Mark Steyn, "Those Evil Crusaders?"
SO EXACTLY WHY do we now look at the Crusades as “a Very Bad Thing”?
British scholar Steven Runciman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Crusades) is part of the answer. He pioneered the “profiteering, landless younger son rape-a-thon” theory of the Crusades. After all, Everybody Knows That, right?
Just The Facts
If you look at actual history, in many cases kings and leading nobles actually went into deep debt to fund the various crusades, including one Spanish king who literally mortgaged his country to pay the incredible costs involved. Until Runciman and others started re-writing history, the Muslims happily knew what history told them- the Crusades failed. Now, crusaders are depicted as the prototypical colonial invaders, opposing Islam and Allah’s will, invading peaceful Muslim lands.
They Punched Back! Wah!
General Saladin Would Like ALL The Things
The Crusades were a response to:
a) Muslim violence against Christians and Christian pilgrims to the Holy land,
b) the near total destruction of the church & tomb of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by a Muslim leader,
c) a cry for help from a Byzantine Emperor, since it was primarily Byzantium that had lost land and been ceaselessly fighting Islam for 400 and more years to that point.
That Jihad - with a very few pauses - has continued for 1400 years, and to the estimated tune of 270 MILLION deaths.
Re-writing all these awkward facts for 2014, of course, ties in nicely with cultural Marxism, the vilification of Christianity, and the re-writing of history in ideological terms. This is why ignorance of history in schools and universities is literally killing us.
Crosses carved by pilgrims into a wall of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, by crusaders
To The Rescue
Thankfully, scholars like Thomas F. Madden and Rodney Stark are pulling the Crusades out of the memory hole, and remembering the whole story, because it is crucial for us to remember and know the roots of the Islamism now occupying so much of our time and money and politics. The Crusades are still with us, and can serve as an example of what to do, and what not to do, and the seriousness of Jihad then and now.
As bad as the Crusades could sometimes be, they shine in comparison to the rape, theft, enslavement and beheadings of Jihad, and were an attempt to defend Christian lands, holy sites, and lands then recently conquered by the moon-god blood cult of Mohammedanism.
Learn the facts:
Article: The Real History of the Crusades, by Thomas Madden
(http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/madden/03463.html)
Book: The New Concise History of the Crusades, by Thomas F. Madden
(http://www.amazon.ca/The-New-Concise-History-Crusades/dp/0742538230)
Video: Thomas F. Madden, Ph.D. The Crusades: Then and Now
(http://vimeo.com/33043624)
More Book: God’s Battalions, The Case for the Crusades, by Rodney Stark
(http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Battalions-Crusades-Rodney-Stark/dp/0061582611/)
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http://steynian.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/those-evil-crusaders/