By Justin Esthay
It is a common and fallacious assertion from secularists and Muslims alike, that terrorism is a response to American "imperialism," and that the Crusades were a Christian war of aggression waged against Islamic victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the days of Muhammad, a murderer who raided caravans, slaying and robbing those he found, Islam has been expanding through assiduous brutality.
• Islam's war against the west
It is a common and fallacious assertion from secularists and Muslims alike, that terrorism is a response to American "imperialism," and that the Crusades were a Christian war of aggression waged against Islamic victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the days of Muhammad, a murderer who raided caravans, slaying and robbing those he found, Islam has been expanding through assiduous brutality.
• Islam's war against the west
Contrary to the Crusades being called to forcibly convert Muslim lands to Christianity (which is precisely what Islam had done to get them), it was a war of self-defense in response to centuries of Muslim aggression. The first time European Christians had any significant exposure to Islam was some three hundred years prior to the first Crusade; when Muslims invaded Christian Spain and France (about 711 A.D.). This was the true beginning of the war against terror, which has been ongoing ever since. They were halted in France by Charles Martel ("The Hammer"), but Spain would spend many centuries (until 1492, the year Columbus discovered the "New World") repelling Muslim invaders.
One need simply look to the Cathedral of Otranto, for example, which contains the remains of hundreds of martyrs killed for refusing to convert to Islam when the city of Otranto was taken by Muslim forces in 1480, to establish that Muslim aggression far antecedes any American foreign policy. "The archbishop was beheaded before the altar, his companions were sawn in half, and their accompanying priests were all murdered."
Long before the first Crusade Muhammad had demanded conversion from the Christian Byzantine Empire (the eastern remnants of the Roman Empire) as the price of safety. The result of the Byzantine's declination was centuries of attack from Muslim armies to compel conversion, until a beleaguered Byzantine Emperor finally appealed to the Pope for help. This, was the cause of the first Crusade; the first of numerous efforts to repel Muslim invaders and reclaim Christian lands lost to Islamic conquest.
"For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They 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 permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them." - Pope Urban II, Calling the first Crusade, 1095 A.D.
The Byzantine Empire ultimately fell to Muslim forces, and the Hagia Sophia, a beautiful church in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, was converted into a mosque by the invading Muslims. With the fall of the Byzantine Empire a large portion of once Christian lands became Islamic, and is erroneously viewed along with many others, as always having been such by most today.
The advent of Islam, subsequent fall of the Christian Byzantine Empire (red) to Islamic aggression (green), and invasion of Europe and centuries long occupation of Spain can be seen here in a chronological map.
The notion that Christianity was the aggressor against Islam, which did not exist until well over 500 years after Christ walked the earth, is absurd. Damascus, a once mostly Christian city in Syria, and to where Paul was heading when he encountered Christ, was conquered by Muslim invaders who demolished the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and built a mosque upon it. Syria, now the home of groups like ISIS, is a place unsafe for "infidels" like Paul today.
The advent of Islam, subsequent fall of the Christian Byzantine Empire (red) to Islamic aggression (green), and invasion of Europe and centuries long occupation of Spain can be seen here in a chronological map.
The notion that Christianity was the aggressor against Islam, which did not exist until well over 500 years after Christ walked the earth, is absurd. Damascus, a once mostly Christian city in Syria, and to where Paul was heading when he encountered Christ, was conquered by Muslim invaders who demolished the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and built a mosque upon it. Syria, now the home of groups like ISIS, is a place unsafe for "infidels" like Paul today.
"The armed Islamist Opposition in Syria has murdered more than 200 Christians in the city of Homs, including entire families with young children. These Islamic gangs kidnapped Christians and demanded high ransoms. In two cases, after the ransoms were paid, the men's bodies were found."
Essentially all the lands now held by Muslims in the middle east were stolen from other peoples, which they often subsequently eradicated, if not by force then by imposition of the "dhimmitude;" measures which render "kafirs" (non-Muslims) second class citizens, impose a tax upon them, and enact rigid statutes which proscribe kafirs from disseminating their faith to others (even their own children). Intended to compel the conversion of conquered subjects, who ultimately acquiesce to escape the onerous conditions of life as a dhimmi, it gradually extirpates different faiths from lands conquered by Islam.
It should also be noted that supplanting a conquered peoples' houses of worship with mosques is a common act of asserting Muslim dominance over a vanquished foe. Sadly, most Americans being historically ignorant of such, do not understand what building a mosque on the site of the 911 terror attack in New York represents. By erecting a mosque upon the site where Islam vanquished its enemy, they are proclaiming the victory of Islam over America.
• Islam declares war against an infant United States
Destroying the absurd leftist assertion that Islamic aggression is the result of American foreign policy (as opposed to the catalyst for such), is the fact that Muslims were attacking American vessels, robbing them, and enslaving their crews during the administrations of our first presidents; before our incipient nation had any significant foreign policy of which to speak regarding Islam, and certainly long before we ever "bombed" any Muslim country. Our Navy was formed in no small part to remedy this problem (i.e. Muslim violence), that we would no longer spend a fifth of our federal budget in ransom and extortion fees (by the time of Jefferson's administration) for "peace" with Islamic states which were attacking us without provocation.
"[H]ow is it possible the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence."- George Washington, to Marquis de Lafayette, August 15, 1786.Every American needs to understand a few things:
• If not for the Crusades which impeded Islamic expansion across Europe, there would be no Europe, nor consequently America as we know it (if at all). One need simply observe the condition of Islamic states, which are spectacles of barbarism and oppression, to see how much we owe to the Crusades.
• Our conflict with Islam is not the result of any thing we do, per se, or any "foreign policy" we currently have. It is the result of Islamic dictum, from Muhammad, which states:
"I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle,... so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me..."• The only thing your well intended "civility" will accomplish is the facilitation of the Islamic conquest of the west, with far less trouble than those middle eastern lands they took only after violent resistance, and the negation of the sacrifice of countless lives lost in defense of Christian civilization against centuries of Islamic aggression.
A complete withdrawal from, and eschewal of the Islamic region of the world will not produce some magical "peace" with Islam. History has already shown us that being perceived as weak by Islamic states, was a far more expensive foreign policy than warring against them. While we may not be at war with individual Muslims who do not engage in hostile acts against us, the ideology of Islam is inherently incompatible with, and hostile to, American concepts of liberty and governance. As such we are, and ever will be, in contention with "Islam" as an ideology. Those Muslims that don't attack us, don't, and those that do will never be swayed by tepid appeals to "peace." America does not need a leader who can't grasp this reality; because the consequences of such delusion is at best, expensive, and at worst, deadly.
Christians must stop being manipulated into feeling ashamed of their faith, and therefore averse to defending it. The legacy of those Christian warriors which essentially saved the western world should be a source of gratitude and pride for Christians. Without their sacrifice we'd all be speaking Arabic right now.
