Santorum Tackles the Crusades

March 2, 2011 By vorjack 13 Comments

Rick Santorum weighs in on a historical debate:

Rick Santorum launched into a scathing attack on the left, charging during an appearance in South Carolina that the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by “the American left who hates Christendom.”

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said in Spartanburg on Tuesday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”

Other folks can deal with the politics, I’m more interested in the history.

I think Santorum is about half right. I’m not a big fan of the argument that the Latin crusaders were only in it to grab loot and land, nor am I going to argue that they were motivated by a drive to exterminate Islam. There was a bit of each of these, but not enough to explain the sudden appearance of the Crusades.

But you also can’t ignore the fact that the Franks (to use the catch-all term used by the Muslims) did pack up and go down to the Holy Land, at tremendous expense. The idea that Rome was suddenly responding to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem 400 years before just doesn’t hold water. And while the Seljuk Turks were putting pressure on Byzantium, that looks like one more battle in a long struggle between competing powers.

The Seljuks didn’t pose a major threat to the west, so it wasn’t a defensive war. Nor would it explain their headlong rush to Jerusalem, which at the time was in the hands of the Egyptian Fatimid rulers, the enemies of the Seljuks. Islam was probably more fragmented at this time than ever before (which explains why the First Crusade was so successful.)

Pope Urban II did play many of these cards when he ignited the First Crusade, but he was doing so for his own political reasons. He was looking to increase his own influence, and by creating a kind of holy war he succeeded. The knights who marched off were seeking a new type of armed pilgrimage by which to ease the burden of their sin.

In the end, it has to be seen as a type of religious aggression, just not a straightforward kind.

The Busybody has a good Top Ten list of recent works on the Crusades. I highly recommend Thomas Asbridge. I hear good things about Christopher Tyerman, but I found God’s War to be impenetrable.

Filed Under: Christianity, History, Islam 13 Comments

Reasons to be Optimistic about Egypt

February 4, 2011 By vorjack 15 Comments

At the beginning of the year, there was a story about Coptic Christians in Egypt suffering from attacks by Muslim radicals. In response, large numbers of their Muslim neighbors joined them at church to offer a human shield for their protection.

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. [...]

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

Now it appears that in the midst of the uprising, some Christians are returning the favor. Via Reddit, here’s a photograph of Egyptian Christians forming a human chain to protect a praying group of Muslims:


(via)

Another story comes from the Egyptian Museum, which houses an enormous number of artifacts from ancient Egypt. The museum suffered from looting, vandalism or both during the early part of the protests. Then, according to the Christian Science Monitor, Egyptian citizens once again formed a human shield around the museum until the military could arrive:

One man pleaded with people outside the museum’s gates on Tahrir Square not to loot the building, shouting at the crowd: “We are not like Baghdad.” After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, thieves carted off thousands of artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad — only a fraction of which have been recovered.

Suddenly other young men — some armed with truncheons taken from the police — formed a human chain outside the main entrance in an attempt to protect the collection inside.

“I’m standing here to defend and to protect our national treasure,” said one of the men, Farid Saad, a 40-year-old engineer.

Another man, 26-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim, said it was important to guard the museum because it “has 5,000 years of our history. If they steal it, we’ll never find it again.”

Filed Under: Christianity, Current Events, Islam 15 Comments

Egyptian Protestors and the American Far Right

February 3, 2011 By vorjack 30 Comments

I’ll be honest: I don’t have a firm grasp on what’s happening in Egypt. That ignorance is what’s stopping me from passing any comment on the protests. Like a lot of Americans, I know more about Egypt under the Pharaohs than under Mubarak.

I think my ignorance is shared by a lot of America’s far right, but that’s not stopping them from weaving these current events into end-times scenarios or conspiracy theories. Not surprisingly, the worst offender is Glenn Beck, who combines a whole mess of conspiracy and rapture buzz words to describe the situation. From Religion Dispatches Anthea Butler:

Beck, without having to say anything religious, recites every end-time theme; fire, riots, Islam, Israel, you name it. Beck’s latest assertion is that the Egyptian uprising will result in a Muslim Caliphate. Ridiculous, yes, but it is the dog whistle that calls together conspiracy theorists, rapture-watchers and end-times purveyors. His constant refrain that this is our “Archduke Ferdinand” moment no doubt will sear a vision of an impending World War III into the minds of his listeners, and his blackboard will continue to contribute to the growing right-wing conspiracy theories that President Obama is engineering this from the White House.

Butler’s colleague, Sarah Posner, discusses some of the other celebrities amongst the far right. Apparently the narrative that is taking shape there is more firm than Beck’s confused speculation. The current meme is blaming the entire uprising on the Muslim Brotherhood, which actually seems to have come late to the protests.

In fact, Haroon Moghul argues that the uprising in Egypt is not an Islamic uprising like the one seen in Iran. He teases out the differences in 4 Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Not Islamic, mostly based on his read of the culture of Egypt and Iran. In summary:

1. The particular brand of authoritarian Islamism seen in Iran has had it’s day, and it is no longer trusted by most of the Islamic world.

2. Iranian Shi’a Islam has a more powerful, more organized and more independent clergy than in Sunni Egypt.

3. The Shah of Iran had sought to impose a Persian identity over an Islamic identity, which partially explains the backlash. In comparison, Egypt has never had those stresses. Which leads to …

4. Islam really isn’t part of the disagreement in Egypt the way it was in Iran. For better or worse, Egypt is a deeply Muslim country, and no one feels that their religious identity is under threat.

Interestingly, Stephen Prothero has his own four points. They’re from of an outsider’s perspective, but they come to the same conclusion

So, at least for the moment it doesn’t look like the nightmares of the far right are coming to pass. It is very unlikely that we’ll see another theocracy or a new caliphate come out of Egypt.

Filed Under: Current Events, Islam 30 Comments

Rules of History

December 15, 2010 By vorjack 13 Comments

I think one of the rules I’ve learned from the study of history is, simply put, “No one gets the war they want.”

I think that we’re witnessing a perfect example right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rumsfeld and his allies wanted a short, victorious war to demonstrate American power and shake off the malaise of Vietnam. His efforts created exactly the quagmire that he was trying to avoid.

WWI has some good examples, to the point that it’s sometimes referred to as the “accidental war.” But the grand champion still has to be Alexius Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor who turned to the west for aid against the Turks. He was probably expecting a few thousand mounted troops to aid him in pushing the Turks out of Anatolia. He got 100,000+ crusaders who created a new power bloc, wrecked the balance of power and ultimately sacked Constantinople.

While I’m reading Fred Donner’s Muhammnd and the Believers: At the Origin’s of Islam, I’m tempted to add another rule, “No One Gets the Religion They Want.” Donner turns a more critical eye on the Quran and argues that the original movement was an attempt to create a broad monotheistic coalition rather than a new religion.

It makes a lot of sense. The Arabian peninsula was surrounded by monotheists at the time: Christian Rome and Aksum, Zoroastrian Persia and a smattering of Jewish groups. Donner believes that Muhammad was trying to bring monotheists into a new virtuous community in preparation for the coming apocalypse.

Of course, it eventually dawned on these new believers that not all that many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were willing to accept the authority of the new prophet, and the movement became a separate religion.

It some ways it’s strikingly similar to certain theories of early Christian development. The core group of Christian-Jews might have believed that both the gentiles and the Jews would now convert to this new form of Judaism in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Filed Under: History, Islam 13 Comments

Quran Burning crosses the pond, men arrested.

September 24, 2010 By fatemeh 187 Comments

This is an old discussion but one that always interests me, and it’s one that’s come up a few times lately: Should the force of law be used to prevent the burning of religious books and to punish those who do so?

In the UK, six men have been arrested for burning Qurans on the anniversary of 9/11. The charge is inciting racial hatred, an offense under both UK and European law.

Personally I’m happy that I live in a country where “freedom of speach” doesn’t extend as far as allowing this sort of thing.

Filed Under: Articles, Islam 187 Comments
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