor Alexius' appeal provided Pope Urban II with his lifetime
opportunity to gain more recognition and power for the papal authority
and for its role in legitimizing the temporal actions of the West
European kings. Presiding over an urgent Church Council meeting, at
Piacenza, Italy, in March 1095, Pope Urban II - with the Byzantine
ambassador sitting next to him - called upon all the Western European
followers of Christ to do "God's will” by carrying arms to "liberate the
Holy Land" and cleanse it from the desecration of the Arab and Muslim
"infidels." The Pope's call to fight the Arabs was ironic because, as
scholar Francis Peters observed "God may indeed have wished it, but
there is certainly no evidence that the Christians of Jerusalem did, or
that anything extraordinary was occurring to pilgrims there to prompt
such a response at that moment in history." [3] Although Christian and
Jewish pilgrims (Arab and non-Arab) were burdened by taxes; they were
never barred or even restricted from their religious shrines in
Jerusalem either by Muslim Arab or Turkish authorities, even during the
few severe sporadic civil disturbances in Palestine. In fact, Arabs
(Muslims, Jews, and Christians) as well as non-Arabs (also Muslims,
Jews, and Christians) have all lived together in Palestine in peace
under Islamic rule since the dawn of Islam.
In reality, however, the veritable rationale behind launching the
Crusades went beyond religious impulses, which were mostly the concern
of the common people. Western kings, knights, feudal lords, and
merchants were driven primarily by political, military, and commercial
ambitions as well as by the prospects of new lands and riches that would
accompany the establishment of European colonies in the Arab world.
Nevertheless, to start a new general European massive movement, like the
Crusades, the leadership of a central figure was needed. Pope Urban II
was the only central figure at the time in the entire West with an
authority that transcended all of Western Europe's national boundaries.
On November 25, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered in Clermont, France, what
was perhaps the single most effective speech in Western history - one
that has influenced the West up to the present time. Not only did the
Pope appeal to the Western masses through religious motives, but he also
used what came to be known as the typical Western ideological argument
in support of a colonialist and imperialist policy that eventually led
Europe in later generations to brutally colonize the entire non-European
world. In this historic speech, Pope Urban II reminded the Europeans
that their lands were suffering from widespread economic problems:
"For this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and
surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large
population; nor does it abound in wealth, and it furnishes scarcely food
enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one
another, that you wage war, and that very many among you perish in civil
strife." [4]
The Pope then quickly pointed out that the Arab land of Palestine to
which they would be going for their Crusade "floweth with milk and honey
... like another paradise of delights." [5] Pope Urban II then
passionately exhorted the faithful Westerners: "Set out on the road to
the Holy Sepulcher, take that land from the wicked people and make it
your own!" [6] After the Pope ended his fiery speech, the entire large
European crowd responded jubilantly with a loud roar: "Dieu le veult!"
(God wills it!).
In fact, the Western Crusaders were the first great wave of European
colonialism since the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. The Crusades took
the form of a series of brutal military invasions in the name of
"Christianity" to the heart of Arab and Muslim lands in order to
brutally colonize Arab Palestine and kill its people. There were at
least nine major Western Crusades and many smaller ones launched against
the Arabs between 1095 and 1290: The First (1095-1099); the Second
(1147-1149); the Third (1189-1192); the Fourth (1198-1204); the
Children's Crusade (1212); the Fifth (1217-1221); the Sixth (1228-1229);
the Seventh (1248-1254); the Eighth (1270); and the Ninth (1290). Other
ill-starred Western military expeditions against the Arabs continued up
to the 15th century. Actually, Europe's hatred and fear of Arab and
Muslim power were so intense that the idea of the Crusade persisted well
into the 17th century, and the conviction that war might be just and
legitimate has since become more deeply engraved in the conscience of
the West.
