Crusades

So Oblamer wants to say that ISIS is equivalent to the Crusades?  I beg to disagree.  That the 57-state guy doesn’t know his history is perhaps no surprise but he tips his “If ever there is a controversy, I will stand with Muslims” hand.  Muslims consider the Christian Crusades a singular atrocity.  That’s where Obama is coming from with his Muslim upbringing. 

            But the truth about the Crusades is nothing akin to ISIS.  Terrorists kill with cruelty almost inhuman, thinking they are following their scriptures. They want to take over the world with a Caliphate in the sense of Hitler or Trotsky or Genghis Khan.  Crusaders did neither.  But the version of the crusades that I learned in High School was just as incorrect.  That narrative was simply that the Pope sent a bunch of guys on a holy war to win back the Holy land.  Wrong.  Much more involved and interesting than this.

            The first crusade started as a defensive call to arms against the incursions of the Seljuk Turks.  The barbarian Seljuks had come out of Central Asia and conquered Asia Minor (Turkey, today) and Syria from the Byzantine empire, defeating them in the battle of Manziert, 1071.  The Byzantine emperor pleaded desperately with the Pope to send help, lest the Turks would invade Europe and subject all of Christendom.  Now the Pope and Archbishops of Eastern Orthodoxy had just had a big row in 1054 over icons and had split, but the Pope carefully considered the plea.  Here’s why.  In the West, the last of the barbarian invaders—Vikings, Magyars (Hungarians), and Saxons had just been pacified and Christianized but they were CINO’s, Christians in name only.  Marauding knights and nobles fought petty wars against each other and were causing much suffering and instability.  The Popes pondered what to do and decided to reform the papacy to make it more political, so that they could requisition knights and become feudal monarchs.  Make the new barbarians civilized by mutual favors owed.  So Pope Urban called for a crusade to help the Byzantines. Some speculate that Urban wanted to retake the East, but there is little evidence of it.  The whole thing didn’t work as planned.  True to form, the marauding Crusader knights didn’t obey the Eastern Emperor and took matters into their own hands, raiding Byzantium and even overthrowing the brave Christian Orthodox ruler of Edessa who had successfully resisted the Muslim onslaught. 

            But the Seljuks weren’t content to attack Constantinople.  They also went after the Fatimid Caliphate, a big Islamic empire that stretched from Bagdad to N. Africa and occupied the holy land.  As the eleventh century progressed, both the Seljuk empire and Fatimid empires fractured into smaller states.   These fought over Jerusalem and thousands of Christians were slaughtered.  Church of the Holy Seplucre was destroyed.  Pilgrims—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—had previously had peaceful passage.  Muslims now robbed them and often killed them. This headline evoked another reason for a crusade—recapture Jerusalem to restore order. 

            And so the Crusaders did, managing to massacre a bunch of Muslims, Jews and Christians in the process of taking Jerusalem.  This is what the Muslims consider so detestable.  But in fact, cruelty and massacres were common in the Dark Ages.  Muslims aggrandize Saladin, a latter day hero who reconquered the Crusader states a century later after half a dozen failed crusades by insufficient and ill-led forces. 

            What is interesting about Barack Hussein Obama is that he seems to want to pick fights with Christians as this latest Prayer Breakfast lecture once again shows. This follows his lawsuit against Lutherans demanding EEOC get to pick their ministers, Catholics mandated to buy birth control, Hobby Lobby to buy abortifacients, military chaplains ordered not to preach the gospel, etc.   Apparently he wants to turn his back on Christian Democrats, a puzzling thing.  For years, these folks have been in the forefront of union organization and social justice initiatives.  Why is he trying to make them so rare?  I think more than anything it proves his own lack of faith and discomfort with Christians.  Like he says on page 261 of his book, he is going to stand with the Muslims.