Well crap, the stupid forum logged me out and completely deleted my very large post. GRRR.
Wanted to respond to some of the discussion thusfar. First of all, I want it to be understood that I hold no prejudice against Muslims or anyone else. I have had several friends and aquaintences who were Muslim and I know that they are good people who believe in world peace and tollerance. I appreciate Radwan's courtesy and good manners in expressing his views from the perspective of Islam.
You're telling of the Crusades is a tad one-sided, albeit such travesties did most certainly occur. I have to agree that the Crusades should be irrelevant as a basis for anything today. Unfortunately, it still festers in the minds and hearts of Muslims in this world. I think it becomes a broad excuse for xenophobia and bigotry in the Muslim world today. After all, it was not the Christians who struck first. The Christians held the Holy Land first and they were conquerred by the Muslims under the philosophy of "spreading Islam by the sword." They took Jerusalem, killed numerous Christians and demolished every Christian holy site in the entire city save one: the Church of the Nativity. That particular church was spared only because of its depiction of the Three Wise Men as Persians (who were an integral part of Islam at that time.) At the time of the Crusades, the Islamic world was unquestionably the more civilized. But Muslims committed attrocities a plenty, mostly much later on. When the Turkish forces took Constantinople, they slaughtered every man woman and child in the city ... because they had been so stubborn and difficult to take. The Hagia Sofia, centuries long the crown jewel and greatest of Christian cathedrals was desecrated (from the Christian viewpoint) and turned into a Muslim mosque. For Eastern Orthodox Christians, this would have been the equivalent of conquering Mecca, wiping out all trace of the Muslim faith from it, and converting all of its mosques into Christian cathedrals.
Ultimately, the end result of the religious bigotry that fueled both the Crusades and the Jihads was stalemate. Neither religion could countenance the existence of the other, but neither could manage wipe out the other. The Crusades are a poor excuse for Muslim xenophobia. They are 800-1000 years gone. In the Christian world, the mentality that fueled the Crusades is almost completely gone.
Some new animosity has resulted from the attacks of 9/11 and all prior and subsequent Muslim instigated terrorist attacks. Would the Muslim world sit idly by if an extremist group in the United States managed to drop a tactical nuclear warhead on Mecca? I'm betting the answer is a resounding, "No!" So why is America to be faulted for trying to retaliate after 9/11.
Using the Crusades as an excuse for fearing/hating Americans is particularly ludicrous. The United States of America held as one of its founding principals the Freedom of Religion. Why? Because the founding fathers of this nation remembered well the murderous results of religious intollerance. They sought to make this land a complete counterculture to the madness that had gripped their European forefathers for centuries. And most importantly, the United States of America would not come into existence until 700 years after the Crusades.
How can anyone conceive of a direct association between the Crusades and the USA??
In the balancing out of things, it has been the Muslim world and not the Christian world that is guilty of the most recent and most insidious Muslim/Christian attrocities. You can read about the Armenian Holocaust here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Holocaust or you can look through the thread about that subject on this forum. I do not know of any attocity committed by Christendom against Islam that managed to tally over 1 million intentional deaths.
The main difference between the two viewpoints is that the Christan world has chosen not to hold onto centries old grudges. For some reason, apparently Muslims do.
As far as Israel is concerned, the unceasing Muslim rhetoric becomes tiresome and counterproductive. "The Israelis stole the land of the Palestine from the Palestinian people and should be forced to return them." This concept has been the outcry of the Muslim world since the creation of the State of Israel in the 1940's. It comes down to a failure to admit reality. Israel and her people have no intention of leaving. They have been horribly abused by all the nations of the world for centuries. Now they have their own nation on lands that were theirs anciently. They going to give up the lands they now hold, pack up and leave. Those lands are sacred to them and to their relious convictions. The Palestinians have been handed a raw deal, but so were countless other displaced peoples. The Armenians were handed a far worse deal by the tender mercies of the biggotted Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. The long and short of it: The Muslim world has been beating its head against a brick wall and refusing to look for alternate solutions.:bang:
