If Jdawg is going to try and rehabilitate WW1, then I'm going to try for the crusades.
They have a pretty bad reputation among Christians because they represent explicitly the way the roman catholic church seemed to drift from the teachings of Christ. Jesus, a man killed for rebellion and treason, wasn't exactly a pushover but he was a pacifist and an advocate of peaceful resistance and shaming your oppressor rather than attacking him. The 'turn the other cheek' thing is a great example of this, when slapped with the open right hand of a roman his advice wasn't to punch back (the eye for an eye thinking he refutes) but to turn the cheek and force your attacker to either shame themselves by using the unclean left hand or use the back of the hand and thus implicitly mark you as an equal. You slapped servants but punched peers. It's passive resistance as a response to force, not more force.
So to have the church which is supposed to act in his name, justify and encourage acts of actual war is something a lot of Christians are ashamed of. From the 800s to the 1600s the church explicitly called for and encouraged various invasions of non Christian states (not just in the middle east but they supported the norman invasion of England, the sacking of the Baltic states and the killing of jews in germany as well) and excused even massacres, slavery and cannibalism by it's knights in those wars. Even bishops fought in the war. To modern Christianity this kind of martial faith and use of force to increase the physical power of the church is embarrassing and something they're not proud of.
And that's fair enough. But as a non Christian, the crusades seem to me to have an unfair reputation. If you look at them purely in political terms, they're actually rather noble.
The modern perception is of advanced European nations running around deserts killing the poor beggers who lived there. Like it's the early stages of the imperialism that led to Europe ruling the world. But that just isn't true.
During the first 6 crusades, the islam empires were without doubt the most culturally, scientifically and militarily advanced countries on the planet. In terms of medicine they were miles ahead of anyone else in the world and in terms of science only the song dynasty in china came close. And, for all they were wracked with infighting, they were an explicitly aggressive and expansive power. Mohammed unlike Jesus, was a warrior who led an army during his life. And his followers had their own version of 'arab man's burden' which had led to them conquering and colonising northern Africa, most of the middle east and as far as Italy, Greece, Spain,, Portugal, India and China. And much like the people conquered by the earlier roman empires or the later european empires, those that weren't killed enjoyed a higher standard of life in the new empires. Even jews who didn't have full rights in either empire were probably better off living in Muslim Spain than Christian Spain. But they weren't free.
The Christian European states were backward in comparison. It was our dark ages, when post roman Europe had splintered into a lot of small weak kingdoms.
The crusades was basically what would have happened if after the Iroquois War of the early 1600s, a leader of the native americans called for Indians everywhere to fight back in the name of the great spirit and for the next 500 years various unorganised savage tribes from as far away as the other end of the continent threw themselves at the much more advanced Europeans until they didn't have any strength left to fight in north America.
Now obviously it was the mongol empire that did in the caliphates, but it was the crusades, staring with the reconquista in spain, that weakened them and kept them on the defensive and put a stop to Europe following Egypt or Iran as a life long province of the muslim empires. And as much as the crusaders did massacre, rape and murder their way across the middle east, so did the muslims (there are no real good guys in history, life pre industrial revolution was brutal nasty and short and so were most of the people, nostalgia is a lie really).
Anti imperialism is in these days, if we're to honour various freedom fighters to fight for their own land and own way of living against being taken over by a more advanced but foreign power, then the crusaders are just as heroic as William Wallace or Alfred the Great or Sitting Bull.
They have a pretty bad reputation among Christians because they represent explicitly the way the roman catholic church seemed to drift from the teachings of Christ. Jesus, a man killed for rebellion and treason, wasn't exactly a pushover but he was a pacifist and an advocate of peaceful resistance and shaming your oppressor rather than attacking him. The 'turn the other cheek' thing is a great example of this, when slapped with the open right hand of a roman his advice wasn't to punch back (the eye for an eye thinking he refutes) but to turn the cheek and force your attacker to either shame themselves by using the unclean left hand or use the back of the hand and thus implicitly mark you as an equal. You slapped servants but punched peers. It's passive resistance as a response to force, not more force.
So to have the church which is supposed to act in his name, justify and encourage acts of actual war is something a lot of Christians are ashamed of. From the 800s to the 1600s the church explicitly called for and encouraged various invasions of non Christian states (not just in the middle east but they supported the norman invasion of England, the sacking of the Baltic states and the killing of jews in germany as well) and excused even massacres, slavery and cannibalism by it's knights in those wars. Even bishops fought in the war. To modern Christianity this kind of martial faith and use of force to increase the physical power of the church is embarrassing and something they're not proud of.
And that's fair enough. But as a non Christian, the crusades seem to me to have an unfair reputation. If you look at them purely in political terms, they're actually rather noble.
The modern perception is of advanced European nations running around deserts killing the poor beggers who lived there. Like it's the early stages of the imperialism that led to Europe ruling the world. But that just isn't true.
During the first 6 crusades, the islam empires were without doubt the most culturally, scientifically and militarily advanced countries on the planet. In terms of medicine they were miles ahead of anyone else in the world and in terms of science only the song dynasty in china came close. And, for all they were wracked with infighting, they were an explicitly aggressive and expansive power. Mohammed unlike Jesus, was a warrior who led an army during his life. And his followers had their own version of 'arab man's burden' which had led to them conquering and colonising northern Africa, most of the middle east and as far as Italy, Greece, Spain,, Portugal, India and China. And much like the people conquered by the earlier roman empires or the later european empires, those that weren't killed enjoyed a higher standard of life in the new empires. Even jews who didn't have full rights in either empire were probably better off living in Muslim Spain than Christian Spain. But they weren't free.
The Christian European states were backward in comparison. It was our dark ages, when post roman Europe had splintered into a lot of small weak kingdoms.
The crusades was basically what would have happened if after the Iroquois War of the early 1600s, a leader of the native americans called for Indians everywhere to fight back in the name of the great spirit and for the next 500 years various unorganised savage tribes from as far away as the other end of the continent threw themselves at the much more advanced Europeans until they didn't have any strength left to fight in north America.
Now obviously it was the mongol empire that did in the caliphates, but it was the crusades, staring with the reconquista in spain, that weakened them and kept them on the defensive and put a stop to Europe following Egypt or Iran as a life long province of the muslim empires. And as much as the crusaders did massacre, rape and murder their way across the middle east, so did the muslims (there are no real good guys in history, life pre industrial revolution was brutal nasty and short and so were most of the people, nostalgia is a lie really).
Anti imperialism is in these days, if we're to honour various freedom fighters to fight for their own land and own way of living against being taken over by a more advanced but foreign power, then the crusaders are just as heroic as William Wallace or Alfred the Great or Sitting Bull.
