vernuf
Sophomore
@vernuf
Posts: 310
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Post by vernuf on Aug 4, 2017 14:41:58 GMT
moldmammines
OK, BOO-BOO, take your quote and tell that to the Muslims.. You have read the Koran? Right?
“If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
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Post by maya55555 on Aug 4, 2017 17:05:56 GMT
vernuf
You mis-understood my statement.
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Post by Cinemachinery on Aug 4, 2017 19:19:56 GMT
Hmmmm... Did the crusades save Europe? From Islam? Not so sure... After the first five crusades...the big ones...Constantinople still fell, and the Turks did advance well into Europe. The Battle of Lepanto definitely stalled them, but they held on into the 1800's. That's several centuries of dominion in European land. But, they held parts of eastern Europe and the Balkans, and fuck those places, right? So maybe it's more accurate to say that the Crusades saved Western Europe? But how true is that? The video briefly mentions the Albigensian crusade, where the Catholic forces massacred > 200,000 Cathars in southern France. So...the defenders of Europe turned on themselves. Just goes to show you that the only thing medieval Christians hated more than muslims were Christians of a different denomination. Meanwhile Islamic states still resided fairly comfortably in Spain, while most of the military forces went down to the holy land instead of participating in the reconquista. So, life in western Europe still sucked. So then maybe the Crusades saved Christendom? Sure. But how much of a threat were the muslim forces prior to the Crusades? Islamic advances in Spain had already been checked a couple centuries before, and the unified Islamic world had already split into the fractious, infighting mess that it has been pretty much up to the present day. Perhaps, if the Islamic arabic dynasties of the Mid-East were allowed to remain in power, then the invading Seljuk Turks from the east would have been checked, or at least stalled in their eventual conquest of Anatolia. Also, Christendom was fighting among itself (again, Albigensian Crusade and the Fourth Crusade) and would only continue to get worse in the Reformation in the coming centuries. The wars of religion following the Reformation far outweigh the crusades in casualties...but it's Christian on Christian killing, so baby Jesus can at least feel a little better about that. As long as those sand loving rag heads don't kill any of our guys, it's all good. So, perhaps the most accurate thing to say is that the Crusades saved (mostly) western Europe (except Spain) from being killed by Muslims, although western European Christians did plenty of killing among themselves in the process. I dunno, seems like it's all kind of a wash. Dayum, son! You've got me reading now.
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Post by sublime92 on Aug 5, 2017 5:35:53 GMT
It's super easy to put an anti-christian spin on the crusades Erjen. When you kill a bunch of people while pushing your religion on them it tends to make you look bad. Exactly. And now the Muslims are returning the sentiment, trying to save the Western world from Christianity. Interesting that the three Abrahamic religions have to fight to the death over which version of the invisible sky father is the correct one. Back in 2001, after the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, I made a comment to some people I worked with that the Muslims were just doing what the Christians did during the Crusades. If looks could kill, I would have been drawn, quartered and beheaded. Christian Crusade, Muslim Jihad; same thing. And the Jews have been persecuted by each offshoot of their religion. All part of 'God's Plan' or just plain old human nature to protect the insiders of the tribe from outsiders. One would think we could have evolved beyond this by now. I guess not. There is a clear dichotomy between the founding of Christianity and Islam. For instance, Jesus's teachings were spread peacefully and organically throughout the Middle East during the early christian expansion. Jesus never instructed his disciples to forcefully convert or murder innocent people. Essentially, the violence of the Crusades was antithetical to what Jesus preached. "When you kill a bunch of people while pushing your religion on them it tends to make you look bad". That's a good transition into Islam. Mohammad founded Islam 600 years after Christianity but did so in an insouciant matter. He went the way of waging military campaigns across the Middle East against unbelievers like Christians and Jews in order to spread his vision. He sliced off heads, used sub-saharan african slave labor and took sex slaves as spoils of his expansionist holy war(ISIS was given Mohammad's blessing). Before he died, he advised his companions to continue the Islamic expansion until the world was under Islamic rule. It's stuff like this that makes me question those who believe Mohammad, a warmonger, was the final messenger of God and the almighty nobleman of what is ethically and morally right on earth. The differences between Jesus and Mohammad couldn't be any more finite. Moreover, it's really lazy to conflate or blur the lines between pre-enlightenment/reformative Christianity 500-1000 years ago with unreformed Islam in the year 2017. The cold hard truth is that Christianity and Judaism did indeed see enlightenments and reformations. Comparatively, Islam has yet to see one with any substantial weight. Overall, the further the world grandstands with tired lectures of moral and cultural relativism, the more Islam's 21st century violent streak becomes diluted to the public. Sitting around and thinking, "Oh, well, Islam is just doing what Christianity did 1000 years ago, we'll just have to wait it out" exemplifies the very finest in moral relativist buffoonery.
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Post by Karl Aksel on Aug 5, 2017 8:27:05 GMT
moldmammines
OK, BOO-BOO, take your quote and tell that to the Muslims.. You have read the Koran? Right?
You're kind of making his point, there. Muslims killing for religion=bad. And you recognize this. But you do not accept that Christians killing for religion=bad?
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Post by Commander_Jim on Aug 5, 2017 8:35:45 GMT
the crusades were a bunch of fiascos
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Post by Karl Aksel on Aug 5, 2017 8:42:31 GMT
There is a clear dichotomy between the founding of Christianity and Islam. For instance, Jesus's teachings were spread peacefully and organically throughout the Middle East during the early christian expansion. Jesus never instructed his disciples to forcefully convert or murder innocent people. Essentially, the violence of the Crusades was antithetical to what Jesus preached. So clearly, whatever the circumstances around the founding of a religion were, it means diddly squat for how it will be practised later. You can't make Christian history look any better by saying, "yes, the Crusades were bad, but look at the founding!" I don't get it, is that supposed to make people less violent, just because they're Christian? I think you meant to say "infinite". But the differences or similarities of Jesus and Mohammed are irrelevant. For one thing, Jesus did not found Christianity - his followers did. But that aside, their characters have precious little influence on the characters of their later followers. Like Gandhi said: "I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Hey, you were the one who tried to make the founding of Christianity and Islam relevant, and that's even further back in time. This is simply not accurate. It is certainly accurate for Christianity and Judaism, especially Christianity - but just because you won't find identical changes in Islam doesn't mean they don't count. Islam has changed both away from and towards secularism and scepticism, and is practised diversely today even among the more conservative Islamic states. The difference between the most puritanical of Islamic nations and the least, are truly like night and day. "Violent streak". As if the West isn't on a violent streak itself.
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Post by cupcakes on Aug 5, 2017 17:46:31 GMT
OK, BOO-BOO, take your quote and tell that to the Muslims.. You have read the Koran? Right?
You're right in that the commonalities between the two are striking. BTW, I lie according to my whims.
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Post by OpiateOfTheMasses on Aug 5, 2017 22:56:10 GMT
The purpose of the Crusades was the Pope/Catholic church trying to exert it's authority and achieve a couple of things:
1. To give the various Western European states something to fight that wasn't each other. You had a whole bunch of knights and noblemen who desperately wanted to prove themselves in combat and were basically spoiling for a fight. And they would regularly fight amongst themselves. And it wasn't ideal have Christians fighting Christians. So this gave all the young warriors an opportunity to go off and have a war and not end up killing any Christians in the process. At least that was the idea.
2. And it helped promote Catholicism/diminish Islam. Which has to be a good thing as far as the Catholic church is concerned.
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