Did the Crusades serve any purpose?

At which point in time, rsr?

At Medina (originally a Jewish settlement), in 627 A.D., Mohammed killed 800 Jews, having his followers dig ditches for the heads to roll into.

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1104.htm

http://www.insiderreport.net/clash_1-2.html

 

Here is a good article about the Crusades:

"It is not Christianity that first assaulted Islam with sword but the other way round."


http://www.christiansofiraq.com/crusade11265

 

With the exception of the Apostle Peter, in the garden of Gethsemanne, real Christians have never taken up the sword to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Jesus could have called legions of angels to His rescue--He did not.

The long war against God rages--

Now what?

Selah,

Bro. James

 

No True Scotsman...

 

The Qur'an itself forbids compulsion in religion (002.256 Let there be no compulsion in religion). Religion without belief if useless. There have been times in history were corrupt leaders have tried to convert people, but it is not the norm in Islam. There are many historical evidences where Muslims have lived with other religions in peace. In Spain many people were still allowed to pray in their churches. In fact, throughout many Middle Eastern countries synagogues and churches stand side by side with mosques. The exception being Saudi Arabia, which can be debated as not correct in Islam as the Qur'an states Jews and Christians are People of the Book and need to be respected.

 

http://www.studytoanswer.net/myths_ch7.html#ch7-1

 

Another Christian site LadyEagle. Also, that is the particular view of a Islamic jurist and philosopher.

Muslims in their faith believe Religion is not by compulsion. Go to any mosque and they will tell you the same thing. Oh wait, you have Muslim friends, so ask them.

 

"The Qur'an itself forbids compulsion in religion (002.256 Let there be no compulsion in religion). "-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well DavidsonBap, this info is from the lips of a Muslim with a doctorate. He told me that under there religious law, non Muslims would be taxed at a higher rate than Muslims, sounds like a compulsion to me. Also, he said if you are not Muslim, they wont force you directly to become one, but if you are one or become one, under there religious law, you will be put to death if you convert to something else. So much for the kind loving spirit of Islam. Especially if you are borne one, "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Why do we insist on trying to say Islam is a NICE religion????

 

Letters from Ex-Muslims:

http://www.bibleprobe.com/islamapostates.htm

 

It may be a Christian site, but the verses from the Quran are pretty specific, without any jurist and philosopher interpreting them.

It's no problem to find those same verses on plenty of muslim sites on the web.

You can go on and believe whatever you want to believe, but the historical and present day evidence and facts tell the truth about the "religion of peace." If it was so peaceful, they wouldn't have to keep reminding us.

The truth of it is, it was started by a murderer who was visited by an angel, all right, a fallen one.

While there may be some truth to the notion that not all Muslims are terrorists, the majority of terrorist acts are committed by Muslims. Islam is dangerous in that it is not only a false religion, but historically, it is a political ideology which seeks world domination by the sword.

http://www.vicmord.com

It would not surprise me at all if the total number of genocidal atrocities committed by islamists far outweighed those committed by Nazis and Communists combined to date.

The majority of Christians being persecuted, murdered, and tortured are in muslim countries.

Shall we discuss the Muslim takeover of countries in Africa? Where would you like to start? Sierra Leone? Somalia? Sudan?

 

Actually they are not specific. There is a historical context to the entire Qur'an (mecca and Medina). For example, the so-called sword versus have been misunderstood many a time. It's like opening the Bible and just picking out a sentence without any knowledge of what was said before or after.

No. Historically Islam has been just as violent as Christianity. In fact, upon further investigation we find it is politics and corrupt rulers that have lead masses into murder and land grabs.
As far as Muslims today. More accurately, Muslim extremists are the problem today. Not the average Muslim. If that was the case, 6 million American Muslims would be strapped with bombs and wipe out America. Really. There are over a Billion Muslims.

That is your opinion. As far as murderer, Moses killed. Muhammad never said he was God, he said he was a man - a messenger.

The terrorists acts of today are committed by Muslim extremists. To forget the rest of history is convenient. If you think Christendom is is not seeking "world domination" than think again.

Please LadyEagle.

Okay, I'm done. We agree to disagree.

Peace and God bless.

 

That which was birthed by Constantine The Great after his paganistic dreams of "veni vidi vici is still in control of Christendom--overtly and/or covertly.

The real followers of Jesus never persecuted anyone. They have been "sawn assunder" in every generation.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

errata: Connie was the one with: in hoc signo vinces--like Philip Morris.

Sorry, my ROM's get errors from time to time.

Bro. James

 

"That which was birthed by Constantine The Great after his paganistic dreams of "veni vidi vici is still in control of Christendom--overtly and/or covertly.

The real followers of Jesus never persecuted anyone. They have been "sawn assunder" in every generation."-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are the man Bro-James.

 

Funny, if the "sword verses" have been misunderstood, then they've been misunderstood by generation after generation of Muslim theologians and religious scholars. The near uniform consensus on said verses for pretty much all of Muslim history is that these verses mean pretty much exactly what they appear to mean - wage war on the infidel until they either convert or submit to the dhimma. The jurists quoted in the site Lady Eagle posted the URL to are a SMALL fraction of similar views that could have been posted from across the width and breadth of Islamic history. So, if these verses are being "taken out of context", then start laying blame for this at the feel of Islamic scholars from al-Tabari to ibn Hanbal to Sayeed Maududi.....

Now, why don't we see Bible-believing Christians using the so-called "sword verses" in the Bible to justify a program of forced conversion and subjugation? After all, from what you seem to be saying, the two are little different in charactre, so if the Qur'an is understood so, why not the Bible? (We'll ignore for the time being the obvious programmatic differences between the texts which render any attempt to make a moral equivalency argument moot).

If by "Christianity" you mean Catholicism and other sorts of pseudo-Christian groups, your "just as" statement becomes a matter of apples and oranges.

As for your attempt to shift the impetus of Islamic aggression from religion to "politics and corrupt rulers", we should note that the two often work hand in hand. Religion is used by corrupt rulers to foment violence against non-Muslim people for any number of reasons - this has been true of the violence against Jews in Catholic Europe, and is also true of the violence against ALL minority groups in the Muslim world, both past and present.

However, it is also noteworthy that where said "Christian" groups commit violence, they do so in violation of the Scripture they say they hold to, whereas Muslims do so at the behest of their scripture. How do you explain that the whole history of Islamic spread in the first century AH has nothing to do with "politics" or "corrupt rulers", and everything to do with expanding Dar es-Salaam, as the Muslim sources themselves make explicitly clear?

Not to quibble about numbers, but there are actually only about 2 million Muslims in the US. The 6 million figure largely appears in and is derived from Muslim propaganda put out by groups like the Muslim Student Associations and CAIR. In fact, one Muslim group claimed that there were 6 million Muslims based upon the last census - easily exposed as a lie since the US Census does not ask questions about religion.

The matter isn't one of "fringe" versus "mainstream" in Islam, but rather "committed" versus "non-committed". Theologically speaking, most non-violent Muslims actually differ very little from the "fringe extremists" who commit the violence, most Muslims could, by the technical sense of the word, be termed "fundamentalists". They both believe the Qur'an is the literal word of allah, they both believe that the world WILL be subjugated to Islam before the Last Day, etc. etc. The difference is that the "fringe extremists" are willing to "go all the way" and act upon what they believe in the most decisive manner possible, while the bulk of the fundamentalist Muslims are not willing to go that far. It's an issue of commitment, not theology.

Could you please direct me to where Moses claimed to be God?

Now, concerning Mohammed. Have you even actually *read* what the hadith have to say concerning Mohammed's behaviour? I mean, this isn't stuff Jerry Falwell or Robert Morey came up with, it's right there in the "second scriptures" of the religion itself, from their own words, relayed by supposed companions of Mohammed themselves. Surely you won't try to tell us that you consider a hot-headed, extremely ill-considered, yet all-in-all un-premeditated murder by Moses to be morally equivalent to lining 600 Jews up in front of a trench, decapitating them, pushing their bodies into the trench, and burying them in a mass grave, and then distributing their widows among your soldiers for good measure - would you?

However, since I don't believe Mohammed even existed as a historical person maybe there's the hopeful off-chance that that didn't really happen.....

Would you care to demonstrate how Christians seek "world domination"?

Must be in those commands to Christians nestled deep within the book of II Hezekiah....

However, since we wish to talk about the rest of history, the rest of history exposes the charactre of Islam quite readily, for those willing to actually invest the time to study it.

The only reason I would find to question LadyEagle's comparison would be due to the extremely large number of people murdered by Communism in the 20th century - 100 million in China alone, at least 30 million in the Soviet Union, plus all the odds and ends from the rest of the world. If Islam hasn't historically killed that many, it's largely because Islam hasn't, for most of its history, had the opportunity to bring that many people under its power and aggression because of the relatively smallish populations in most countries back in "the day". Nevertheless, Islam has killed its share of people - brutally, wickedly - because of its view of its own superiority, and therefore its self-perceived justification to do so.

Just ask the Indians.

Cheers,
TQC

 

Wow, TQC, for your first post on here, all I can say is tremendous! Welcome to the Board!

 

Hi LadyEagle,

It's good to be here, thank you!

I have a small confession to make....I found your board because of the link you posted to Ten Myths About Islam, it showed up on my page stats. In my last post, I wrote in third-person about the website because I didn't want to put DavidsonBap "on guard" so that he wouldn't engage me because I wrote that evil Christian site that "bashes Islam". I wasn't meaning to be deceitful in any way however!