With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's 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.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world.
At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be consumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous.
Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war.
Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood.
In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land.
The Crusaders' expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously.
They were not just a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance.
Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe.
Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap.
Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade.
They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to "store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt."
They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love.

Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen.
Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder.
A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.
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Is it OK for the Muslims to violently conquer lands, but not OK for the Christians to attempt to restore things when the opportunity and justification arose - namely continued Muslim aggression and continued threat even into Eastern Europe?

That article (The Real History of the Crusades) was written by Thomas F Madden - a historian, a crusades specialist and also a Roman Catholic apologist, a Republican and a neo-con.

(Source: http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3463&Itemid=48)

He also wrote "The Real Inquisition" where he justifies the Inqiusition....

To understand the Inquisition we have to remember that the Middle Ages were, well, medieval. We should not expect people in the past to view the world and their place in it the way we do today. (You try living through the Black Death and see how it changes your attitude.) For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church. It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.

The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training — something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.

The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.

(Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp)

I would say (expert or not) his opinions doesn't appear neutral.



"The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community."

Well I guess that explains why sprint omitted the link.

Yes, I agree with much of what I posted.
He's a christian, I am a christian. Quite likely we would agree.
I am also a conservative.

tell me, where are the erros in his writings ?
This was during islams "golden years", so they had advanced hugely.

christianity has become easy targets for any lefty for far too long.
Then you all complain when we defend the Bible.



The holocaust ??? I feel that is quite against the NT teachings.
The witch hunts, belong to the dark ages. were a result of one person alleging something agaisnt another.
it spread like a fever, then died out as quickly.




Or do you want this, in an enlightened age ??

A FEMALE suicide bomber blew herself up among policemen outside a restaurant north of Baghdad overnight, killing 15 people and wounding 35.

The attack took place in Baquba, capital of Diyala province, where Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda militants have sought to sow tension despite a succession of military offensives that have put the group on the back foot.

Police said the woman walked over to a group of policemen outside a restaurant then detonated explosives under her clothing.

"When she approached the police patrol, a powerful blast ripped through the area," said Adnan Fayadh, a photocopy shop owner who was nearby.

Police and the US military said 15 people were killed in the attack, which was also near a number of government buildings in Baquba, 65km north of Baghdad. The US military said the dead included seven policemen.

The US military said 21 female suicide bombers had carried out attacks this year."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23906629-12377,00.html

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 9:04am:


Well, I'm not sure where the errors are because I am not fully versed on or have studied the subject (beyond a cursory read). You appear to have studied the subject. Why don't you enlighten us on where the errors are?

Is your opinion based on your research or from your emotions? Is your agreement with Thomas F Madden merely because he reflected your views? Is it because he's a Christian, you're a Christian. Quite likely you'll agree? Did you check his sources? Did you check opposing viewpoints to his article? Is his article an op-ed?

As for his Inquisition article where he wrote and I highlighted ""The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community." was extremely apologetic with total disregard to reality where innocents were tortured until they "confessed" then burnt at the stake as heretics.

Check out his many articles from his website (www.thomasmadden.org). His articles are all the same theme. Christians misunderstood, Crusades misunderstood, Inquisition misunderstood.

Your brand of "research" is where you already have the "answer" and you trawl for texts to support you. You appear to accept things at face value when they reflect your viewpoint. If they don't you are highly critical often times repeatly asking people to "prove it".

Perhaps Sprint you need to incorporate into your assertions the actions of the Christian armies under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (who died just a few years before the birth of Muhammad) threatening to conquer all of the middle east (and Christianising it as a consequence) to understand why Arabs saw the Byzantine Empire as a very real threat. It was not just religious zeal that drove the Muslims into Europe, but a firm belief (proved by the obvious Byzantine aspiration of reconstituting the Roman Empire) that the European Christian Emperors presented a direct threat to their autonomy.

Sprint if you want an accurate account of the crusades, rather than an absurdly biased political blog, you should start with a history textbook. You don't necessarily have to agree with it, but at least you will know what it is you are rejecting. No-one here is going to take that guy seriously enough to bother finding all the mistakes he made.

acid - Al Jazeera news as a source ?
what info do you gleam from there, how to tie bombs on ??