Forgive the title.
Michael Coren in yesterday's National Post (May 5, 2005) blames the Crusades on the Muslims, he says they started it by invading the holy land and starting wars with Europe. But I find this conclusion rather unfair and quite arbitrarily chosen. If Coren is looking for a cause to crusade his pen through paper, why stop with the Muslims? Why not blame the Israelites for invading Jericho in the first place - better yet, blame God for delivering the Holy Land to the Israelites, catapulting mankind into an endless series of seriously passionate skirmishes over a ridiculously small tract of land. Perhaps this is more accurately the truth about the Crusades - God started it.
The one group Christians hated even more than the Muslims are fellow Christians. Millennia of experience attest that the Christian's zeal for barbarous hatred toward fellow Christians has always been much worse than for anyone else. When Pope Urban II declared the first crusade with the words, "Men of God, men chosen and blessed among all, combine your forces!" he was saying "quiet down, violently happy princes, and stop your infighting; for God's sake you're Christian, men; here, focus your energies on something else and go play in the backyard." Trying to solve the bloodlust of princes, I think, is more accurately the truth about the Crusades.
2 comments:
It's more fun to blame the Muslims. I always do.
Christo,
Well said. However, Michael Coren, in response to what I am sure is a significant amount of feedback, "revisited" the assertions of his article and makes absolutely no concessions or attempts at diplomacy. According to Coren, (and I can't remember if the following appeared in his first article) Christianity, when compared to Islam, is the only institution to demonstrate "genuine contrition" for particular past wrongs. Further, his main idea can be summarized as “Moslems were wrong, and should apologize for the Crusades.” He even alludes to the contribution this has on the beginnings of terror. Subtlety Coren has not. He presents an obviously biased article and goes on to criticize Moslems for similar narrow-mindedness. I find this not only unfair, as you said, but hypocritical as well. I'm sure the issue is lot more complex and ambiguous than Michael Coren's black and white portrayal.
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