Ah, yes, of course - dismiss the source.
History.com makes no specific citations or quotations. I am going to dismiss it as the babble that it is.
I will, however, direct you to events precipitating the Crusades:
The Muslim governor of Caesarea seized a group of pilgrims from Iconium and had them all executed. Muslims extorted ransom money from Pilgrims, and threatened to ransack the most holy churches in Christendom such as the Church of the Resurrection - if they didn’t pay exorbitant taxes. In the 8th Century a Muslim ruler banned all displays of the Cross in Jerusalem. He also increased the penalty tax (Jizya) and forbad Christians to engage in any religious instruction, even of their own children! In 772, the Calipha al Mansur ordered the hands of all Christians and Jews in Jerusalem to be branded.
In 789, Muslims beheaded a monk in Bethlehem, plundering the monastery and slaughtering many more Christians. In 923, a new wave of destruction of churches was launched by the Muslim rulers. In 937, Muslims went on a rampage in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.
In 1004 the Fatimid Calipha Abu Ali al–Mansur al–Hakim unleashed a violent wave of church burning and destruction, confiscation of Christian property, and ferocious slaughter of both Christians and Jews. Over the next ten years, thirty thousand churches were destroyed and vast numbers of Believers were forcibly converted or killed.
In 1009, Al-Hakim ordered that the most holy churches in Christendom – the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem - be destroyed. He heaped humiliating and burdensome decrees upon Christians and Jews forcing Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks, and Jews to have blocks of wood in the shape of a calf around their necks. Ultimately, he ordered Christians and Jews to either accept Islam or flee his areas of control.
Christians remained in a precarious position and under threat throughout the Middle East. When the Seljuk Turks swept into Jerusalem in 1077 they murdered over three thousand people, including many Christians. It was at this point that the Christian Emperor of Byzantium, Alexius I, appealed for help to the Western churches.
Pope Urban II challenged the knights of Europe at the Council of Clermont in 1095: “The Turks and Arabs have attacked our brethren in the East and have conquered the territory of Romania (the Greek Empire) as far as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont…have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many and have destroyed the churches and devastated the Empire. If you continue to permit them to continue thus for a while with impunity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I…persuade all people of whatever rank, foot soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians…”
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Now, again, you can dismiss the source.
However, the source cites specific historical events and quotations that history.com fails to do.
They even quote Muslim sources:
Even Maalouf in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, reports the observations of Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr who traversed the Mediterranean on his way to Mecca in the early 1180’s and found that the Muslims were far better off in those lands controlled by the Crusaders than they were in Muslim ruled lands. And that Muslims preferred to live in the Crusader realms as those lands were more orderly and better managed.
Ibn Jubayr wrote: “Whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims. They live in comfort with the Franks – may God preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All their regions, patrolled by the Crusaders in Syria are subject to the same system: The land that remains, the villages and farms, have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the hearts of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territories. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustices of their co-religionists, whereas the Franks act with equity."
This view is simply inconsistent with the historical data. You would understand this if you had actually read my response rather than regurgitating what you were told is the case.
A simple question - you suggest Hitler used many religions - but then try to make the case that Christianity is somehow responsible for something within its texts that makes it possible for nationalism to take root.
What do you want from Christians in Korea? "We're sorry Germans had such a fanatical love of their land that they associated the Christian God with duty to their own nation?"
Regurgitating the propaganda you're spoon-fed in your school isn't going to work, here, kiddo. You're going to have to read if you don't want to be a slave.
Allow me to give you another interesting take:
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"‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his pet architect Albert Speer. “Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a Männerreligion—a “religion of men”—and hygienic too. The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with “houris” and “wine flowing.” This, Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity."
If Hitler could choose what religion the Germans had - he would have preferred they had Islam rather than Christianity - because it was easier to justify his ambitions within Islam.
Shouldn't that tell you something?
Again, if you read my last response, you would have already known this.
Actually, being poor has little to do with conflict.
Control has everything to do with conflict. Regions that attempt to establish control over other groups always have conflict (oddly, people don't typically like others dictating what to do). This is why the socialist revolution in South America is so prevalent and why the various warlords of Africa can become a subject.
Vietnam is a poor nation. North Korea is a poor nation. North Korea is bat-shit insane - and they aren't nearly as big of a problem as Chechnya is.
Then, you miss the elephant in the room:
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America's Palestine is the black community - and specifically Ferguson.
Charlie Hebdo, should be fresh in your mind, as well.
The reality is that Surat 9 places Islam into an openly declared war against the rest of the world. If you don't believe that, now, then it really won't be long until there are Black Panthers in the street reminding you that it is punishable by death to speak ill of Muhammad and Islam. Perhaps within our lifetime.
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And - if you still don't understand:
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"From Ferguson to New York, Palestinian flags and signs bearing Arabic slogans against racism and for “Ittihad” (unity) were numerous in the protests condemning the police killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On one hand, they illustrate the common struggle that many Arabs, Muslim and African-Americans seek against racial profiling, prejudice and discrimination. For another, they bridge the gap that for a long time has kept these communities apart.
While Arab-Americans and Muslims who immigrated to the United States, were not instrumental in the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans from the 1960s onwards, they are vocal and active in the demonstrations taking place across the U.S. today. Several Arab-American, Muslim organizations and independent activists are either on the ground in different U.S. cities or raising awareness and hosting events in solidarity with the protestors."
We are at war, son.
Now, why would they be doing that?
Okay.
And this concerns the discussion, how?
Allow the Pope who commissioned the Crusades to explain:
"Pope Urban II challenged the knights of Europe at the Council of Clermont in 1095: “The Turks and Arabs have attacked our brethren in the East and have conquered the territory of Romania (the Greek Empire) as far as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont…have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many and have destroyed the churches and devastated the Empire. If you continue to permit them to continue thus for a while with impunity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I…persuade all people of whatever rank, foot soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians…” "
Yes, and no.
Allow the Qu'ran to explain:
Surat 2:87 And We did certainly give Moses the Torah and followed up after him with messengers. And We gave Jesus, the son of Mary, clear proofs and supported him with the Pure Spirit. But is it [not] that every time a messenger came to you, [O Children of Israel], with what your souls did not desire, you were arrogant? And a party [of messengers] you denied and another party you killed.
88 And We did certainly give Moses the Torah and followed up after him with messengers. And We gave Jesus, the son of Mary, clear proofs and supported him with the Pure Spirit. But is it [not] that every time a messenger came to you, [O Children of Israel], with what your souls did not desire, you were arrogant? And a party [of messengers] you denied and another party you killed.
89 And when there came to them a Book from Allah confirming that which was with them - although before they used to pray for victory against those who disbelieved - but [then] when there came to them that which they recognized, they disbelieved in it; so the curse of Allah will be upon the disbelievers.
90 How wretched is that for which they sold themselves - that they would disbelieve in what Allah has revealed through [their] outrage that Allah would send down His favor upon whom He wills from among His servants. So they returned having [earned] wrath upon wrath. And for the disbelievers is a humiliating punishment.
91 And when it is said to them, "Believe in what Allah has revealed," they say, "We believe [only] in what was revealed to us." And they disbelieve in what came after it, while it is the truth confirming that which is with them. Say, "Then why did you kill the prophets of Allah before, if you are [indeed] believers?"
Islam basically teaches that the Jews and Christians are Idolaters, that they do not believe in the same God. In other words - it could be said that Islam teaches that it was the original religion of Adam, Moses, etc - but that the Jews have forsaken that religion and elevated their own creation over the scripture (humorous, since Muhammad was illiterate and could neither read nor write).
For a little history on Muhammad and the Islam he founded:
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" One thing seems clear, however: all the parties in the Qur'an are monotheists worshipping the God of the Biblical tradition, and all are familiar – if rarely directly from the Bible itself – with Biblical concepts and stories. This is true even of the so-called polytheists, traditionally identified with Mohammed's tribe in Mecca. The Islamic tradition says that the members of this tribe, known as Quraysh, were believers in the God of Abraham whose monotheism had been corrupted by pagan elements; modern historians would be inclined to reverse the relationship and cast the pagan elements as older than the monotheism; but some kind of combination of Biblical-type monotheism and Arabian paganism is indeed what one encounters in the Qur'an.
The so-called polytheists believed in one creator God who ruled the world and whom one approached through prayer and ritual; in fact, like the anathematised ideological enemies of modern times, they seem to have originated in the same community as the people who denounced them. For a variety of doctrinal reasons, however, the tradition likes to stress the pagan side of the prophet's opponents, and one highly influential source in particular (Ibn al-Kalbi) casts them as naive worshippers of stones and idols of a type that may very well have existed in other parts of Arabia. For this reason, the secondary literature has tended to depict them as straightforward pagans too.
Some exegetes are considerably more sophisticated than Ibn al-Kalbi, and among modern historians GR Hawting stands out as the first to have shown that the people denounced as polytheists in the Qur'an are anything but straightforward pagans. The fact that the Qur'an seems to record a split in a monotheist community in Arabia can be expected to transform our understanding of how the new religion arose. "
I fail to see how it was directed at anyone else.
You must also understand, child - I hold no bias toward Christianity. In fact, I believe much of the modern church hierarchy is the "beast" that is effectively a construct of the devil. Islam is merely a less subtle construct of the same. But that is a deeper lecture that gets into why anything but anarchy is effectively a manifestation of "the dragon" associated with evil and the war in the heavens.
Of course - I wouldn't be a dragon if I didn't understand the "reason for the madness." The consequence of knowledge is arrogance - it is, thus, the course that most dragons choose to follow their own knowledge rather than seek the wisdom of creation.
But, again, I digress.
