se.) The fact is that the Crusades were a jihad in reverse is easily proved by early Christian History. Muslims insist that Christians willingly converted to Islam. Three indisputable facts contradict that claim. 1. For the first 300 years of Christianity. the followers of Jesus would accept torture and death from the Roman Empire rather than forsake their commitment to Jesus. They believed any revocation of their declared faith would earn them a ticket into Hell. There is no reason they would have willingly changed their faith from Jesus to Muhammad except by force. Islam does not promise paradise for believers, as does Christianity. Even Muhammad said he did not know his final reward. That would only be determined on his judgment day. 2. Next, Islam had conquered Spain in addition to North Africa and the Middle East. When the Moors attempted to extend their empire into Europe, they were met at Tours by Charles Martel and were soundly defeated. From that point forward, Islam was pushed out of Spain. So, if Christians willingly converted to Islam, why did they resist it at Tours and push it out of Europe? 3. Christians never would have willingly given up their holy cities of Jerusalem and Alexandria. * * * * * * * * The following is a excerpt from an article in Crisis Magazine. Credit is given at its end. * * * * * * * * So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression--an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands. Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity--and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion--has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years. With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammeds death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt--once the most heavily Christian areas in the world--quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of Western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:23:44 +0000
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