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.
